Thread by @kathleen_belew

I'm so excited to share my thoughts on @maddow Rachel Maddow's phenomenal new podcast, ULTRA. Mild spoilers ahead, along with my wholehearted endorsement (1)

ULTRA is a vivid, funny, smart podcast about the “Great Sedition Trial” of 1944. I’m a historian of the paramilitary white power movement and a major sedition trial of similar/same activists in the 1980s... (2)

...and I was still bowled over by the first episode, which details a number of elements you will recognize in the 1980s incarnation of paramilitary white power groups I wrote about in Bring the War Home: (3)

These include 1) organized paramilitary groups and Aryan bookstores 2) a plan to wage war on the federal government through selective targeting 3) building and storing bombs 4) distributing hate materials ... (4)

5) being really excited about Nazis 6) getting illegally obtained weapons from state sources (National Guard units in this case, Ft Bragg in the '80s) and 7) stunning failures, to put it mildly, in surveillance, prosecution, and government response. (5)

I am, as I mentioned, a historian of the paramilitary right. And this podcast has persuaded me that a broad-based, social movement of Nazi and Klan activists was afoot in the 1940s... (6)

... and that it wasn’t just America First here and the Silver Shirts there, but that there was a groundswell of interconnected people (interconnections well documented in the show, btw) that wanted to overthrow the U.S. and implement a fascist government. (7)

The Great Sedition Trial was a spectacular failure, leaving us largely unaware of the real threat posed by a coalition of Hitler-backed Nazi propagandists;... (8)

...sitting U.S. senators using their offices (and taxpayer money) to distribute disinformation designed to turn Americans against each other; ... (9)

...an array of paramilitary groups ready to go to war on the US and install a fascist regime; and a series of failures in judicial accountability. (10)

It was such a failure that bringing the story together is a shock. As @maddow notes, this historical moment is usually remembered as a time when Americans unified against the threat Hitler and fascism posed to the nation and the world. (11)

The trial was such a failure, in other words, that most of us don’t know this story (12)

Maddow is primarily focused on judicial and political responses, which is a perfectly appropriate focus when discussing criminal acts. It’s hard to point to exactly where the Great Sedition Trial fails: (13)

(is it the defendants putting together propaganda envelopes right there in the courtroom? Government reprisal against the prosecutor? The judge who allows the defendants room for all kinds of disruptive hijinks and then dies, mid trial?) (14)

(Or maybe the president who buries the incendiary investigation that proves---for, what, the third time?—that this effort was designed and bankrolled by the Hitler Regime?) (15)

It's a lot of failure, but that’s not where we land. Maddow’s point about this, in the last episode, is that the crisis we face today is not new, and that this realization should give us hope—because previous generations have faced this threat and overcome it. (16)

I’ll add a hopeful penny: not only have previous generations faced this crisis before & overcome it, not only did our institutions hold strong, as she points out, through the accountability of elections and courts. (17)

But another thing happened: history (18).

By this I mean that between then and now, the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s movement, the LGBT movement and others have profoundly transformed the way Americans think about equality. (19)

The climate crisis has ignited political action, particularly among young people. When we face reactionary moments and fascist conspiracies (and I mean that here in the sense of groups of people conspiring to overthrow the government, which is what seditious conspiracy is). (20)

So, we have NOT ONLY the example of prior generations confronting this threat and standing it down, as ULTRA shows: we also have years and years of teaching and learning and organizing. We don’t reset back to zero with every sedition trial. (21)

This brings me to the gentle critique, offered only because Maddow asked: as a field expert, I listened to ULTRA absolutely rapt in part because of her talent at storytelling but in part because of all the connections to the present moment that were immediately clear to me: (22)

Making pipe bombs and organizing in cells, she would say, and I would go AHA! This is the same thing that white power activist were doing in the 1980s and also the same thing that The Base and Attomwaffen have tried in the present moment. (23)

Marching uniformed armies down the street, she would say, and I would go AHA! This is the same thing we’ve seen from the Oath Keepers (two of whom were just found guilty of seditious conspiracy). (24)

Denying involvement with the government and denying their fascist and white supremacist positions? That’s the Proud Boys now. (25)

But without drawing the connections, ULTRA didn’t follow through in explaining to a mainstream listener just why this story is so important. I will absolutely recommend it anyway—I just wish there was a version with click-through or subtitle or references (26)

But to sum up, TL/DR: ULTRA by @maddow is a gorgeous, timely, smart work of the history of the present: looking at the past to understand where we are—and to locate possibilities for action that we might not otherwise have seen. Kudos and strongly recommend to everyone! (27)

As Maddow notes, it’s not just about the failed court prosecutions and the others who chose not to act. It’s about the secretary who reported her boss, the civilian investigators, the whistleblowers, the undercover journalists. (28)

It takes all of those people to stop a fascist mobilization. And now, as we face another groundswell, another threat, ULTRA is an urgent story about how it will take all of us to stop this one. (29)

P.S.: Do not miss the superb website, msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-…, which has transcripts, episodes, DOCUMENTS, and PHOTOS (30)

nbcnews.com/msnbc/msnbc-po… like this one which is basically this one of the people I study but, you know, old school (31)

P.P.S. (Also, in addition to funny moments and superb scoring, ULTRA has amazing historian stuff, including not-to-be-missed tidbits after the closing credits of people nerding out about their archives and love notes to the Library of Congress... (32) #twitterstorians

@maddow does very well in the podcast in engaging and promoting the historical research that provides the backbone of ULTRA, including Charles R. Gallagher (Nazis of Copely Square) and @nancybeckyoung (Why We Fight: Congress and the Politics of WWII) (33)

Also, since "The KKK" is trending as I write this review thread, if any ULTRA fans out there are interested in reading more about what comes before and after the podcast (in fascist/white supremacist paramilitarism)--this historian is happy to offer book reccs! (32)