A Conversation with Rachel Maddow

this podcast is brought to you by cyber attacks can be prevented checkpoint you deserve the best security the World Cup is over it's Hanukah and we have a conversation with the author of what probably is the world's most listen to podcast right now we're talking to Rachel madow it's Unholy I'm Jonathan freedland of the guardian in London and I'm un Levy of Channel 12 in Tel [Music] Unholy twoj on the news from cashet podcast so Jonathan it's been nearly two years doing this podcast and I wanted to discuss I think it's time to discuss the rift between us um and uh I don't mean the diaspora Jew Israeli Jew thing and I definitely don't mean the true gap between us which is television journalists uh versus print journalists that is a Gap will never be able to Bridge I of course am talking about the fact that we will never agree on what is the best Jewish holiday because you intellectual Spirits think it's pesak and I of course know that it's purm because what's not to like you dress up and you have to drink but I'm thinking maybe this holiday that season that is upon us could be a compromise between us because Hanukah is a nice holiday what do you think I love Hanukah I love it um I but I as I overanalyze because that's what we do almost for a living I like it partly because it is so wintry and twinkly lights and it's dark and all those things and it's cold and it seems warming I don't get what it's like having a Hanukah in 25° um and blue skies which is what's happening where you are so I was I was the understated line there I I I heard you saying you like Hanukah cuz it emulates Christmas sort of but uh no it's like 20° outside say that didn't actually say that you see you're projecting I maybe you're projecting your dim view of diaspora jury onto me no I'm just I think I'm quitting you from last year but okay fine whatever you want to say um I'm kidding but um it is quite warm and I can tell you that the way what it looks like from here and especially from my parental Viewpoint is that um we're the Holy Land in the land of holidays and we sort of it's an 8-day vacation from schools so um I and not all complaining just saying that somehow I figured out that I have been up to this point in 17 different hanuka parties at schools and and kindergartens uh and since I only have three children I don't know how that happened but uh this is my uh current um vocation and uh yeah that's that's what it is and but I can tell you that we have special suot with the Argentinian flag in our neighborhood Bakery so that's nice which takes us seamlessly to to the World Cup and I don't know if you watched I thought what you were going to say was the big divide between us was about what you know watching football which is something that wasn't part of my life a long time ago but now is and watching the World Cup final it was a truly thrilling game funny enough I was at sort of Hana is gathering where suf G were consumed and slowly people began drifting over to watch the World Cup final it was you know some of the people in the room were there from the beginning but others joined as it got more and more intense and it was um just one of the most terrific games well you know finals for tournaments are often very disappointing and lackluster sort of kg Games This was um absolutely thrilling but one little small thought I had because this is the season uh y longtime readers of my column in the guardian will know that always around this year frankly Christmas time rather than Hanukah I do try and write a column that is not one that makes you want to jump off a tall building cuz very often um readers tell me that Columns of mine can be a tiny bit dispiriting um at this time of year I try and give people a little bit of cheer and I am working up a column which will be a bit more optimistic for the year ahead and here's a little note of optimism something I noticed partly in one of my own two children but also around was quite a lot of Brits were rooting for supporting Argentina in this final the football commentary you know the commentators on the TV and radio were very clearly hoping our Argentina would win because of this romantic fairy tale story of uh lonel Messi the world's greatest footballer who had never won this Trophy and this would be the crown in glory it was his last World Cup match and could he do what had eluded him until then but what struck me as being hopeful was lots of Brits were just sort of all in for Argentina now you could be grumpy about that and say that's because they because British people don't like the French um which you know who were Argentina's opponents and there's something in that but 40 years after Britain and Argentina were at War I mean a shooting War which left hundreds Dead uh hundreds of British service people dead um here there were not not as if they'd forgotten that but sort of as if they were ready to move on and and and put that to one side and I sort of thought okay there's a there's something hopeful about that in my living memory uh it was all argies and sinking the belgrano and here people were just taking Delight in this football Triumph so I think there's an optimistic lesson there even for people who are not necessarily obsessed with the game itself so I'm wondering if to bring us all crashing down and say that you know how Israel's always watch any International mat whether it's football or the Eurovision right it's like what happened in World War II let's see that through that pris so someone wrote on Twitter when this was going on like who are we going to support the government who once cooperated with the Nazis or the country that the Nazis escaped to so that was that was my non-optimistic take but it was a great game even I watched that was really great that a good story it was that that is sort of by the way that what you said in in how the Israeli press were covering it I do have that impulse in me and I fight it as I think you know because there is a little bit of me that still does that and puts it through that prism but this in this case Brits didn't do that even though the war of Britain versus Argentina over the Faulkland Islands the malvinas as Argentina would say is much much more recent um just 1982 now talking of people not letting go of grudges uh Etc even for a very long time or people who've been around for 40 years um it fits every bill has a big he has a big announcement yes well we're recording this on Wednesday and netan is finally expected to announce he's formed a coalition today that's just the official announcement Jonathan according to the basic law of the government the cabinet must be sworn in a week after this uh official announcement but it's Hanukah so actually the deadline is January 2nd most pundits think he's going to the the government will be sworn in next week but let's say that Nyo always has this tendency to push everything up to the very uh last deadline as we said this is a a government that is going to be let's say understating it we'll say that it's it's going to be incredibly fascinating to watch the most religious and far-right government Israel has ever had I think a lot of its credit has been uh wasted up in the sort of pregame already and obviously uh Jonathan we've been discussing this in great detail uh in the past past couple of weeks ever since nania won resounding victory in November uh 1st but again this is a coalition that will have a lot of power can make a lot of changes and it's uh going to be incredibly interesting to watch what it is going to do even from the first uh days of its of its creation you call it pregame I was thinking there's been a kind of phony War until now abroad which is people saying what they will do what policy will be or would be once this government is in place slightly in denial as if it was still conditional or hypothetical but governments uh we've seen some noises from the Biden Administration diaspora Jewish communities phony war is about to be over they're going