Ultra

[Tom Wilkinson]

Has anyone listened to the Rachel Maddow podcast Ultra?
She is not someone I typically follow but I have found it very interesting and am amazed how strong the nazi party movement was in the US and the ties it had to the far right including many in government.

Some of the similarities to current events are striking.


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[moTthediesel]

It’s great, I had no idea how far the Nazi’s had penetrated the US government. Mostly GOP members, what a surprise.

“History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes”

[Canoeyawl]

I think...
That if anyone has not figured out the GOP is a cross breed of fascism and nazism, they are not capable of critical thinking.

And Rachel btw, is a Stanford graduate (BA in public policy) and a Rhodes scholar with a doctorate in Philosophy/politics Oxford

exit to add: Thank God she is a liberal

[Tom Wilkinson]

I think...
That if anyone has not figured out the GOP is a cross breed of fascism and nazism, they are not capable of critical thinking.

And Rachel btw, is a Stanford graduate (BA in public policy) and a Rhodes scholar with a doctorate in Philosophy/politics Oxford

exit to add: Thank God she is a liberal

I agree, but I had no idea of the amount of history of naziism in the US nor how far into government it was. How propaganda was being sent to United States citizens on the government dime through the us postal service as one example.


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[Jimmy W]

Have you read the Wikipedia page on the crash?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovettsville_air_disaster

At the bottom of that page in a link to a PDF of the Civil Aeronautics Board report.
https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/3..._33015_DS1.pdf

I haven't finished listening to the first episode yet.

[Tom Wilkinson]

I will have to take a look.


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[Jimmy W]

The speech found after the Lundeen crash. Which I have also not finished reading.
https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...many-speech_sm

[TomF]

It's a remarkable podcast. One striking thing is the amount of audio from Archives, with the voices of the actual people drawn from the news reporting of the time.

[WI-Tom]

It may be worth a listen--thanks.

I've never been a huge Maddow fan. I think she gets most of her facts right, but there's a smugness about her presentation that just turns me off. I can see how it would drive the right-wingers crazy--the spin is a bit overdone even for me. Is this podcast more of the same?

Tom

[Nicholas Carey]

The speech found after the Lundeen crash. Which I have also not finished reading.
https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...many-speech_sm

127 typewritten pages?

I can't imagine why you haven't finished it yet!

[skuthorp]

Minus Pearl Harbour, America may well have been 'neutral'.
Is the history of the American Bund taught anywhere in the country now?

[TomF]

It may be worth a listen--thanks.

I've never been a huge Maddow fan. I think she gets most of her facts right, but there's a smugness about her presentation that just turns me off. I can see how it would drive the right-wingers crazy--the spin is a bit overdone even for me. Is this podcast more of the same?

Tom

imo no, this sounds like if the Discovery Channel had done a series on collaboration between American politicians and the Nazis during the 1940s. Which is, fwiw, what it was.

You can prefer that it was a PBS or BBC documentary for the less popular, sensational style of writing, but the story is just the story. Drawn from archival documents, radio broadcasts, and a book published by one of the principal investigators a decade later

[Ted Hoppe]

I find Maddow is too weighted politically to be unbiased, preachy, condescending and her voice in grinding. She may have intelligent things to say but she turns me off. YMMV.

That said, the GOP are reactionaries to a changing country and world. Helpless they appear like nazis and fascists and are labelled accordingly. We just usd to call them hard core christians...

[CWSmith]

I find Maddow is too weighted politically to be unbiased,...

Maddow is not a news source. She is an analyst who puts things together with her own viewpoint. She is intended to make you think, but she is not unbiased.

[Paul Pless]

I find Maddow is too weighted politically to be unbiased, preachy, condescending and her voice in grinding. She may have intelligent things to say but she turns me off. YMMV.

i don't mind her bias, its the monotonous, overly-repetitive, mind numbing drone that makes her entirely uninteresting to me

[Ted Hoppe]

Maddow is not a news source. She is an analyst who puts things together with her own viewpoint. She is intended to make you think, but she is not unbiased.

