'Amsterdam,' the movie

[enid602]

Last edited Mon Oct 10, 2022, 12:44 PM - Edit history (2)

Saw ‘Amsterdam’ last night. Treated the threat against FDR’s life by prominent industrialists in the ‘30’s.’ Covered the big Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden. The names of the industrialists were changed to protect the oligarchs, but we all know that GWB’s grandfather, Prescott Bush was one of them in real life.

For any Angelenos out there, the movie was filmed on Broadway, and in Echo Park and Pasadena, although it ostensibly takes place in NYC.

[FakeNoose]

1. I've seen the trailers for "Amsterdam" and it looks really good

I'm definitely hoping to see this very soon. Thanks for the tip.

[enid602]

2. Amsterdam

Glad to see that we are finally able to talk about this chapter of American history. Makes it less likely that Jan 6 will be similarly sugar coated.

[brush]

3. I didn't know it was about the American Liberty League's...

attempted coup against FDR in the '30s. Names like du Pont, Sloan (GM), Remington, Hearst, Bush and Al Smith were involved.

I'm going to have to see it.

[Johnny2X2X]

7. America First Committee

The America First Committee was a Nazi Sympathizer group supported by Charles Lindbergh. The AFC dissolved shortly after Pearl Harbor, but they wanted America to stay out of Hitler's way more than anything else.

America First...where have we heard that before? Of course there was "Germany First" too, an actual Nazi motto.

It doesn't get talked about because it sounds like borderline conspiracy theory nonsense, but the MAGA movement is very clearly inspired by and modeled after the rise of the Nazis in Germany. It's overt and obvious, and some of those on the inside of the MAGA movement even admit it.

[brush]

12. Thanks for that info. The American First Committee is...

is even less well known than the American Liberty League. As you said, the magats know about it.

Most know about the fascists in Germany, Italy and Spain but I was surprised to find out that there was a large French fascist movement going on in the '30s that I hadn't heard about. They never reached enough strength to take over the government fortunately.

[enid602]

9. Conspiracy

Last edited Mon Oct 10, 2022, 02:04 PM - Edit history (1)

The movie is mostly about a doctor who served in WWI in France, and his two friends, one of which is the sister of the leader of the cabal seeking to off FDR. It is somewhat comedic, but they are thrown into the middle of the attempted putsch.

[Cosmocat]

4. The Ken Burns doc has been depressing

I kind of new the history on this, but did not know just how pervasive things were back then.

And, Charles Linburg was a really reprehensible person.

[Tree Lady]

6. I wonder how many schools show his documentaries

in history class. I have learned so much from all of them. And yes, depressing to learn people we thought were good were not.

[brush]

14. I didn't see the Ken Burns doc. I hope to catch it if...

if runs again.

I agree that Lindbergh was a reprehensible creature. He had women and families all over the place...and was a nazi sympathizer.

[mitch96]

5. I remember the BBC did a program about it years ago.." The business plot"

Good old Smedly Butler blew the whistle and told FDR about it. Some say that is how FDR got a lot of his social programs passed.
I bet it was something like....Vote with me or get shot for treason and sedition..
The repukes have been trying to undo it ever since
m

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tbs0

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/01/13/fdr-roosevelt-coup-business-plot/

[brush]

15. Yep, FDR outsmarted them. Told them if they didn't back off...

from opposing his New Deal plans he'd expose their fascist treachery to the nation.

[Demsrule86]

17. Yep, it was investigated by Congress and there are transcripts that I have seen fascinating.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. I think you mean "Prescott" not "Preston"

[enid602]

10. Good catch

Damned auto correct

[Stinky The Clown]

11. Heh . . . happens to me all the time!

[grantcart]

13. A lot to unpack here

1) The so called "Business Plot" theory is not supported by any reliable historical source as a legitimate plot.

Pulitizer Prize winner Arthur Schlessinger, a lifelong Democrat and intimate friend of Eleanor stated

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. said in 1958, "Most people agreed with Mayor La Guardia of New York in dismissing it as a 'cocktail putsch'".[49] In Schlesinger's summation of the affair in 1958, "No doubt, MacGuire did have some wild scheme in mind, though the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable, and it can hardly be supposed that the Republic was in much danger."[10]

2) Prescott Bush wasn't a right wing Republican. He was an Eisenhower Republican who helped organize the vote against McCarthy. His father in law was a life long Democrat and his best friend Averill Harriman was a major Democrat power broker.

3) Prescott Bush was a liberal Nelson Rockfeller Republican.

He was one of the founders of Planned Parenthood and it is doubtful that it would have succeeded without his leadership
https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Bush-patriarch-helped-start-Planned-Parenthood-6447937.php


4) Prescott Bush did well but was never "an industrialist" or an "oligarch".

[brush]

16. Try looking up the American Liberty League.

There actually was a planned coup attempt by several prominent Americans in the '30s who wanted to overthrow FDR and install fascism in the US.

Sloan of GM, a duPont, Remington, Al Smith, Hearst and Prescott Bush were involved.

[enid602]

18. Putsch

The Bush family was pretty well off. As I recall, Prescott was found guilty of the dealing with the enemy act for dealing with German interests well into WWII. I wonder how many pundits are now calling J6 a cocktail putsch.

[Demsrule86]

19. You are completly wrong. There was a plot and no one really knows if it came close or not.

Shortly before the committee hearings, in September of 1934, the newly formed American Liberty League—made up of leaders and captains of industry opposed to the president “fomenting class hatred” and his handling of the Depression—released a statement. Among its members were the DuPonts, S.B. Colgate, Sewell Avery, John Raskob, Alfred P. Sloan, and former secretary of State Elihu Root. Butler noticed Robert Sterling Clark’s name on the list, as well as Grayson M. P. Murphy, Gerald MacGuire’s boss.