to have to actually deal with this actual government rather than uh being able to hide under the duvet and pretend it's sort of somehow you know contingent or provisional you know reality will bite as soon as that government is fully sworn in and we of course will be watching it here should we say something about our big guest for today because it's um we're going to be talking to Rachel madow chiefly because she has uh is the presenter author writer of a podcast which I know you and I both got completely hooked on what's the terminology for binge listening to a podcast like that is what yeah we were binging it big time I don't normally do that by the way but I really did with this one it tells a story that has in some ways been forgotten which is that the Nazis and Adolf Hitler had some serious friends and allies in Washington and in the United States that in that period leading up to America's entry to the war Not only was there the America first movement that wanted to keep out of the war but there were some quite serious Nazis farri right fascists anti-semites very specifically who had some real strength in numbers and even plotted to overthrow the American government they were all over the country they were groups who wore uniforms they were on the radio preaching you know Jew hatred it was a serious movement and who knows history could have taken a very different turn and it's sort of been forgotten but is now told in this podcast series called Ultra and the anchor of it is um one of the biggest names in American Broadcasting [Music] Rachel matto host of The Rachel matto show is the face of MSNBC she is a cable news Juggernaut and really the defining TV journalist of liberal cable news in the US her new podcast Ultra is a spectacular success it tells the story of a plot to subvert American democracy and to Institute fascism in the 1940s uh it really sends shivers down your spine and is eily relevant to today we'll discuss all this and more and Rachel thank you so much for talking to us today on on holy I'm so so happy that you guys asked me to do this I'm thrilled thank you for listening to the podcast thank you for saying those nice things I'm really excited to talk to you guys we um love the podcast so we are so excited to have you on ourselves um because it is completely riveting and tells a story that I think very few people will have known before in fact you make a point of how little known this story is one of your interviewees in the show is a historian who says if you even went down the corridor of her office in the University Department you wouldn't find more than one person who knew anything about this you tell us how much you want to tell us about it but I'm curious to know the extent to which you knew any or some or all of this story before embarking on rendering it for a new audience through this podcast I knew the tiniest little sliver of it and this isn't actually what I set out um to do a podcast about I was interested in something a little bit later on in the timeline um I was actually interested in the origin of American Holocaust denial because for all the other things that Holocaust denial is um for its origin points in the United States it was just truly bizarre because it emerged at a time when among other things there were not only lots of refugees in this country but there were lots of American GIS who had laid their own eyes on the direct evidence of what had happened and hastan started early and very specifically and there's it turns out there are some very unusual very personal stories about where it came from and why and I was interested in that freak Show um and in trying to tell that story I you know started reading and um and ended up getting to this backstory which I knew a tiny sliver about I mean I knew I had I had I have done a little bit of work on the um on a sedition trial that happened a few decades ago in Fort Smith Arkansas and I had been thinking about that because we have the big sedition trial around January 6th and I had this sort of vague sense or semiformed sense that hey sedition Trials happen very rarely in the United States and they often fail and I knew there had been something about that around World War II but that was kind of it it turned out when I started doing the kind of backstory of Holocaust denial I ended up in the trial transcripts of the 1944 great sedition trial and then trying to figure out who all these characters were and in learning about the defendants and in particular about the J department and bringing that case I just weighed into this world that I'd never heard of and that it ended up I think it ends up being an important part of the story that none of us know it it's an interesting and sort of deep question about what Stories We Tell and and what stories we don't right and and the fact that there's never actually been a Reckoning with this uh reality it's kind of been forgotten and and sidelined and the I guess we'll talk about this more as this the conversation progress of the sort of eer similarities between then and now one of the Striking things about this story not only just how you know deep the Nazi involvement in the top branches of of the US government during the 1940s uh was how deep it was but also it's kind of clear and tragic that the legal system the criminal justice system is really kind of I don't know inadequately equipped to deal with this kind of threat to National Security and I mean that that is one of the shocking Revelations about you know when you listen to this podcast and I wonder if you you feel like it's the same today in that in that regard H yeah and I think one of the I think if the podcast could have been sort of infinite if it had been 18 hours instead of eight hours this is one of the things that I I think I would have liked to tease out a little bit so thank so thank you for the question because I have unresolved feelings about this that I haven't really articulated yet but I feel like the the way in which the justice system is in equipped to deal with a threat like this is multifaceted I mean on in one part of it it's that you know under the Constitution we have uh the right of free speech and the right of to to associate freely and that means you have the right to say and think horrible things and to associate with people for horrible purposes um part of what's Difficult about Prosecuting something like this is is that we rightfully have protections to do all sorts of terrible things under the US Constitution and that just creates a fundamental Baseline over which you your your behavior needs to rise before it is no longer subject to those constitutional protections then there's a sort of um almost definitional problem in terms of Prosecuting sedition which is that if you are being brought up on sedition charges it means by definition that you tried to overthrow the government and you failed because there is still a government to put you on trial for sedition had you succeeded you'd have everybody else up against the wall so by definition the time by by the time you get into the courtroom you are putting somebody on trial for having tried a plot that did not succeed and that inherently creates an environment in which the defense can say well this wasn't a serious plot this was you know blowhards talking there was never any risk it was going to happen but then there's also this kind of technical thing that happens in Trials like this particularly when you're talking about a group that believes it is powerful enough to actually overthrow something as big and strong as the US government which is that a conspiracy to do this tends to involve a lot of people and it's hard to put a lot of people on trial because everybody's entitled to an individual defense and because if you get 28 defendants in the courtroom at once you better have the world's most technically skilled judge or the court case is going to run off the rails and that's what we saw part of what happened in 1944 I think we're seeing