As much as I enjoy and am learning from Rachel Maddow's Ultra Season 2, which explores rampant antisemitism/Nazism in 1940s & 1950s US politics (up to and including the Chicago Tribune, WaPo, NYT, etc giving credulous coverage to a Nazi plot at Nuremberg to turn the blame on Jewish-US soldiers)...
There's something about the narrative format that makes the whole thing feel like a cosy whodunnit. But it's *not* just a "good story". It's a reminder that we've been fighting the far right forever.
@MLClark My interpretation of it was that she isn't sensationalizing it, which could easily be brushed aside as partisan hype. Instead, calmly presenting it as fact and proof, we've been here before and swept it under the rug. I think some of it is carefully phrased to create similarities to current events in our heads.
No, she's definitely not sensationalizing it! The cosy nature of the storytelling sometimes has an "isn't this neat" feel to it, though, that can yield complacency.
I'm hoping it's only a mid-series vibe, though, and that the series ends with a truly thoughtful and forward-looking closing remark based on all the damning history we've just been through. We shall see!
(And if hasn't been said enough, fuck McCarthy and everyone who road into power with him. What a horrible human being.)
(I'll do a write-up on it for a future Monday Media Review when it's finished, but for now it's raising a huge storytelling question. I understand that the aim is to tell this history in a way that's accessible; the question is simply whether this comes at a cost to agency. Are people listening to learn neat historical facts? To have a cool conversation piece at a dinner with friends? Or is the structure going to lead to a sense of civic empowerment at the end? A way forward? We shall see!)