Also implicated in the plot was Al Smith, former New York governor and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee, as well as Prescott Bush, a banker, future Connecticut senator, and father to George H. W. Bush and grandfather to George W. Bush.

Of these wealthy and prominent people, none was called for testimony, and none was punished.

https://timeline.com/business-plot-overthrow-fdr-9a59a012c32a

Prescott Bush was a traitor with ties to Nazi Germany and a long history with Hitler.

One of the “Business Plot” coup-plotters was banker Prescott Bush, the father of George H W Bush and grandfather of George W Bush. None of Prescott Bush’s progeny have been willing to talk about Prescott’s traitorous deeds. At the time of the plot, Prescott Bush was deeply involved in the business of the Hamburg-America Lines (co-owned by industrialists from both pro-Hitler Germany and pro-Hitler America). Bush was also involved in the ascendance of Adolf Hitler to his becoming dictator in 1933. Prescott Bush was slated to be the liaison between the coup-plotting group and Hitler’s new regime. The defeat of the Democrat FDR in his runs for re-election were important goals. The attempt to defeat FDR in the 1940 re-election campaign was actually heavily-funded by Nazi Germany. (A reminder of the alleged Russian involvement in defeating Hillary Clinton.) Prescott Bush became an FDR-hating Republican US Senator from Connecticut who must have been privately ambivalent about going to war against his old allies in Germany.

https://duluthreader.com/articles/2018/12/06/111844-the-bush-family-dynasty-and-prescott-bushs-love

It happened...and was swept under the carpet...it was thought that Roosevelt did not want to destroy the banking system and used this to get his new deal through. Some of these men would have been tried as traitors IMHO had Roosevelt wanted to... They were involved in an attempted coup against this country and fully intended to install a fascist dictator.

The consternation had been growing in the months between Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election and his inauguration, but his elimination of the gold standard in April 1933 infuriated some of the country’s wealthiest men.

Titans of banking and business worried that if U.S. currency wasn’t backed by gold, inflation could skyrocket and make their millions worthless. Why, they could end up as poor as most everyone else was during the Great Depre

So, according to the sworn congressional testimony of a retired general, they decided to overthrow the government and install a dictator who was more business friendly. After all, they reasoned, that had been working well in Italy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/01/13/fdr-roosevelt-coup-business-plot/

[Hortensis]

20. I really like historical movies, so appreciate the invitation to check this one out.

The different descriptions of what this movie's about in typical reviews and on this thread were confusing, though. Most pop reviews are so caught up in other stuff that they give the political short shrift.

Inspired by the use of the word "oligarchs" in the OP, I tried to find reviews in sympathy with what that suggested to me by googling the title with the word "Progressives," and that brought up this review from Vox, and others. (Btw, "oligarch" itself failed as a search term --unsurprisingly, since any oligarchs running America of course would not have allowed election of a liberal government or the New Deal.)

... The title refers to a utopia, a place where three survivors of World War I’s destruction — Burt Berendsen, played by Christian Bale, Harold Woodman, played by John David Washington, and Valerie Voze, played by Margot Robbie — share a European idyll. It’s when they come back to the United States and are witness to a series of murders that these American eccentrics endure the hazards of race, class, female subjugation, and cultural corruption, presaging the next world war and social debacles to follow. ...

Wonderfully humane as it is, Amsterdam can’t surmount the prevailing sense of failure. ... I expected Russell to be the one filmmaker who saw through the anti-American distaste of media progressives, but this cloud-cuckoo-land tale ultimately clashes with the spoiled cynicism of Hollywood elites. ...

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/19/17847110/how-fascism-works-donald-trump-jason-stanley

More encouragement for those who will like this:

This is a film with a specifically capital-P Progressive perspective that plays a little loose with its historical politics. ... The multi-ethnic pack of misfits taking on the unfairness of America ... Major instances of discrimination against black Americans are given, ... an involuntary eugenics scheme is portrayed as a specifically partisan crime rather than something the Progressives of the era were fully behind. It must be commended for its sympathetic depiction of First World War veterans and the combat, medical and psychological horrors they were subjected to.

...it’s often very funny, ...

https://spotlightreport.net/featured/amsterdam-movie-review

Enjoy!

[enid602]

21. movie

They tell you right before the move that some of the story is true, and others are not. At the end of the movie they show most of the historical figures in real life, alongside the actors in the movie. They do not show who the industrialists were, nor Tom Vose, the socially prominent head of the cabal, who I think was supposed to be Prescott.

[Hortensis]

22. Good. I was just looking to see what historians do know,

and the congressional committee's final report said "there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient."

That's plenty interesting right there -- a group of extremely powerful RWers so worried about a socialist takeover that they seriously discussed heading it off with a fascist takeover. Too much like today. Spectacular and fascinating as the subject is, and now timely again, there's a severe lack of historic books on this plot itself for lack of known material, both evidence and subversive effects, to study.

Maybe someday a missing diary will shed light on how close they might have come to the execution phase where talk becomes a crime. While I'm still around please!

[enid602]

23. Preference

I think the family namciers really just liked Hitler, as so many around the world today admire Trump’s brand of leadership.

[Hortensis]

24. Agree, appallingly many found/find much to admire

in Hitler's ability to get and use power ruthlessly. But the smart ones very sensibly distrusted and feared him. He assassinated and blackmailed his way to power and then took out people who helped him. Same now -- they want to use tRump to get power (actually, the MAGAs have given them no choice but to try, and they have been doing well), but then what to do about the problem of HIM?