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The anti-Communist hysteria rampant in the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s is often called the McCarthy period. But the red-baiting and persecution started even before McCarthy was elected to the Senate in 1946. The notorious House Un-American Activities Committee led the crusade to ferret out alleged Communists in the U.S. They struck gold when they took on Hollywood, not because they actually found Communists but because of the public's media-fed fixation on movie stars. Perhaps the most interesting case involved the great director Elia Kazan who felt he had to name names and cooperate with HUAC. In this program Victor Navasky raises interesting moral choices and questions. His discussion of the actor Lee J. Cobb is most moving. Interview by David Barsamian and S.K. Levin. Recorded at KGNU.

States want to dominate the narrative with their version of events. There are two basic models. One follows Aldous Huxley, the other George Orwell. The latter is best known for 1984. Big Brother is brutal. He wields a big stick while Huxley uses a much softer carrot. Censorship is self-imposed because the journalist knows the boundaries of permissible thought. Essential assumptions are embedded unconsciously so they don’t even rise to the level of being challenged. The Huxley model is more subtle and relies on persuasion and getting people to focus on trivialities. Orwell is straight-out coercion. Sing the tune I’ve told you to or else. Recorded at First Parish Church at an event marking the 25th anniversary of South End Press.

At the end of World War Two, the victorious Allies decided to try top Nazi officials as war criminals. A tribunal was convened in Nuremberg. Some of them were hanged. Others were given jail sentences. Today, Nuremberg is largely forgotten. The clear evidence of that was the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, an unambiguous war crime committed by war criminals, not just George W. Bush but Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, et al. Those responsible for the Iraq War have never answered for the chaos, massive bloodshed and dislocation that followed not just in Iraq, but in neighboring Syria as well. The rise of ISIS, the massacre of Yazidis and sectarian violence can be directly traced to what Bush and his cohorts did. Will he and the others involved be held to account? Hardly; the former president has taken up painting in his retirement.

Why has the United States intervened so often in foreign lands? What are its origins? Having expanded its borders largely through its destruction of Indigenous peoples the U.S. went on to project its power globally. Today, its empire of bases rings the Earth. According to Monthly Review the U.S. “has at least eight hundred military bases located in eighty-five countries.” Historically, military interventions and invasions have been a bi-partisan affair. Republicans and Democrats will only question tactics. It wasn’t always that way. There was a period in U.S. history when there was a fierce debate about Washington’s use of force around the world. It centered on two factions, one led by Theodore Roosevelt and the other by none other than Mark Twain. The themes and debates of the past resonate today. The names change but policy is fairly constant.

In this program, Daniel Ellsberg discusses early U.S. support for France’s effort to retain control of its Indochina colony. In a little-known and scary fact of history, he describes Eisenhower’s offer of nuclear weapons to the French to stave off defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Within a few years, the U.S. supplanted the French and expanded the war to all of Indochina. Ellsberg looks at Washington’s policy of backing corrupt regimes in Saigon, first by Kennedy and then by Johnson. You’ve probably heard the figure of 58,000 Americans killed in the war. There is scant mention of the millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians who were victims of U.S. military intervention. Interview by David Barsamian.

In South Dakota, in 1973, hundreds of Native American activists led by members of the American Indian Movement occupied the Pine Ridge Reservation village of Wounded Knee— which was also the site of a notorious massacre in 1890 in which federal troops killed 300 Lakota men, women and children. The months-long action in 1973 helped galvanize the movement for Indigenous rights which continues today. As the great historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says, U.S. “policies involving Indigenous peoples have consistently been designed to disadvantage the Indigenous, locking them into suppressed social status and codifying dependence on the U.S. government.” Despite a history of oppression and genocide and continued discrimination Native Americans are organizing and resisting. A younger generation of Indigenous activists offers the promise of not just survival but for a resurgence of Indigenous societies and a renaissance of traditional culture. Interview by David Barsamian. Recorded at the University of Denver.

Thirty years ago, the Oslo Accords between Israelis and Palestinians were signed. There was widespread fanfare and jubilation. There was Clinton standing between Rabin and Arafat bringing them together at the White House. It was a new dawn. Finally, peace in the Holy Land. The pundits and the polls told us it was a miracle. Where is that miracle today? The chance of a viable independent Palestinian state has become a pipe dream. Israeli oppression of Palestinians is not random but systemic. Land which was to be part of a Palestinian state has been seized for Israeli-only settlements. Washington enables Israeli policies. While there has been some shift in U.S. public opinion the ruling political class ignores the realities on the ground.

Turning 100, the accolades for Henry Kissinger are pouring in. He is a legend. Over decades, he has assiduously cultivated and constructed the image of the sagacious elder statesman. Corporate journalists hang on his every word. Politicians seek his advice. But what is his record to deserve such respect and reverence? He is one of the most notorious characters of this or any other period in history. Just ask the Kurds, the East Timorese, the Bangladeshis, the Laotians, and the Chileans what they think of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But since they are “unpeople,” their opinions don’t count. When he was Nixon’s national security advisor, Kissinger displayed his kowtowing to power when he kept silent as his boss made anti-Semitic remarks. When Nixon demanded that Cambodia be bombed, he conveyed the order like a good errand boy. It was Kissinger who once boasted, “The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” Recorded at the University of Montana.

I interviewed Khurram Parvez in Srinagar, Kashmir in February 2011. When I returned to India that September to follow up on reporting on the mass graves in Kashmir, I was denied entry by the Indian government. I’ve been banned from India ever since. Sadly, this interview is still relevant. Since August 2019 the Hindu nationalist regime ruling India has imposed even harsher conditions on Kashmiris and eliminated what little autonomy they had. This story needs to be told. But the G20 won’t hear it. Its tourism officials are visiting Kashmir in late May in what will be an orchestrated photo-op extolling the valley’s natural beauties and comparing Kashmir to paradise. Kashmir is off the media radar screen. India has carefully controlled the narrative. Interview by David Barsamian.

The term fascism is loosely bandied about. When most people think of it the images that come to mind are of stormtroopers and Hitler ranting and raving. It is often automatically assumed that fascism developed in Europe in the 1920s. But it had its origins earlier in the United States. The United States was built on genocidal attacks on Indigenous people, white supremacy and enslaved Black people. Actually, Hitler and the Nazis were greatly impressed and inspired by American fascism. Though the term was not used the United States had developed a sophisticated system of aggressive nationalism, racism and oppression, in other words: fascism. It lingers in the shadows and reappears, as is evident today. Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and other groups are fascist.  They fear social equality as a threat to patriarchal, white supremacist domination.