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Actors James Stewart as George Bailey, Donna Reed as Mary Hatch, and Frank Faylen as Ernie in the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images)

That Time the FBI Scrutinized “It's a Wonderful Life” for Communist Messaging

The film “deliberately maligned the upper class,” according to a report that didn’t like the portrayal of Mr. Potter as a bad guy.
Plantation house in the snow.

The Grim History of Christmas for Slaves in the Deep South

"If you read enough sources, you run into cases of slaves spending a lot of time over Christmas crying."
Paul Robeson in 1960, London, performing on stage in front of a crowd.

Black King of Songs

His communism brought the great American singer Paul Robeson trouble in the US, but helped make him a hero in China.

US Prep Schools Held Student Exchanges with Elite Nazi Academies

The American exchange organizers were unaware that the German pupils and staff were charged with an explicitly propagandistic mission.
Ansel Adams photograph of a baseball game with the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.

An American Landscape

In 1943, Ansel Adams traveled to photograph Manzanar—one of the ten internment camps that together detained 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
The Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children Program in action, New York, 1969. Photo by Bev Grant/Getty Images

The Black Panthers Fed More Hungry Kids Than the State of California

It wasn’t all young men and guns: the Black Panther Party’s programs fed more hungry kids than the state of California.
Cover of Moyne's book, with the subtitle "How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War," in front of a desert landscape.

Not Humane, Just Invisible

A counter-narrative to Samuel Moyn’s "Humane": drone warfare and the long history of liberal empire blurring the line between policing and endless war.
Black and white lithograph depicting the Founders signing the Declaration of Independence.

Have Americans Got George III All Wrong?

George III was a model monarch, whose reputation finally deserves rehabilitation a quarter of a millennium later.
Poster of American flag asking people to pledge allegiance and silence about the war.

World War II’s “Rumor Control” Project

How the federal government enlisted ordinary citizens to spy on each other for the war effort.
Person filling out Florida voter registration application

Democracy Dies in Silence

Florida’s move to silence expert criticism of its disenfranchisement campaign echoes its Redemption-era assault on civil rights.
Chinese miners in California

The Anti-Asian Roots of Today’s Anti-Immigrant Politics

Long before Trump, politicians on the country’s West Coast mobilized a white working-class base through violent hate of Chinese and Japanese immigrants.
U.S. Capitol riot

Echo Chambers

Parallels between the American Revolution and the U.S. Capitol riot.
An American Flag with opening one of the stripes like a door

The Slippery Matter of ‘Truth’ in Patriotic Education

Laws against teaching critical race theory might backfire on Republicans.
Painting of attack on Fort Washington

Morale Manipulation As the Central Strategic Imperative in the American Revolutionary War

Actions are more persuasive than words, and manipulating morale often dictates how commanders deploy their troops. Witness the American War of Independence.
Socialist deputies march with strikers on February 12 1934.

Feb 6 1934/Jan 6 2021

What do the two events really have in common?
German American Bund members
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The Long History of American Nazism — And Why We Can’t Forget it Today

Even as the United States mobilized to defeat Nazi Germany, anti-democratic forces simmered at home.
Comic book cover
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The Propaganda of World War II Comic Books 

A government-funded group called the Writers' War Board got writers and illustrators to portray the United States positively—and its enemies as evil.
The Hussman School of Journalism and Media’s Carroll Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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The Irony of Complaints About Nikole Hannah-Jones’s Advocacy Journalism

The White press helped destroy democracy in the South. Black journalists developed an activist tradition because they had to.
A mannequin family in a house at Operation Doorstep in Nevada, 7,500 feet from the blast.

Blackness and the Bomb

Seventy years after the civil preparedness film Duck and Cover, it's long past time to reckon with the way white supremacy shaped U.S. nuclear defense efforts.
Riesman giving fundraising speech

My Grandfather the Zionist

He helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?
“Natural Bridge, Virginia” (1860) by David Johnson. Oil on canvas.

Rekindling the Wonder of Natural Bridge, Once a Testament to American Grandeur

"Virginia Arcadia: The Natural Bridge in American Art,” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, surveys the arch as icon and propaganda.
Anti-War and Anti-Fascist Demonstration In New York

Cameras for Class Struggle

How the radical documentarians of the Workers' Film and Photo League put their art in the service of social movements.
Benito Mussolini.

The Americans Who Embraced Mussolini

As we confront rightwing extremism in our own time, the history of American fascist sympathy reveals a legacy worth reckoning with.
Biden in the Oval Office signing executive actions

Biden Rescinding the 1776 Commission Doesn't End the Fight over History

The 1776 Commission marks the depth of right-wing commitment to ideological pseudo-history that can be used to shut down meaningful conversation about racism.

Why Trump Isn't a Fascist

The storming of the Capitol on 6 January was not a coup. But American democracy is still in danger.
Photo of people protesting and demanding all votes are counted the day after Election Day at McPherson Square, near the White House.
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President Trump’s False Claims About Election Fraud Are Dangerous

Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the vote has a familiar ring. It evokes an egregious example of election fraud in the 1890s.
Benjamin Tillman statue

American History Is Getting Whitewashed, Again

As demands for racial justice grow, Trump is pushing historical mythmaking into high gear.
Nelson A. Rockefeller examining one of the paintings to be hung in the museum's new building.

How MoMA and the CIA Conspired to Use Artists to Promote American Propaganda During the Cold War

The Museum of Modern Art was among several institutions that aided the CIA in its propaganda efforts, according to the new book ArtCurious.

Officer Friendly and the Invention of the “Good Cop”

If your childhood vision of police is all pet rescues and tinfoil badges, Friendly’s “copaganda” did its job.
Harry Sternberg’s 1947 visualization of fascism as a three-headed monster.

What We Don’t Understand About Fascism

Using the word incorrectly oversimplifies history—and won't help us address our current political crisis.

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