right now in the Justice Department's prosecutions of the oathkeepers and the and the proud boys they've broken up those trials into four and five defendants maybe as an effort to try to remedy that technical thing there there's and there's more there's probably 10 different facets on which this is difficult for the justice department to handle doesn't mean that the justice department should be excused from trying to take this on these are in many cases crimes but I think there's a reason why people involved in these sort of things tend to get tripped up on other crimes um and very rarely actually convicted on sedition Insurrection treason some of the sort of Topline almost biblical sounding crimes that um that attend to this things I mean in your n's question and straight away in your answer you've got to the parallels of then and now even in terms of how you got into this story I mean we should just say in in a in a sentence or two I mean you sketch out not just this chaotic kind of zoo of a trial in 1944 but the whole world that this came out of that there was all this this panoply of far-right anti-Semitic fascistic groups in America in that period that were doing you know tons of propagandizing to keep America out of the war against you know the Jews in their own country against Roosevelt and for a kind of totalitarian overthrow in the United States so you even before we get to the trial it's a chilling world you sketch but you go out of your way I really noticed it to not allow The Listener to be simplistic about the parallels between then and now and the bit where you do it is so interesting to me because it's this figure father coglin the big broadcaster of his day who is on the radio just pumping out really vile and particularly anti-jewish stuff massive following tens of millions of listeners and I think you're almost addressing your regular listeners and viewers there and saying it will be easy to draw a direct line from this person to the talk show hosts of today but be careful with that because what he's doing is in a way I think you say effectively so much worse what coglin did it's not just it's not Shan Hannity it's not Tucker Carlson it's a whole other level of hate Etc people who know something of your story that's fascinating as well because you began as a guest a contributor I think on Tucker Carlson show when it was on MSNBC so maybe there's a still a friendship there or whatever but I think there's a bigger reason why you're going out of your way to not allow there to be that easy link so what what is that thinking I I think in part because of my job because people are used to seeing me talking about current events whenever I talk about historical things I think there's a tendency for people who know me or even who just know me by reputation to think that I'm speaking in code about today um and so and occasionally you know I am speaking about today but I try to be explicit when I'm doing that I mean the thing about history is that it doesn't repeat um it does rhyme and so it's worth being precise about where there are parallels and where there are not and I think what is partly relevant about cogin or more relevant about cogin than any analogy we can draw between him and some figure who popular figure in right-wing media today is actually not about him but about the size of his audience like the thing that's important to me about cogin is not that uh just that he was influential or just the content of his uh anti-semitic and and radical right-wing violent um to his audience it was that so many Americans loved it and were hanging on his every word the parallel is not cogin the parallel is us um and what we should worry about when we look at that example is not who's that guy today but how are we how is it that we are the country who thinks of ourselves as United and willing to sacrifice and travel the high seas to go take on fascism abroad as a in our greatest you know greatest Generations moment of leadership to go tackle Nazism while the largest media audience ever assembled in American history to this day was listening to this guy every week who was saying the Jews deserved it that's the parallel to make and so I think it's easy to kind of focus on the bad guys and it's easy to to create fcil analogies and um you know I'm not looking for a trump in history I'm not looking for a Fox News in history I'm looking for us in history because one of the um poignant lines that I think jumped out at Jonathan and at me when we were listening was that fascism happens recurrently you say that in uh I think it's the last episode but really that this this is a cycle it's a very sad tragic even dark view of of America and I think it's practical the the basis of of sort of fascist appeal in the United States are consistent right that there is a glorious past that it would be great if we could return to in that glorious past we didn't have this alien or parasitic element that had ruined everything if we could expunge them we could return ourselves to our former glory and part of what's in the way is that those parasites and alien elements get a say in what's happening in our country and we ought to organize ourselves so that rather we can lead with our native born strength and not be infected by this weakness that's inherent in everybody getting a say in the future of the of of of our country we are a republic not a democracy right um the basis of that appeal when you sort of strip them of their exclamation points politicians use them all the time conservative media figures use them all the time it's something that has a sort of Timeless appeal I think it's our responsibility sort of when you can see that when you can see those sort of code words and ideas fall into place yet again whoever the scapegoat is going to be this time and it's almost always the Jews and it's often people who don't have white skin and it's very often immigrants and it's some combination therein when you see those things fall in the line to me it's a practical help to be able to say oh look it's that same old song listen here's what it sounded like in the' 40s here's what it sounded like in the 1920s here's what it sounded like in the in the 1800s here's this it's the same old thing and that has that has two benefits one is that I think it uh alerts us to sort of what we need to turn on in terms of our defenses and our firewalls as a country uh but I think it also makes fascism boring which is helpful um part of what you know you know the number one selling book of 1940 in the United States was Charles lindberg's wife and Marl Lindberg writing a book this like Poetic book um about how fascism was the future because it was so elegant and efficient and modernist and it was so exciting and while she didn't think of herself as the kind of person who' be attracted to these kinds of leaders she could see that this was the way we needed to adapt as a species because this was such a beautiful shiny new way of being fascists always make it sound like it's transgressive and interesting and something you've never thought of before it's boring it's old it's recursive and so that to me is is um that to me is a is a helpful helpful Fring and and are you describing there that recurrence is that a specifically peculiarly American thing or is that a human thing do you think I mean I'm I don't know much more than uh American politics and so I don't feel like I can speak for other places I do think that there is something human about being told oh the strong man will take care of you and all we need is more control and the good old days I mean I think those are somewhat um Universal sort of human points of comfort in terms of what somebody can sell you but I I see it at work in America in a way that I'm trying to elucidate no I came out of listening to ultra thinking this is you've made a case there for why this is or there is a peculiar American Dimension here that and the recurrence and things about the um the appeal o of it particularly to the