Fascism on Film Podcast

This week’s film, Casablanca, is an examination of anti-fascist propaganda from Hollywood as a reminder that America can not afford to be neutral in the cause of world peace and freedom.

This week’s episode takes a look at the Nazi occupation of France in François Truffaut’s ”The Last Metro,” a must-see film from 1980.

In this episode of the Fascism on Film Podcast, we look at Mr. Klein (1976), Joseph Losey’s haunting story of identity, complicity, and erasure in Nazi-occupied France. Alain Delon plays Robert Klein, a Paris art dealer who lives comfortably off the desperation of others, buying paintings and possessions from Jewish families needing to flee persecution. He’s charming, detached, and perfectly suited to the opportunism of wartime Paris until the day a Jewish newspaper arrives in his mail, addressed to “Mr. Klein.” Trying to prove he is not that Mr. Klein, he enters a maze of bureaucracy that slowly consumes him. What begins as a misunderstanding becomes an obsession and, finally, a collapse of identity. Losey’s film moves between realism and dream. Mirrored rooms double Klein’s reflection, a grotesque cabaret mocking Jewish caricatures, and the quiet efficiency of the French police preparing for the 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv roundup. Beneath the surface elegance lies what we call the “machinery of murder” a portrait of fascism carried out through paperwork, compliance, and silence. We discuss how Mr. Klein reveals fascism not as spectacle but as routine, and how easily a society can lose its moral center when categorizing people for persecution becomes routine bureaucracy. Watching it today, the parallels are chilling. Join us as we unpack Mr. Klein, a story that asks what happens when the system decides who you are and how easily anyone can disappear inside it.

In the season 1 finale episode of Fascism on Film, we turn to Paul Verhoeven’s "Starship Troopers," a gory, flamboyant, and darkly hilarious satire that asks viewers to confront their own appetite for militarism, propaganda, and authoritarian spectacle. Released in 1997 and adapted (loosely and subversively) from Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel, the film uses the grammar of classic war movies to tell the story of a society where service guarantees citizenship, where democracy has failed, and where a perpetual war machine feeds on loyalty, violence, and spectacle. Propaganda as entertainment: Verhoeven replaces the opening title cards common in war films with a “Federal Network” commercial—state‑run media commanding the audience: “Would you like to know more?” Recruitment videos, live battlefield feeds, and grotesque lab footage turn war into a televised brand, complete with slogans: “We have the ships. We have the weapons. We need soldiers!” Militarism as a civic religion: In this world, only those who serve in the military earn the right to vote. A high‑school teacher (Michael Ironside) lectures students that “violence has resolved more issues throughout history than any other factor,” a mantra repeated until it becomes gospel. Fascist aesthetics played straight—then satirized: Nazi‑inspired uniforms, brutalist eagles, banners, chants, and blood sacrifices permeate the mise‑en‑scène. Verhoeven draws directly from Triumph of the Will while exaggerating those tropes to absurdity. The construction of the enemy: The Arachnids are depicted as both pathetic and existentially threatening—a core contradiction of fascist propaganda. They are not just an enemy; they are a species to be eradicated. The audience is invited to cheer at genocide, then left uneasy with that reaction. The illusion of choice: Echoing Edward Bernays’ Propaganda (1928), the film shows how a regime offers superficial choices while shaping thought at every level. The viewer’s cursor clicks “Would you like to know more?” but every path leads back to the same militaristic narrative. The humor and horror of complicity: Verhoeven’s satire is deliberately unsubtle—Rico, Carmen, and Carl are glamorous poster-children for the regime, even as they march deeper into moral compromise. When a captured “brain bug” is tortured and soldiers cheer, we are forced to ask: Who are we rooting for? While this is the end of our first season, it is by no means the last. We plan to be back in mid-to-late October with a whole new season of movies that examine fascism.

Italian filmmaking master, Federico Fellini, takes a nostalgic look at his early life as a teenager in fascist Italy with his final masterpiece, 1973's "Amarcord." While this film is not heavy on the violent and repressive aspects of fascism, it does offer an intricate portrait of a town mostly at ease with its repressive government. Filled with many classic Fellini moments and characters, this time Fellini uses his canvas to portray Italian citizens trapped in a fool's paradise, unable to see the horrors that will befall the country in a few short years.