She is a (social) media star spun as a viable new source. We know what she was at MSNBC and the producers fed her prompts in her ear. She was spun intentionally as a news sources in the light of a trusted progressive foil. We should always weigh her past with what she is now. I will not take away my respect for her intelligence but I am always reminded of the soap box outrage on that made billions of dollars for NBC/Universal.

Perhaps if the hype and drive for viewership had not been so high, we would have had a more civil discourse and be in a better place. Moreover we would not have turned our own politicians into media stars to feed the money making media machine.

[Ted Hoppe]

https://www.thewrap.com/maddow-deal-30-million-2024/

Rachel Maddow Nets $30 Million Annually in New MSNBC Deal (Report)

The Daily Beast reports that Maddow will get $30 million a year through 2024

[Norman Bernstein]

It's a remarkable podcast. One striking thing is the amount of audio from Archives, with the voices of the actual people drawn from the news reporting of the time.

Uhhh…. I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I suspect the clips were largely voice actors, for dramatic effect.

I listened to the whole podcast… the story was fantastic… Maddox’s presentation, sadly, was typical for her: overdramatized, and far more wordy than it deserved. Maddox likes to overkill every point she makes. It was a lot like ‘Frontline’… 20 minutes of material stretched over 2 hours.

Still, I was very glad I listened to it. Few people are aware of just how much Christian nationalism and Nazi propaganda were infiltrated into America in the years just prior to WWII.

[Ted Hoppe]

Uhhh…. I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I suspect the clips were largely voice actors, for dramatic effect.

Few people are aware of just how much Christian nationalism and Nazi propaganda were infiltrated into America in the years just prior to WWII.

I would think it is historically speaking it related the same pattern and length of time that the second largest immigration wave happened. The response to huge cultural and populations changes in the nation.

[TomF]

Uhhh…. I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I suspect the clips were largely voice actors, for dramatic effect.

I listened to the whole podcast… the story was fantastic… Maddox’s presentation, sadly, was typical for her: overdramatized, and far more wordy than it deserved. Maddox likes to overkill every point she makes. It was a lot like ‘Frontline’… 20 minutes of material stretched over 2 hours.

Still, I was very glad I listened to it. Few people are aware of just how much Christian nationalism and Nazi propaganda were infiltrated into America in the years just prior to WWII.

No, actually. Maddow was asked about that in at least 2 separate interviews - she said she'd been asked where she found such voice actors

She replied that the voices are, simply, the archival recordings from the time. Part of what drew her to the project was the sheer quantity of such which could be used in a present day podcast.

People got their news from the radio in the 1940s, and that was the style of public speech

[Garret]

i don't mind her bias, its the monotonous, overly-repetitive, mind numbing drone that makes her entirely uninteresting to me

Yep - though maybe not entirely uninteresting - just too annoying to listen to often. Note that I'm referring to her regular show - I need to listen to Ultra I guess.

[Ted Hoppe]

People got their news from the radio in the 1940s, and that was the style of public speech

In the 40s people got their news from multiple papers during the day in most major cities in the US. Also was a more literate urban population despite not being college educated.
Maddow and team cherry picked their voices and ideas. It is entertainment no less.

[TomF]

Personally, I think it's as sensational as hell to learn that Fr. Coughlan's "America First" movement led to a series of explosions set off by those he inspired, using explosives members of the group had stolen from the US military. And that they were acquitted of seditious conspiracy.

I found it sensational that not only were there allegations of Nazi collaboration with elected members of Congress, but that the key Nazi feeding German propaganda to elected members, who wrote the content of many of their speeches, was convicted of that spy role.

I found it sensational that the lead FBI investigator went to Germany immediately after the war, and interviewed leafing Nazis then on trial at Nuremberg, and searched the German government archives for their records about who was on the Nazi payroll in the US House and Senate, and found the names and payment records in black and white.