country that had a blank imagines itself having had a blank slate and and so on so what you said before about going back to some sort of untainted new new beginning I think other you know old countries like the one I'm sitting in have that's less of a fantasy it's not non-existent but I think it's less of a one but just with the thing with now um I wondered about this listening to it too which is the defenses we have against it there you know the Americans now can think well we were on the right side in second world war greatest Generation everything you said and I wonder if there are defenses now where you know a former president Donald Trump sits with a neonazi and Holocaust Den um for dinner and the defense now is oh it's sort of unserious trump is a bit of a buffoon this guy Fuentes is is is a sort of comic figure in a way he Grins and smirks he's with Kanye West who's black therefore it can't really be fascism are these all defense mechanism people have to not take F not recognize fascism even when it's sort of knocking on the front door yes and I think this is uh to me again a really sort of rewarding Revelation in history that people who present themselves uh to the public making these kinds of cases often seem cartoonish and buffoonish they often seem like grifters and smalltime Crooks and in fact they are buffoonish and cartoonish and smalltime Crooks and they do speak in ham-handed and laughable ways and they also sometimes take over governments the cartoonish nature of the presentation and the dangerous nature of the appeal do not contradict one another it turns out there was a guy named George deathridge um which is crazy name great name great name yes exactly helpful when you put the word death in your name in terms of remembering what you're like as a character he was running he was running um he was involved in hatching a plot that was designed to have 13 man armed terroristic cells set off accelerationist violence in like 50 different communities in the country after the 1940 election which they knew Roosevelt would win and the idea was to inspire the anti- Roosevelt right to rise up in the chaos after this terroristic violence and take over the government he was working with a guy named Clayton Les Clayton Engles was the husband of one of the most famous people in the country at the time Laura Les was a cele Aviator she was a pilot as famous as Amelia aart at the time her husband was working with the German government through the uh the the German console in San Francisco to get tens of thousands of dollars of funding to amass weapons for this plot which had assembled terrorists cells all over the country for that kind of a takeover so crazy and dangerous they aren't mutually exclusive spheres there is a a lot of overlap in that V diagram and since we we we mentioned Kanye and and and Nick Fuentes you know when you listen to this podcast just how you realize how deep the roots of anti-Semitism are how worried are you about this phenomenon not now is it a is it deep is it a social media phenomenon is it the Kanye wests of the world or is it something that something that we should really be concerned about I think we have to be really concerned about it I mean I think that one of the things that we know about the sort of recurring appeal not just of sort of thing that we've been talking about here in terms of calls toward authoritarianism and fascism but the recurring appeal of anti-Semitism and violent anti-Semitism is that it matters who's saying it it's you're always going to have people on The Fringe and you're always going to have crackpots and people who don't have a following and people who are just trying to get attention saying this kind of stuff but when the microphone gets bigger the risk gets bigger too and um people who are inclined toward n istic violence are looking for some sort of validation from people who they see as you know mainstream Gatekeepers and Kanye West for all the other things that we think about him and know about him is a major cultural figure and for him to be you know posting swastikas online and talking about violence toward Jewish people and um making the kinds of anti-Semitic rants that he has been it's going to have consequences for a generation I think it's not just going to be those neo-nazis in La holding up those banners over the 405 saying Kanye is right about the Jews it's going to be a generation of young men and others who will use him as a touchstone both as a Gateway into that kind of rhetoric and argument um but also as a legitimizing force it's super super super dangerous and I think that's why um the concerns around Elon Musk and his the decisions he's made around Twitter are not just celebrity and business Pages Intrigue it's got real consequences for us as a as a democracy I mean just on that with because you mentioned Elon Musk I don't know how active you are as an individual obviously your show is promoted on Twitter and everything but is what what's your read of that because that's been such an important forum for journalism particularly actually but for as a sort of space if it's going and i' well I'd be interested to hear whether you think it is you know that's going to have a big impact Beyond just the sort of as you say the tech Pages or the business Pages how do you see that playing out since you've mentioned it I I don't know um I think the one thing that seems clear is that it's not coming back once you've dismantled a company like that I mean Twitter was a unique there there's a lot of different kinds of social media companies Twitter had a unique reach and a unique function and it evolved I think you know this is arguable but I think it evolved in an organic way to try to responsibly handle its influence and reach and it you know overreached in some cases and under reached in others and made some mistakes and corrected it was a iterative process in terms of how Twitter developed as a company and when you come in and fire everybody um and literally just eliminate the structures that were created to try to responsibly handle that traffic you can't recreate them because there isn't a template for how to be a social media company that big and particularly that influential in the news news space which is such contested space and also so important so I don't I don't think it ever will be what it was now what it's going to be instead maybe it's going to be the the mouthpiece and the um effective State media for some sort of ideologically specific and perhaps foreign aligned interest because it's been noticeable isn't it that musk is you know with these little polls of people they're often you know they sound like they're you know backing of vadir Putin position on Ukraine or sometimes on China he I mean I don't know how to read his policies I'd love to know what you think whether he is himself some kind of far right white nationalist or just somebody who loves giving those people a platform I I don't know how to read his politics you know I'd love to hear what you think I really prefer never to think about him uh I don't want I don't wna I don't want I don't there's no there's no No Vacancy for any apartment in my head for him to live um which is just part of my own mental health but I I in terms of his behavior I mean he just seems like your average kind of redpilled middle-aged white ey right like there's you you see this happen with with people who aren't notable billionaires that they get red pilled they get they become entranced by an Moro lindberg's idea of an authoritarian future and strong men who just decide things without input from other people and that makes it all right because as long as you have a strong man who sees the future you just follow him and then everything will be efficient and profitable and everybody will fall in line I mean that sort of boring romance with the idea of a strong man again we've been singing that that song for a long time and to get excited by the transgressive thrill of posting anti-semitic and