The Cold War Was — and Still Is — a Protection Racket — Paul Jay Pt. 3/3
About this episode
Paul Jay discusses the origins of the nuclear bomb and argues that the Cold War was a protection racket rather than a defense strategy.
In part three, filmmaker and journalist Paul Jay turns to the film that brought this conversation full circle: How to Stop a Nuclear War. Jay traces the bomb\'s origins to a lie — the U.S. and Britain knew by 1944 there was no German nuclear program, yet built one anyway to secure postwar hegemony. He argues the Cold War was never really about defense; it was a protection racket that justified permanent militarization, purged the American left, and convinced generations that annihilation was the price of safety. Jay makes the case that nuclear winter research has been buried for decades because acknowledging it would mean admitting there is no such thing as a winnable nuclear war — only a lucrative one.
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