The Hoaxters (1952)

This might have worked a bit better if they’d engaged a commentator capable of putting his tongue in his cheek a little. They didn’t, so as it is, it is a too earnest and simplistic appraisal of those it dubs the “hoaxters”. Those are the people like Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin who promised their populations a much improved lifestyle of opportunity and prosperity - only for those dreams to end in wartime ruin. Meantime, we see an United States basking in the sunlight of it’s open democracy and freedom, powerfully and emphatically, and warning of the dangers to this Elysian existence should the fickle and untrustworthy communists ever make any inroads into society on their side of the Atlantic. That’s all the usual flag-waving fayre, so it’s not especially surprising. What is makes no effort to do, though, is to contextualise just what led to the rise of fascism and totalitarianism in Europe. Given the devastation following the Great War and the political upheavals, unemployment, homelessness and poverty that ensued, surely it was worth trying to explain that when people are desperate, the powers of oratory when coupled with appeals to pride and jingoism are particularly effective amongst many a population at least as well educated as anyone in the US. Obviously intended for internal consumption, it probably had a job to do - but as anything like a dispassionate analysis of just how fanaticism turns into electoral success it falls short taking aim at some easy historically loathed targets and leaves us little better informed that we would be if we had read some opposition newspaper headlines at the time.