racist and anti-trans and all these different um tropes that he's engaging in to get excited by the thrill of being transgressive in that way like it's just this sophomoric redpilled guy thing that you see over and over again so just assuming that he's that in terms of what happens to Twitter and its influence again I I do think that there's a chance that it just kind of reduces down to a um toxic isn't the right word but a sort of one of these you know slightly larger than normal Bad actors online in terms of in the same way that 4chan 8chan you know and and any of the propaganda Outlets that are supported by Russia or other Bad actors um exists it could be that uh it could also just disappear I mean it also has a lot of debt and who's going to pay that debt does somebody buy it who then turns it into a play thing I don't know the journalistic space though hasn't been duplicated and I know that there are other entities that are trying to create the same sort of space for the sharing for for reporters as individuals to share news information in the way that they do on Twitter I think Twitter was a good broadcasting platform for a lot of journalists I think the the idea that people were getting you know tips and and user generated content from Twitter and turning that into the news that's a little overstated at least in my experience at MSNBC that's not necessarily how we use Twitter it was more of a place to disseminate news rather than to gather news but we'll see if somebody else can recreate that I hope I hope so because I do think that there's a place for Real Time news-based information you know outside of news organization websites that that would be helpful to have a home for but while Twitter is sort of than this freef fall and it really was this you know news source or even an agenda Setter when you look at like the map of what is going on right now in the United States and that that there are a lot of people who think that the news is kind of calcified into Echo Chambers right the people listen to the news that they want to listen to um this reminds me I mean you had many conversations uh with John Stewart and he used to say always you know to talk about MSNBC and say you know you're doing kind of the ideological arms race with Fox news is that helpful that reality that we live in that everyone believes in what they they want to believe in you can have all the information in the world but it doesn't it doesn't mean anything I mean the the the January 6th uh investigation was all televised but people can still believe that you know the whole thing was rigged and and Trump won the elections that was a long convoluted question I apologize well it's more of a topic than a question I I think that um there's a difference between you know presenting news information and talking about how you feel about the news and those are two different things and they have two different functions and I think people do find comfort in hearing people um Express their opinions about the news and sort of emote about the news in ways that they identify with or that resonate with them I think that's real um and I think there's also echo of that in history I mean um part of the history in the 1930s and 40s in terms of going back and and looking at that era in history is that you know certain newspapers um were definitely a comfortable home for Americans who thought that we shouldn't be in World War II or that if we were going to be in World War II we should be on the other side I mean there were there were news organizations in the United States who were a home a comfortable home for Americans who had that point of view and some of the great journalistic scandals in the of the time leading up to World War II involved some of those papers um there's a good case to be made that one of the Senators who was an isolationist senator who features in in Ultra may have been the source of the leak of Roosevelt's plans for the an the expeditionary Force the American Army in Europe just before Pearl Harbor happened and that was published in a Chicago isolationist newspaper on their FR page like this stuff again is it isn't it isn't new when it comes to presenting the news though um take the example of the January 6th investigation I think there isn't a parallel to be drawn there isn't a mirror image between MSNBC choosing to broadcast the hearings and cover them and and Fox News saying we're not covering them and you shouldn't watch them right that's that there isn't a mirror image there like there's one side there that is covering the news and the other side saying no no no no no no no we refuse to acknowledge let's talk about Hunter Biden yes exactly let's talk about Joe Biden's grandson's veterinarians nieces Tik Tok account um and by the way and by the way subpoenas are coming you know it's just uh I don't you can criticize me for who my audience is if you want but it's I don't I don't think in terms of who the choir is when I'm preaching no no but the interesting I mean Jonathan mentioned this I mean you can see these great YouTube videos online of you in conversation with Tucker Carlson this is 2005 had a show on MSNBC you were a pundit there it's a lovely convers the really nice conversations and and you say this can't exist in the world anymore this kind of conversation where can it live at all I mean what changed did he change did the discourse change did you know in 2005 had I mean this is hypothetical and this is I mean maybe this isn't helpful but in in 2005 had Tucker gotten on the air on MSNBC and been like immigrants are dirty and are making America a dirty place and there is a secret plot by an international cabal to replace white people with non-white people and you white people better get it together I mean if he had said the things that he's saying on FOX NOW on MSNBC in 2005 he would no longer have a show on MSNBC in 2005 right I mean so yeah I mean I think Styles change and you know one of the things that I don't do on MSNBC and I haven't done since I've started there at the beginning is I don't put on a Punch and Judy show where I bring on somebody from the right and somebody on the left and say you know Light Rail policy you guys fight and then we watch the fight you know or and I don't bring on a panel of six people at a time to for everybody to say one word and then nobody remembers what the topic is again like I do one-on-one interviews almost exclusively with newsmakers or or experts or reporters that's a stylistic thing but honestly I mean to get I think to get to the root of what you're asking about I don't believe that it reduces the value of a news product um of a a newscast of a of a discussion led by a host on TV about the news to know where the host is coming from you know I was raised in an era where all the newscasters were the sort of voice of God objective you know know ostensibly objective non- entities who absolutely had a subjective take on the news that was manifest not so much in what they were identifying explicitly as their opinion but was manifest in what they chose to cover and what they didn't chose to cover and who they allowed to speak on it with authority and that sort of false sense of nons subjectivity among supposedly objective non-entity newscasters um is something that deserved to die um because it was false growing up as a kid in the Reagan Era as tens of thousands of Americans were dying of AIDS and the president wasn't talking about it and when the you know the the White House spokesman spoke about it from The Briefing room it was it was in veiled anti-gay jokes you know that being covered is as if that was the appropriate that was that was the national take on what was going on with that epidemic at the time that's an object lesson in I think think the the inherent falsity and the the unacknowledged specificity of that kind of take on the news and I'm glad that's over and I'm I will happily tell you where that where I'm coming from but I also run Corrections when I get something