{"id":25908,"date":"2023-04-11T21:11:58","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T04:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=25908"},"modified":"2023-04-11T21:12:00","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T04:12:00","slug":"the-true-history-behind-the-plot-against-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/04\/11\/the-true-history-behind-the-plot-against-america\/","title":{"rendered":"The True History Behind \u2018The Plot Against America\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

HISTORY<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0MARCH 16, 2020 (smithsonianmag.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip Roth\u2019s classic novel, newly adapted by HBO, envisions a world in which Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 presidential election<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Charles Lindbergh, Walter Winchell and Franklin D. Roosevelt (L to R) are among the public figures fictionalized in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America<\/em>. Photo illustration by Meilan Solly \/ Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Meilan<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Meilan Solly<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Associate Editor, History<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Plot Against America<\/em> unfolds in a world much like our own. Set in Newark, New Jersey, on the eve of World War II, Philip Roth\u2019s 2004 novel<\/a> 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, \u201c[T]he Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What follows is an alternate history penned in the same vein as Philip K. Dick\u2019s The Man in the High Castle<\/em><\/a>, a 1962 novel recently adapted for television<\/a> by Amazon Studios. Like High Castle<\/em>, The Plot Against America<\/em>\u2014the subject of a new HBO limited series<\/a> of the same name\u2014poses the age-old question of \u201cWhat if?\u201d 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\u2019s peak, envisioning a virulently isolationist United States that nevertheless ends up entangled in international affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seamlessly blending truth and imagination, The Plot Against America <\/em>pits aviator Charles A. Lindbergh against incumbent Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. Voters\u2019 choice, argues the Spirit of St. Louis <\/em>pilot and fervent \u201cAmerica Firster\u201d in a trailer for the series<\/a>, is not between Lindbergh and Roosevelt, but \u201cbetween Lindbergh and war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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