Prequel An American Fight Against Fascism

Rachel’s book pieces together and provides insight into America’s brainwashing as Nazism and antisemitism flourished worldwide and particularly here in America. Similar to her investigative news reporting, Rachel has laid out facts, characters and timelines in a compelling way. Rachel has a remarkable way, in my opinion, of allowing the reader to have the puzzle before them, and follow along as piece by piece the puzzle is fit together brilliantly.Sadly, Prequel is as current today as it was in the political climate of Nazism, with the exception that propaganda reaching the masses is now accomplished in mere seconds. This is a worthwhile and necessary read for those who are reeling in light of the current shenanigans and farcical tendency of our political representatives.

Well written, alarming, frightening, ——exposes how close America was to the end of our way of democracy in the 40’s ——-More importantly our present day reflects the sobering reality of where we are and the direction that we are headed for——Do we want a fascist form of government? If not we have to step up and resist all forms of change in that direction —-Most of all we need to demand that our leaders follow the will of the voters in protection of our freedom——RRL

I’ve watched Rachel Maddow for years on MSNBC. I’ve heard two of her pod cast series and I enjoyed all of her work. I chose to try this book because it was inspired by her ULTRA podcast. I haven’t been an avid “book” reader for some time and I hoped that I could “tough it out.” To my surprise, it turned out to be a very interesting read and it was hard to put down. Rachel is a gifted writer who, by the way, has quite the vocabulary. I kept my phone close by so I could use my dictionary app to define words that I’ve never heard of. After I looked them up, I usually found that the word happened to be the perfect word for the sentence. I actually enjoyed learning the new words. Rachel Maddow is the real deal. I’m planning on purchasing more of her books.

Rachel is a very good writer and story teller. This book follows her Ultra podcast story line if you listened to that. The topic is too close to home. The parallels with today’s political situation is very scary, since we don’t yet know how this run toward fascism will end. It was interesting to me to see how a fascist, nazi-sympathizing movement got started slowly around WWII, with only a few key individuals, and then grew exponentially. The infiltration in Congress and the DOJ was deep, and Hitler was behind it all. Just how extensive and how the propaganda spread was alarming. It may not be Hitler this time, but the reader can put a name of who is is this time. I really enjoyed the book and even bought one as a gift for a friend. After finishing it, she texted to say “she needed to go out for a walk to clear her head”. It’s a serious read. We agreed to meet for dinner to talk about the book since it raises a lot of feelings and talking points.

While we remember American veterans, let’s also remember civilian heroes William Power Maloney, O. John Rogge, Dillard Stokes, Henry Hokes, Leon Lewis & Erik Sevareid, who fought Hitler, Goebbels, Nazi agents & American fascists inside America, as told by Rachel Madow in her new book, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. While law enforcement was preoccupied with communists & often sympathetic to fascists as anti-communist, private citizens took up the fight against Nazis in America. In California, the Jewish American, Leon Lewis, frustrated by the indifference of sheriffs, police & the FBI, started his own espionage group to infiltrate fascist groups. John Hoke, an advertising man out East, was alarmed by a letter from his son in an Ivy League college, wanting to quit because of all the Nazi propaganda being shoved under his dorm door. Hoke investigated & found that Nazi propaganda was being promulgated all across the nation, much of it mailed at taxpayers’ expense through Senators’ franking privilege. The Attorney General appointed Maloney to investigate, but when he found many members of Congress implicated, one of them, Senator Wheeler of Montana, complained & the AG fired him. About two dozen members of Congress aided & were on Hitler’s payroll, but they were never brought to justice. Special Prosecutor John Rogge, who replaced Malony, accused & brought to trial dozen of them, but they & their attorneys brought such chaos to the trial that the judge died of a heart attack. The most influential American propagandist for fascism was Fr. Coughlin, a Catholic priest, whose radio show had 30,000,000 listeners. Because the Communist Party was atheistic & the fascists (Nazis) professed themselves Christians, Christian churches tended to favor fascists, as the Catholic Church allied with General Franco during the Spanish Civil War is his victory to become dictator of Spain. The church finally canceled his radio show but never defrocked him, & he died immensely wealthy. The Justice Department didn’t want to start over with a new judge & dropped the case. HItler in Mein Kampf wrote that the masses do not tell big lies; small lies are more plausible. However, when a person in authority, like Hitler, or Donald Trump, tells ridiculously big lies & keeps repeating them, the masses think that nobody would tell such lies, unless there were something to them, especially if other people in power defended those lies. After the war, Rogge went to the Nuremburg Trials, found reams of documents verifying the connections between Germany & American fascists. He wrote a report, which Truman’s attorney general promised he could make public. However, when the AG & Truman read the report, they forbade him to publish it, because it implicated so many members of Congress & other prominent, powerful people, such as Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a long-time friend of President Truman. Rogge went on tour to American colleges & lectured on what he had learned. The AG had him tracked down & fired. He was finally allowed to publish his report decades later.