wrong I will also abide by NBC News standards in terms of how I present to you the news and you can fact check me from here to the end of the Earth you can be good at this and honest about this and help people understand the world better while also being real about who you are I I get all that I just wonder about polarization particularly how avoidable it is if there are if there or not that there are two competing streams of news that are transparent and open about where they're coming from but the fact that there isn't a single Forum which is accepted grudgingly complainingly but by both sides as basically the fact and here I'm thinking about where I'm sitting and there is the existence of the BBC D sorry about the dog barking the BBC seems to me to play quite an important political role in this country as a guard against Fascism and the things we've been speaking about because like it or not when all the sort of noise is over both sides have to say okay those are the facts and that does condition you against some of the sort of post-truth problematic stuff we've been talking about and I worry for you know as somebody's been watching America for for decades that that the absence of that is what means there's a guard there against polarization and against really the things you're warning about in some ways in Ultra that guard is missing if two nations are watching two screens and not there's no agreed middle area forgive me though I mean in the United States I would say that we have um what you're describing as polarized or maybe sort of atomized television news in the cable news space and then we've got newspapers which I think are playing the kind of BBC role that you're describing I think I mean as much as Trump and his ilk are you know denouncing the New York Times as if it's you know as as if it's the workers World daily or whatever it is I I would say that the the great body of American print journalism New York Times Washington Post in the Wall Street Journal um and and on and on and on including Regional papers plays the kind of BBC role that you're talking about whereas in Britain you have the BBC on TV but your papers I'm sorry like I would put MSNBC up against anything that's happening in terms of the British print media and so yeah and you'd be and you'd be completely right that's absolutely right our papers are massively polarized and broadcast isn't and the United States the opposite I mean first I think broadcasting is more powerful but also now I think tell me if I'm wrong but I get the impression that the number of Republicans or conservatives who would accept that the New York Times or Washington Post are a kind of BBC style neutral rather than also part of the liberal media I think that number has shrunk so that they too are lumped in with the liberal press sure and and the right has been making that case forever right so like in in 1972 uh before spirro agnu is forced out of the vice presidency just ahead of Richard Nixon being forced out of the presidency in the Watergate era the California Republican Women's Conference is turning up to hear him give a speech where he's saying I will not resign if indicted I will not resign if indicted and they all turn up all these Republican women in the early '70s when the technology for recording things was not that handy they're all turning up with their like boom boox tape recorders to record his speech at that event because the media is the enemy of the people and the media is not going to play the important parts of what Spiro agnu says and so they're going to circulate it amongst themselves because the media is evil and you know that's agnu is famous for the Ning nabobs of negativism criticism of the US media but his whole job in the Administration was to make the American public believe that the media not some specific partisan part of the media but the media r large that journalism itself is a left-wing cabal and you have seen you see that in you I mean that's been a right-wing case against the media as long as there's been a rightwing and there's been a media um the idea that the um objective professionally reported presentation of facts about the world is somehow d dangerous to one side of the political Spectrum I mean it's part of why I'm a liberal it's funny I'm listening to this conversation the um since my day job or night job is still to Anchor the evening news on Israeli television um this is all very interesting especially the question of objectivity because when you try to be objective I think the result is that you get flag from both sides for either being this side or that side but I'm just picking a thread up to ask on a personal note not because you kind of scaled down that nightly appearance after almost 15 years uh I wonder if there's still that kind of Rush of live television every evening I mean you do it once a week now I if I'm not mistaken but do you still feel that um you asking for a friend you need really just there's a small M of people who are interested in this uh question I'm one of them so I'm just wondering when you are you saying does it feel different does it feel different to do it once when I when I do it one night a week does it feel different than it did when I was doing miss it do you miss that Rush of the Nightly News cycle no um I mean what was going on with me ahead of making that change was that I was breaking down physically and also that I was feeling like I was becoming Dumber um that my mental bandwidth was just sort of getting Tighter and Tighter and Tighter as the accumulative pressure of a daily production deadline made me think shorter sentences and smaller thoughts and I want to think book length thoughts you know what I mean like and I want to spend my time not just reading um other reading articles produced for the Daily News I want to spend my time reading books and and re and digging into archives and and thinking things that have a a longer Arc and I found myself less and less able to do that and therefore less able to be creative and the adrenaline of the Daily News cycle um and the daily production deadlines can only get you so far you know I mean you can't you can't live on you can't live on that Sugar Rush forever you can in the short run but you can't in the long run and so I knew that I needed to make a change for me but I love being on M day a week um I I this was presented to me as a potential option at the at the very outset of me starting to think about this and I was like that's crazy anybody was on one day a week they have to do something that's about the whole week and it ends up being a magazine show and I hate that kind no actually it turns out you can just get on the air one day a week and do what you normally do and connect with people and connect with the news in a way that um is still just as exciting it just isn't killing you I I'm not going to recommend it to you because everybody will be very mad at me if you ever do it but I will say it is a very satisfying CH some people might be very pleased fewer than you'd think so so since now your new bandwidth enables you to think sort of historical bigger thoughts what about the with the big sweep of what you've just done and what this striking point that we began with which is how it was nearly forgotten and I think you use this phrase about it being memory hold and that very pointed and charg reference to 1984 the idea that things are deliberately forgotten they don't accidentally get forgotten they're put in the memory hole what happens then to the thing that as we speakers just reached a new stage which is the January the 6th investigation uh you know also an attempted s sedition where you know Donald Trump's been referred for criminal charges possible criminal charges to by Congress to the Department of Justice that could happen and yet some having listened to ultra I think to myself now it seems so big but in 10 20 50 80 years time are we going to remember it could it be that you know these names that are household