The Plot Against America 1.5: Involuntary Transfer

Another powerful, deeply infuriating episode - 1.5 - in the 1940s alternate American history which has Lindbergh as President and anti-semitism rising that is The Plot Against America.

The main theme is the transfer of Jewish residents of Eastern cities to rural mid-America that Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf kept insisting was voluntary.  He and we learn the truth when he sees the rabid-anti-semite Henry Ford, a member of the Lindbergh cabinet, give his definition of voluntary.  If you want to keep your job, you agree to move your family.  What does the Rabbi need, to get him see how blind he is and has been?  The Lindberghs don't even attend his wedding.  And yet he continues to promote Lindbergh as the greatest thing since sliced bread in America.

As an example:  when Walter Winchell finally denounces the Rabbi's pet transfer program on Winchell's radio show with his breathless, patented voice, Bengelsdorf gets Winchell fired from his radio show.  I don't even know if there's an FCC in this alternate reality.  I do know that in our reality, I've frequently denounced the FCC and its regulation of broadcasters as a blatant violation of our First Amendment (see, for example, my Flouting of the First Amendment).

In The Plot Against America, the government being forbidden from abridging freedom of speech and press isn't the only egregious violation of the First Amendment.  Before the hour is over, we see a Winchell rally - he's starting a Presidential campaign - broken up by fascist thugs, with the local police and the FBI looking on and doing nothing.  So much for the right guaranteed in the First Amendment of people to peaceably assemble.

Next week is the finale, and I regret this series being so mini.   There's a lot more story to tell in this rise of fascism in America which almost happened - in the attack on the press by the President's minions which bear such resemblances to our own time.  I'll be back here next week with some parting thoughts on this all-too pertinent series.

See also The Plot Against America 1.1: Yet Another Alternate Nazi History, with Forshpeis ... The Plot Against 1.2: The 33rd President ... The Plot Against America 1.3: Corrosive Anti-Semitism ... The Plot Against America 1.4: Close to Home