MSNBC honcho and liberal media star Rachel Maddow and co-host Isaac-Davy Aronson have a new program, Deja News, in which they explore history for its persistent trends — and its disturbing repetitions.
Maddow introduces the show with the tag: “When everything feels ‘unprecedented,’ ever look at the day’s headlines and wonder if anything like this has ever happened before?”
Chances are, it has happened before — or something eerily close to it. (Maddow is exploring similar issues on another podcast series called Ultra.)
Maddow brought the reality of disturbing historical repetition home recently with her tweet sharing Nazi news — from 1938. In a diptych tweet, Maddow shows an attempt to promote a boycott of Nazi Germany “for humanity’s sake” — led by Ladies Auxiliary of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States — and the story of Nazis destroying books by non-Aryan writers in Vienna.
Chillingly, the latter image claims, circa 1938: “there are 250,000 Nazis in American today. Hitler spends $30,000,000 a year here for propaganda.” Maddow captions: “85 years ago, June 1938, from anti-Nazi and U.S. Jewish veterans’ groups.”
85 years ago, June 1938, from anti-Nazi and U.S. Jewish veterans' groups: pic.twitter.com/jJClDpdOsT
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) June 18, 2023
As Maddow and company explore numerous situations from the past that resonate with analogous situations that plague American society today, it’s apparent that the American writer and Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner was correct when he wrote, in Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” That quote is essentially at the heart of Maddow’s recent work.
Commenters are largely responding positively to the historical digging and the perspective it provides, even if the conclusions to be reached are often grim. (Detractors have their say in the comments also, of course.)
Thank you for your vigilance in bringing us to the truth and helping us understand it.
— Kathy Robinson Goldstein (@KathyRobinsonG4) June 19, 2023
Old news that nearly matches the news of contemporary America is nearly everywhere to be found — consider Episode 6 of Maddow’s Ultra.
Called Bedlam, it explores a “high-profile sedition trial, a super-charged indictment and a brand new Justice Department prosecutor.” Sound familiar?
Bedlam‘s description: “The most high-profile sedition trial in American history kicks off inside a Washington, DC federal courtroom. The members of Congress who attempted to quash the investigation are now faced with a super-charged indictment and a brand new Justice Department prosecutor who is battle tested and up for the challenge. What he finds as the curtain rises on the trial, though, is something that he is wholly unprepared for: pre-planned, unmitigated chaos.”
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