names now will be as obscure as the names that you dig up you know death and the others in 80 years time or is there just so much so much sheer volume of material now all the cable hours and The Print hours and the website hours and the tweets that it can't get forgotten what do you think I think that stories get forgotten not because of a conspiracy to bury them but because it's inconvenient or uncomfortable to remember them and so what feels great for americ Americans to remember about the World War II era is going to Europe and kicking Nazi butt like that feels great and so we tell ourselves infinite stories about that and there are infinite stories to tell about that and there's nothing to you know no reason to take anything away from that but less comfortable stories about the Americans who in very large numbers didn't want us to do that or who in smaller numbers smaller but significant numbers wanted us to fight on the side of the Nazis um who were preaching to fellow Americans that the Germans were invincible and that there was no reason for us to even try to fight them and by the way it wouldn't be so bad if they won and maybe Hitler was on to something and the way he took on those commies I mean the Jews I mean the commies I mean that's that doesn't feel as good and so therefore we didn't tell ourselves that story for a very long time now I'm also self-conscious about the fact that well you know I am finding it appealing and convenient and interesting to tell this story now in a way that people didn't previously and I I think that's because I see through lines in terms of what um we confronted in the 40s and and what we're confronting now most transparently the appeal to authoritarian form of government the critique of democracy the rise in anti-Semitism and scapegoating attached to people with real political power like I just I see the parallel and so therefore that story from the 40s is now has has appealed to me and I think has resonance for people who are hearing it the other part of it though and you could take this as sort of of good news as good news or just sort of sterile Diagnostics but losers get forgotten which is which is the nicest you know Side Story that history tells that history can run them over right that's nice yeah I mean part of what happened with this fascist plot that I write about from the pre-World War II era um is that I mean again part of what's interesting to me about it is that it involves a lot of people with a lot of political power there was a paid high-ranking very skilled Nazi agent operating in Congress working with at least two dozen members of the House and Senate to distribute the Hitler government's propaganda to American houses to to American Homes across the across the country it was a big plot but the members of Congress who involved a lot of them were household names they were the most powerful people in representative government in the United States and part of reason we don't know this story is because they went from top of the Heap to turfed out by the voters or by their political parties and forgotten and that's what history does to you when you end up on the wrong side of something like this and there is a form of political accountability for you in your lifetime that's what you want in a way but it then creates a challenge for those of us to go you know dig through the history to find these guys to see how far they fell that's part of what I love about this kind of work so what can you tell us about the Spielberg adaptation and can we all agree that John rgy has to be George Clooney like can we do that can we be on the same page on that at least you know your lips to God's ears please please I would love that um yeah I you know it's a I can't really believe it I just it while the podcast was still underway I heard from um Mr Spielberg about his interest and um when you say still you mean it hadn't been a it hadn't been completely aired we launched the first two episodes on the first week and then one episode per week thereafter it was eight episodes total we hadn't gotten to episode 8 before I heard from him um which was just which was a thrill and we actually you know there was a bunch of people in in Hollywood who were interested from the beginning I mean I part of it might have been that episode one does start with a plane crash which is a pretty cinematic thing Jonathan really was thankful for that he planes he had to fast forward yeah yeah that was all a little bit it was very detailed I do urge my fellow anxious Flyers to get past that first opening of episode one because I promise you it's not all about plane crashes it does get into some absolutely amazing stuff no there's that plane crash at episode one you can get through it you can fast forward to act two of episode one if you want to get past it right away there is an there is a notable appearance of an airport in episode 8 in the final but there's no plane crash that's fine because they're all on the ground on the ground that's all good for me and we do have the weird Nazi flyer the pilot lady who drops the anti-war leaflets on the White House and then her husband gets involved in the plot with George death there's a lot of weird flying things it's maybe it's good for people who don't like I mean this is a very Niche point but what is it with these aviators I you have the other one Laura Engles Laur what is it about the aviators and fascism uh there's there's something going on there I this is a this is inside for people who have already listened to the podcast and who thought about it too much hello but the the fact that you've got the Ernest lundine plane crash and you've got where one of our prosecutors gets fired and you've got Charles Lindberg and you've got Laura Les and you I mean there's there is something going on there in terms of the way that the history is speaking to us here that I don't know I don't I I I'm very excited to find out um I mean if Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner and Danny Strong are going to be involved in making this into something that has a uh that is visual art that is a movie I just I mean just pinch me I can't believe it no I was going to say it's been a thrill to nerd out with you on this because I've been living with it obsessing with it listening to it and now to be able to geek out with the creator of the show is fantastic and it will make a wonderful film it's already wonderful as a podcast um we do recommend everyone listening to this um to listen to ultra right away uh if you haven't sold it now after this hour then I don't know quite what people are missing because um it has been wonderful uh Rachel madell thank you very much indeed thank you so much thank you such a pleasure really it's such a pleasure we'd love to have you on your next podcast uh bring me back it it might be Ultra season two at this point I'm still I'm still marinating in these archives there's still more to find so thank you guys this has been great you guys do a wonderful job [Music] here that was a a fascinating conversation there there's so much to say after it and I I I think we could have uh Gone on and on talking about it especially about the podcast but I I think the an interesting point in what we were talking about right and in the story of 1940 and I think in the IR Eerie similarities that resonate today is the issue of of what do you do when you have the information I mean then it's very prominent in the story of the podcast that of the story of this this whole plot to subvert American democracy is that it it took good people who tried to put the information in front of the American public and we live in a time where the information is more available but I think the question and by the way it's relevant to the book you wrote Jonathan The Escape Artist about rivela trying to escap being aitz and trying to bring the information about aitz to the world but then there's this Gap what do you do with the information once you have it do you act on it