Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra

November 28, 2022 4:40 PM

Nazi messages infiltrating the US. Authoritarian powers on the rise. The involvement of Congress members with this fascist movement. Ripped from the headlines -- of 1940. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra (show page link) is an 8-part podcast that talks about the efforts of the Nazis to gain influence and even win power in the United States during WWII (before US involvement), and the fights to bring those involved to justice. This Apple Podcasts page lets you play each episode, while the show page has background links and more.
posted by hippybear (11 comments total)

Thoroughly engaging podcast. I was hooked at 10 minutes in.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 5:09 PM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

F-o-r-d

BRAZIL: Green Shirts Up, Down
Monday, May 23, 1938

Return of the Green Shirts
January 04, 2020

National Socialist Movement of Chile-1938


Duquesne Spy Ring
posted by clavdivs at 5:30 PM on November 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

I binged it last weekend. The threads it infers from what happened with this in the 40's to what's happening now, 80 years later, is terrifying. But, if nothing else, it gives us the entire playbook.

See also, Slate's One Year podcast on 1942, the episode "The Info Wars of World War II"
posted by deezil at 5:53 PM on November 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

excerpt from Gallagher's book on the "Brooklyn Boys"
posted by clavdivs at 6:21 PM on November 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Sarah Churchwell has done some terrific work in this area. Here she is discussing her 2019 book Behold America.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:32 AM on November 29, 2022

I've been looking for a new podcast series and this is absolutely it.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:44 AM on November 29, 2022

Thanks, hippybear! I knew this was coming, but had forgotten about it. I look forward to diving in later on.
posted by jaruwaan at 5:48 AM on November 29, 2022

I heard some of this content from Rachel on a Pod Save America interview recently (not sure when the actual interview took place). It was fascinating, and Rachel is so good at laying out the facts so that I can easily understand, then wraps it all up so well. Looking forward to this. Thanks for the post!
posted by sundrop at 6:23 AM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

If anyone makes Fanfare posts and has extensive comments, please link back here. The subject is important but I have to pretty aggressively manage my doom intake these days to avoid a steep depression dive (Death Panel is fantastic but also oof) and if I know what and how the ep touches on things that can help. The clips of Maddow I’ve seen before tend to have a kind of “I’m telling you an important, TERRIBLE thing and you should be scared and worried” tone and I don’t need more of that in life right now.
posted by curious nu at 6:30 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

The clips of Maddow I’ve seen before tend to have a kind of “I’m telling you an important, TERRIBLE thing and you should be scared and worried” tone and I don’t need more of that in life right now.

I'm going to say, having listened to this a couple of times now, that I didn't get much sense of doom out of it. It does have Maddow's specific form of delivery, but this is all about historic events from 80 years ago, it's not about things happening in the world RIGHT NOW, which I think is a lot of where the doom comes from (and is why I stopped watching her a while ago -- everything was SO URGENT).

Maybe listen to the first episode (or the first 10 minutes) and if it's not your thing, then no harm no foul.
posted by hippybear at 8:17 PM on November 30, 2022

It's kindofa shame someone decided this needed to be 8 episodes, round about the middle you start to feel how it's been filler-written, which, when delivered with Maddow's trademark delivery, really starts to grate. The narrative arc is well-tailored, and would have been perfect in half the length. Overall it's a useful (and pretty shocking) reexamination of a slice of history that deserves revisiting, mainly to better cut through the weaponized bullshitting that worked for the fasciofabulist perpetrators last time around. (Would have been an added bonus if it had drawn actual personal connections between the America First crowd of yesteryear and their current ilk - that might have merited those further eps, to drive home that there is actual historical continuity, beyond the "justice only ultimately came from voters and historical circumstance" summary that this series leaves it at.)
posted by progosk at 3:30 AM on December 1, 2022