Prequel

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

Perhaps no country in the world wishes to be seen as the world’s savior more than the United States. After all, what other country has an actual superhero named after itself (Steve Rogers who?)? We all know the story of how the US fearlessly entered WWII (on the good side!) after Pearl Harbor and veni vidi vici-ed their way through Europe, saved it from Nazism, and rebuilt it in their own image (well, the western part…). The bursting voice of democracy and freedom sounded so loud that it echoed all the way across the Atlantic! And if it sounds too good to be true, it’s because it was.

Historical records offer a different angle on this beloved story of heroism. What likely won’t surprise you is that significant swaths of Americans were convinced that the US should stay away from the conflict. What likely will surprise you is that plenty of others thought the US should join the conflict . . . on the side of the Axis. The fight against fascism wasn’t only fought on European and Asian battlefields, but also at home. In Prequel, Rachel Maddow tells this very story.

If you’ve never heard of Rachel Maddow, please allow me to (shamelessly) reference my review of her previous book Blowout, where I introduce her in greater detail. In short: Rachel Maddow is an American journalist and a liberal media icon. The new Walter Cronkite, if you will. After Trump’s first term she let go of her intense five-show-a-week schedule to explore other projects and formats, which resulted in popular podcasts such as Deja News, and Ultra. And it was the work on the latter that inspired her to write Prequel.

In both the book and the podcast, we go back to the US of the 20s and 30s, a time which witnessed the immense rise in popularity of radio and a quickly deepening economic crisis. The American people farewelled President Herbet Hoover, whose (in)capabilities produced one of my favorite political slogans: “In Hoover we trusted, now we are busted.” They replaced him with the New Deal of President Roosevelt (the better of the two!). Back then, however, American politics also offered a lot of inspiration for Nazi Germany.

Segregation “Jim Crow” laws along with anti-Native American and anti-immigration laws were a true well of inspiration for how to use the rule of law to advance even the most deplorable practices. The activities of the most famous anti-Semites notwithstanding. Did you know that you could find a reference to Henry Ford’s (yes, that Henry Ford) literary work in the first edition of Mein Kampf? Not exactly bragging rights for the Ford family. In fact, Hitler was so fascinated by Ford, that he had Ford’s portrait behind his work desk.

“I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration.”

Prequel

Maddow Rachel

AngličtinaMäkká väzba

Transworld Publishers Ltd

ISBN: 9781804996126

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Predpokladané dodanie v stredu, 15. júla 2026

11,45 €

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Na objednávku

Predpokladané dodanie v stredu, 15. júla 2026

11,45 €

12,73 € -10 %

Inspiration, however, also worked the other way. The US in the 30s and 40s faced an organized disinformation campaign from Nazi Germany. And it wasn’t just affecting/dancing around the/found in the fringes of society, as one might think (or hope), but actively included several members of Congress. To find out just how such a campaign transpired you’ll have to read the books, but here’s a little teaser. You’ll learn, for example, all the details about aviatrix Laura Ingalls and her flight over Washington DC, during which she flooded the city with thousands of flyers appealing to the US to stay out of the war. The act of an avid pacifist? Wrong. Turns out Ingalls was on the payroll of the Nazi government as an aspiring spy, which ultimately led to her imprisonment Though I am sad to report that experience did not have the desired effect and she remained a staunch Nazi sympathizer till the end of the war.

Maddow is a great storyteller and though not everyone will appreciate her “our story begins when the meteor hit the Earth “method of storytelling, it is the very reason I love her. And if you like to make sense of history and present in a logical way, I suspect you’ll love her, too. The author claims that history doesn’t repeat itself, it accumulates. And perhaps if we look closely at the origins of what is going on now and how the previous generations dealt with it, we can face it too. Prequel isn’t a “doom and gloom” tale of the inevitability of fascism, though it certainly is cautionary. But it is also a reminder that we have faced it before and won. What didn’t allow fascism to fully develop in the United States were ordinary people simply doing their jobs. What stands between us and the triumph of evil are the actions of every single one of us.

Seems to be a story about heroes after all.