do you ignore it do you throw it into a drawer do you accept it maybe that is the Salient question you know that is something that is very very interesting and about Rachel personally you know you can it was so interesting to me to hear about how you know you should be candid about your opinions that is something I think that is arguable but you can't argue that she is a professional that she is incredibly serious and in-depth and she changed the face of cable television in America I mean look this is someone who came in 15 years ago started her own show said I'm going to do a 15-minute or 20-minute monologue which sounds like anti- television and she won Larry King right I mean it's it's astounding to think about even today I think it was a really great conversation I think the point about um information is fascinating because of the connection with what she does and in a way there's this fascinating sort of plea she makes at the end of the series Ultra where she says it wasn't just down to the authorities they actually couldn't really cope with it or politicians in the end it required all these citizens to do their bit and she mentions you know different citizen activists but she also mentions journalists at the time in the 1940s who played this role and were and it's I I thought very clear that she thinks there's a duty there and it's one she's involved in now she's much more sophisticated that she doesn't make the parallel crudely but the notion that the there is a kind of obligation on civil society to deal with these threats and the media is part of that and that she takes that responsibility quite seriously and I think that came through in the conversation too even about how she's made this change away from you know five nights a week to one night a week she wants to do things you know long form journalism and other things you know there's a kind notion I think it ties together that all I suppose is what I'm saying the form and the content the story she's telling an ultra is about a duty that exists on people in the public sphere including journalists like her so I thought that was really fascinating if you haven't been sold on it already do listen to ultra over this holiday period in between Donuts you can uh you can binge on the on Ultra even if you don't want to binge on Donuts we have Awards to hand out Y what what should we what kind of mood are we in are we in a generous mood where we do mench first or do we go I thought generous means we leave our listeners with the good holiday spirit and then do mench last no I think I think it's okay like it very good so I will uh jump in with theah because that's what I that's what I know how to do it's my national Pastime um so okay by uh this still connects to a little bit of Israeli politics you didn't think I'll let you off the hook with the those those few minutes so I do want to talk about ronon is the ex police chief in Israel uh and he uh gave an interview to uh Channel 12 a channel I know well yesterday uh evening and he said this about the Netanyahu cases and the netanyahu's trial that is ongoing of course today he said he thinks that the Attorney General should seek a plea bargaining with incoming prime minister Netanyahu he said quote in the current situation I would definitely recommend for the trial to end he says I'm speaking as a private citizen but our democracy is not yet ready to prosecute a sitting prime minister now you can say whatever you say about this stance specifically there are a lot of people who think that in Israel behind closed doors or not behind closed doors right even in the anti- netan camp people are saying the ramifications of him being on trial are so severe they're worse than the corruption cases themselves that's a maybe a legitimate stance to hold but when you are the ex police chief and you're the person who you know saw oversaw these investigations and recommended right the police recommended to indict netan it's a problem to say it out loud and the trial continues and the prosecutor latar is being threatened and she has to walk around with security TTL and key weaknesses are being threatened and you're sitting on television saying I think the trial needs to end so I think that is just a little bit of uh uh you know a reason for him to receive this award this week yeah no I'm not going to challenge that one because um yeah that's a that's a sort of serious threat to you know liberal Democratic Norms when people don't observe those boundaries and that's Crossing of a line I also I'm not going to contest it because the committee the the awards committee has been in almost permanent session the last uh 24 hours or so over the mench of the week nominee which comes as a suggestion from our friend longtime listener Raymond Simonson who runs jw3 the big Jewish Cultural Center in London controversial because we did hand the menure of the week award to a Brit indeed a titled Brit just last week s Lindsay Hoy uh Speaker of the House of Commons so some reticence to give it to a Brit another for for the second week running and yet Raymond Simonson suggests King Charles III as mench of the week and so obviously we've been in deep conclave discussing this but the prompt for this is coverage which people may have seen because vide of it went to various places around the world of his visit to jw3 the king visited there just last week and says Raymond Simonson he was a complete mench he spent time there with food bank volunteers talking to refugees who uh run or and participate in a cooking project at J jw3 and then the bit that was you know made it onto social media was with a group of 25 Holocaust Survivors at a hanuka lunch where the survivors sort of encourage him to join a group who are dancing uh to a kesma band as they played to life L and Charles does that sort of Royal dancing which is not half dancing and half kind of not um but he's holding their hands and with them and the moment obviously meant a huge amount to those survivors but also to The Wider Jewish Community you know the queen when she spent time uh with the Jewish Community always you know those were memories that didn't uh fade and this is one of those he did spend actually the day with a whole lot of Jewish organizations uh people were joking that essentially he did spend the day driving down this one road where all the Jewish organizations have their headquarters so he had a kind of due day but apparently very kind of warm and generous with it so a little bit of History made and Unholy I don't think we've had two successive Brits as men of the week but the Monarch and head of state probably is allowed to break all convention so he's our menure the week I think the the committee has sat on this as you said and we've decided that it uh we will allow it and maybe an adjacent uh mench award also to Raymond for sending us to our way and for being uh such an avid listener uh we are uh nearing our um the end of our episode Jonathan so we will say our thank yous to our thank yous for 2022 to Gia Glazer and to om primat RK and Bashan also say that our heart goes out this week to our first EP of our show to leol fredman we're sending him our love and um we shall talk soon I think we will and as it is the hanuka season lots of you will be taking time off there will be other distractions of course available but we suggest you binge listen your way through the back catalog of Unholy there may be episodes you've missed you never know you may have fallen down on your duty and obligation to hear every minute of every episode but if you do and you like it of course spread the word if you have family gathering with you I can't imagine why you would um at this time of year but if you do why not mention to your assorted family members that you are a compulsive Unholy listener make this a habit across the board uh you and I Y need will talk next week see you see [Music] you this podcast is brought to you by cyber attacks can be prevented checkpoint you deserve the best security