I found it sensational that when he wrote his report detailing those offenses, a sitting Senator got the Attorney General to squash it, on the order of President Truman. To have the report classified. And that when elements of the report leaked and were published in newspapers, and the investigator then reiterated those leaked aspects in a talk on a university campus, he was fired the next day.

The tale isn't merely "sensational,' it's downright lurid. But it's factual. I don't much appreciate a breathless style of narrative in general, preferring something more like the relaxed telling of a PBS or BBC product. But if any story lends itself to a breathless presentation, surely to God it's one of actual Nazis paying actual US Senators and Members of Congress to read German prepared speeches into the congressional record, during WW2. Advocating Nazi positions, and using US government resources to send transcripts via the Taxpayer funded mass mailers available to elected members... out to ordinary constituents.

The parallels to today are obvious, but frankly Maddow doesn't dwell on them till the conclusion of the final episode (8). She isn't telling a story of alleged present day authoritarian and their actions, but of actual 1940s Nazi sympathizers who held high US office. And how they went about creating nationwide support, including support for violence which actually occurred.

People can draw all the conclusions they wish about current analogues, and she's been very clear that her intent is to counter the "it can't happen here" narrative with a deep description of when it did. And what didn't happen then either to prevent it, or even dole out accountability. Maddow is ruthless saying that tge DoJ has, in that instance, a sh1tty track record. It caved to political pressure. It didn't hold anyone accountable. And if the past is prologue, it should not be assumed that things would play any differently at DoJ in any future instances. Like, hypothetically, any happening now.

I get that Maddow's style irritates some, for being too much like a tabloid. For this story, largely unheard in our generation, it may be entirely appropriate .

[TomF]

No, actually. Maddow was asked about that in at least 2 separate interviews - she said she'd been asked where she found such voice actors

She replied that the voices are, simply, the archival recordings from the time. Part of what drew her to the project was the sheer quantity of such which could be used in a present day podcast.

People got their news from the radio in the 1940s, and that was the style of public speech

Maddow got the actual voice of widow of the dead Senator who had been on the Nazi payroll, in testimony she gave to Congress.

She got the actual voice of Rogge, the lead FBI investigator, in his interview on Meet the Press a week after he had been fired for talking about the (by then leaked) content of the report he had written from interviews with Nazis in Nuremberg, and from materials he had documented in Nazi German government archives.

Sure, she'd not choose parts of their recorded voices where they were not saying this or that directly relevant to the narrative. But it was not a case of Maddow twisting the words to make them say something they did not.

In the show notes, she's also linked to many of the public archives etc where she got these clips and written resources.

[JimD]

My better half hung on her every word for two years while she built a meticulously crafted case detailing how the Mueller Report was going to sink Trump. In fact, the only thing that sank was the Mueller Report, and much of Maddow's credibility along with it. I hope she's a better historian than she is a prognosticator. Edited to add: To her credit, she did at least present facts, something the other team isn't much interested in doing.

[TomF]

In the 40s people got their new from multiple papers during the day in most major cities in the US. Also was a more literate urban population despite not being college educated.
Maddow and team cherry picked their voices and ideas. It is entertainment no less.

Sure. But it was also a period when radio news was important, and as a result extensive radio Archives exist which preserve what new makers sounded like when someone put a mike in front of them.

Today, for all that print media still exists, we have extensive video clips of newsmakers when someone asks a question and turns on a camera. It won't take actors to recreate Reagan saying "tear down this wall," or Clinton saying he did not "have sexual relations with that woman," or Bush standing beneath a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished."

It won't take actors for future documentarians to recreate testimony to Jan6 either, or to show the Capitol being overrun.

We should remember that speaking styles have changed. Recordings of speeches by FDR, Churchill, and even Kennedy feel very ponderous and dated. Movies from as recently as the 1990s have styles of acting and delivery that wouldn't make it past the editing room today; try watching a Bronson film from the 70s or a comedy routine by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, and imagine it happening today. Styles change; tastes change. They were used at the time because they were effective at the time.

