Joseph McCarthy was even worse than I realized.
I knew about his reign of terror in the 1950s, when he falsely accused government officials, Hollywood figures and others of being communists, ruining lives and leading to the still-used ephithet “McCarthyism.”
What I didn’t know was that he consorted with and defended actual Nazis — that is, German war criminals and their surprisingly numerous supporters in the U.S. And that there are some echoes down to the present day.
That’s the main takeaway from the second season of “Ultra,” a podcast series hosted by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. It’s good stuff, and you should listen to it if you get a chance. It’s a wide-ranging look at Nazis and their sympathizers in the U.S. after World War II — a follow-up to the first season, which examined the Nazi movement before and during the war.
And though “Ultra” features a wide cast of characters, the focus is on McCarthy, who defended German soldiers who massacred U.S. troops after they had already surrendered and whose entire Senate career was what you might call Nazi-adjacent.
Two interesting tidbits:
Although Richard Nixon graciously conceded after losing the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy, behind the scenes both he and top Republican officials gave at least tacit support to efforts by extreme right-wing forces to overturn the results in several states and hand the election to Nixon.
And Trump thug Steve Bannon, currently behind bars, has favorably cited an Italian fascist who in turn wrote the introduction for “Imperium,” a Nazi screed written by American fascist Francis Yockey, a shadowy fugitive throughout “Ultra” who kills himself after he is finally taken into custody by the FBI.
The reference to Bannon is the only direct tie Maddow makes to Donald Trump and his ongoing efforts to subvert democracy. But the Trump parallels are clear throughout, as they were during the first season.
If there’s a hopeful takeaway from “Ultra,” it’s this: We’ve defeated fascism in the U.S. before, and we can do it again.
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don’t you love it Dan, she has so much hate for America yet no news total silence on the revolution in Bangladesh
What began as peaceful protests against a quota system for government jobs spiraled into a nationwide movement to push longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina out of office, resulting in a deadly crackdown and clashes which killed at least 300 people, according to analysis by local media and agencies. https://www.yahoo.com/news/student-handing-bottles-water-protesters-075910212.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/06/asia/bangladesh-protests-hasina-resignation-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html
Sen. McCarthy claimed that Soviet intelligence infiltrated the highest levels of the US government, and up until the mid-1990s, his claims were written off as quackery.
But the release of the Venona cables in the 1995 proved that McCarthy was 100% correct.
Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Julius Rosenberg … They were all Soviet spies.
“There was not a single agency of the American government that the Soviets had not infiltrated, ranging from the OSS—the forerunner of the CIA—to the Justice Department, to the Treasury Department, to the State Department, to all of the wartime defense agencies.”
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2904_venona.html