The Atlantic

Why an Anti-Fascist Short Film Is Going Viral

“I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.”
Source: 'Don't Be a Sucker' / Internet Archive

How should Americans fight against a resurgent white-nationalist movement in the United States? This weekend, they returned to an artifact from an earlier era of anti-Nazism. Tens of thousands of people rediscovered—and promptly shared and retweeted—a clip from Don’t Be a Sucker, a short propaganda film made by the U.S. War Department in 1943.

When it first debuted, would have played in movie theaters. Now it has made its 21st-century premiere thanks to a network of smaller. Almost 75 years after it was first shown, lives again as a public object in a new and strange context.

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