Maddow didn't need to cherry pick. If Ken Burns had access to recordings of civil war soldiers reading their own letters home, their delivery and pacing wouldn't have sounded much like Morgan Freeman or Peter Coyote.

[Canoeyawl]

We should remember that speaking styles have changed. Recordings of speeches by FDR, Churchill, and even Kennedy feel very ponderous and dated.

Have you listened to Pence stumping for 2024 yet?
It's enough to make you toss your cookies..

[Ted Hoppe]

I am reminded this is all entertainment.

[Canoeyawl]

You should be reminded that although it is presented as "entertainment" it is deadly serious

[TomF]

Yesterday, Trump posted on his social media network that in the face of such corruption around the 2020 election, it should be overturned or re-run. That in such cases, "all" rules, articles etc need to be terminated. Even those in the Constitution.

Jimmy's already got a thread going on that, iirc. But it's worth reinforcing that this isn't "entertainment." That just as Maddow's podcast "Ultra" narrates an actual WW2 era crisis when Americans elected to high office actively worked (and were paid for it) to shift public opinion to support the Nazis, Trump actually himself wrote yesterday that the Constitution should be terminated to re-install him into office.

And no prominent elected Republicans have denounced him for it yet.

This isn't entertainment.

[Ted Hoppe]

Yesterday, Trump posted on his social media network that in the face of such corruption around the 2020 election, it should be overturned or re-run. That in such cases, "all" rules, articles etc need to be terminated. Even those in the Constitution.

Jimmy's already got a thread going on that, iirc. But it's worth reinforcing that this isn't "entertainment." That just as Maddow's podcast "Ultra" narrates an actual WW2 era crisis when Americans elected to high office actively worked (and were paid for it) to shift public opinion to support the Nazis, Trump actually himself wrote yesterday that the Constitution should be terminated to re-install him into office.

And no prominent elected Republicans have denounced him for it yet.

This isn't entertainment.

Of course this is entertainment. You just don't want to think it is. Moreover US Politics has always been entertainment. Politics is a chance to gather and discuss. The running commentary of glamour in the media since the Kennedys. Reagan dancing with Thatcher. What Nancy Regan wore. Obama's brown suit. Michelle O's dresses.

[Canoeyawl]

Hoodwinked in the name of entertainment.
Many in the industry have a vested interest in this, whether knowingly or not

Edit to add:
The guise of "entertainment" has been the primary venue for propaganda for a long time, since Napoleon I perhaps. Film is fairly recent, trying in neatly with Printed Work and radio.
For todays influence See: Advertising Council

For WW2 see: Goebbels, Heinrich Hoffmann, Eva Braun and etc. USA see: Office of War Information
WW1 had the "ministry of information" and we had the "Committee on Public Information"

[TomF]

What happened in Germany wasn't entertainment. Nor is what is happening today in Ukraine.

Sure, especially in democratic systems where politicians need people to vote for them, it helps to be entertaining. To have people like you enough to vote for you.

But politics isn't entertainment. And the intent to subvert politics to install authoritarianism isn't entertaining at all, except as a deflection. I doubt North Koreans or Syrians find their politics entertaining.

[Canoeyawl]

What happened in Germany wasn't entertainment. Nor is what is happening today in Ukraine.

But they are still selling coke, automobiles and drugs for wrinkles all under the guise of entertainment. Most are so inured to violence as entertainment, they don't recognize it for what it is.

[rbgarr]

i don't mind her bias, its the monotonous, overly-repetitive, mind numbing drone that makes her entirely uninteresting to me

Understandable. She repeated herself beating dead horses into the ground on her television show (which she's only doing once a week now)... but there's little of that in the "ULTRA" podcast. She also created a podcast about Spiro Agnew's crimes which drove him from Nixon's vice-presidency, "Bagman". The research and accompanying music/soundtracks are very well done.

Books she's written are "Blowout" (oil and politics) and "Drift" (military and politics). She's come a long way from the "Air America" radio network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Am...radio_network)

https://www.rachelmaddow.com/bag-man-by-rachel-maddow/