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The True History Behind 'The Plot Against America': Philip Roth Novel Adapted By HBO, *Trailer
- Sen. Burton K. Wheeler (l) & Charles Lindbergh (r) at an 'America First' Rally in New York, May 23, 1941.
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- THE TRUE HISTORY BEHIND ‘THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA.’ Philip Roth’s classic novel, newly adapted by HBO, envisions a world in which Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 presidential election. Smithsonian Magazine, March 16, 2020.The 6-Part HBO Series Premiered in March, 2020.
The Plot Against America unfolds in a world much like our own. Set in Newark, New Jersey, on the eve of World War II, Philip Roth’s 2004 novel finds its protagonist, a fictionalized version of the 7-year-old author himself, leading a banal existence punctuated by nightly radio news broadcasts, dinners with his all-American Jewish family and neighborhood excursions undertaken to fill the halcyon hours of summer vacation. Then, the writer-narrator recounts, “[T]he Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything changed.”
What follows is an alternate history penned in the same vein as Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, a 1962 novel recently adapted for television by Amazon Studios. Like High Castle, The Plot Against America—the subject of a new HBO limited series of the same name—poses the age-old question of “What if?” But while the former depicts a world in which the Axis powers won the war, the latter places its departure from the historical record prior to the conflict’s peak, envisioning a virulently isolationist United States that nevertheless ends up entangled in international affairs.
Seamlessly blending truth and imagination, The Plot Against America pits aviator Charles A. Lindbergh against incumbent Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. Voters’ choice, argues the Spirit of St. Louis pilot and fervent “America Firster” in a trailer for the series, is not between Lindbergh and Roosevelt, but “between Lindbergh and war.” Roth’s account of a celebrity-turned-politician winning the presidency on a platform of fearmongering and “othering” proved more prophetic than he could have predicted. “It’s a story of an American dystopia,” explains “The Plot Against America” showrunner David Simon to Variety’s Will Thorne.
“It seems startlingly prescient in that it anticipates a politician who seizes upon a very simple message and is able to activate the worst fears and impulses of a significant number of Americans. He gets them to relinquish not only power, but some of the most essential bulwarks of self-governance.” While the Roth family, renamed the Levins in the HBO show, and many of the characters mentioned in The Plot Against America are based on real people, much of the narrative is entirely contrived. From the true extent of Lindbergh’s anti-Semitic views to the rise of the “America First” movement, here’s what you need to know to separate fact from fiction....
Read More, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-history-behind-plot-against-america-180974365/
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- 'The Plot Against America' HBO teaser. An alternate American history story of the country’s turn to fascism told through the eyes of a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey. Starring Zoe Kazan, Morgan Spector, Winona Ryder, and John Turturro. #theplotagainstamerica. #HBO, Subscribe to HBO on YouTube: https://goo.gl/wtFYd7
- America First Committee (AFC) rally in New York, c. 1941.
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