Back in December, media historian and legal expert Tim Wu wrote in the New York Times that both the Netflix and Paramount offers “would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by antitrust authorities. The message to Warner Bros. Discovery should be: If you must sell, maybe try finding a buyer who is not a direct competitor.” Federal Trade Commission guidelines, usin their own language, “raise a presumption of illegality.”

There has been plenty of nitpicking about who is a direct competitor. Netflix argues it’s everyone vs. YouTube, which has been echoed by Paramount more recently. However, we know that the Disney merger with 20th Century Fox quickly led to mass layoffs and less output, a massive loss for industry employment and entertainment consumers. Despite David Ellison’s promises that this merger will only grow both companies, we have ample reason to believe the opposite.

There’s also the question of CNN, of course, which his raised a great deal of partisan quibbling. Of course, the alleged side-deal with President Trump to rework CNN in his vision is horrid and should be investigated. Regardless of whatever slant the network may push with an Ellison aquisition, the bigger issue is the number of major media outlets that would be owned by a signle entity. The CNN issue, while important, is a distraction from the essential compontents here - antitrust law.

For those who need to revisit the primary sources, or read them for the first time, here they are.

Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

Here is a key piece of history that applies today, not only to the entertianment space but the tech world as well. We’re inching ever closer to monopolistic practices in Hollywood as this merger mania continues. After all, we can wonder if YouTube will swoop in and pick up the newly merger Warner/Paramount or one of these other conglomerates in a few years?

“Toward the end of the 19th century, trusts come to dominate a number of major industries, destroying competition. For example, on January 2, 1882, the Standard Oil Trust was formed. Attorney Samuel Dodd of Standard Oil first had the idea of a trust. A board of trustees was set up, and all the Standard properties were placed in its hands. Every stockholder received 20 trust certificates for each share of Standard Oil stock. All the profits of the component companies were sent to the nine trustees, who determined the dividends. The nine trustees elected the directors and officers of all the component companies. This allowed Standard Oil to function as a monopoly since the nine trustees ran all the component companies.”

Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)

The above is why the Clayton Antitrust Act was enacted a generation later because it became clear to see the workings of an aspiring monopoly in the making. Stopping them is much easier than dismantling them after the fact. Right now, the question is competition and any merger kills competition by empowering a small group of board members to control a sizeable portion of the industry.

“The Act supplemented and strengthened the Sherman Act of 1890, an existing antitrust bill that had failed to effectively regulate the massive corporations. The newly created Federal Trade Commission enforced the Clayton Antitrust Act and prevented unfair methods of competition. Aside from banning the practices of price discrimination and anti-competitive mergers, the new law also declared strikes, boycotts, and labor unions legal under federal law.”

There are teams of high-priced lawyers working tirelessly to twist these words into knots in order to prove that merging two major studios would be good for everyone. I’ve watched soulles state-level attorneys do the same thing in Wisconsin as they argued that university tenure could be severed for reasons other than those specified in state law. The lesson here is that the law often doesn’t matter, which is terrifying. That’s why the 1889 cartoon picture above is still on-point. The only thing that matters is who owns the those who interpret that law.

In addition, the last few years of major media and publishing mergers have made me curious to learn more about Teddy Roosevelt and the trust-busting era…(feel free to share reading recommendations!)

Also on my reading list is Amy Klobuchar’s book on the history of antitrust wars, which feels increasingly important reading today.

Update Monday July 20

A federal judge has issued an injunction citing merits of the Clayton Act. Here’s the judge’s quote as seen in The Hollywood Reporter.

“Because the Plaintiff States raise serious questions on the merits of their Clayton Act claim and because the balance of equities and public interest tip sharply in favor of the Plaintiff States, the Court ultimately finds the public interest favors their requested TRO to stay the merger in the interim,” Martínez-Olguín wrote in the order.

Brownshirts are storming US cities, murdering US citizens, while Trump administration supporters yell “comply or die” from the digital rooftops. People are disappearing, some criminals, others asylum seekers, and even more non-violent undocumented immigrants. Each of them guaranteed due-process by the 14th amendment of the US Constitution. We’ve often asked if fascism could take over the US and we’ve routinely felt that America is simply better and stronger than other countries where it’s happened before. That arrogance is fading fast. The reliably even-handed Jonathan Rauch has written in The Atlantic this week about Trump in simple terms: “yes, it’s fascism.”

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, yet not enough media outlets are making substantial note. Recent months have found reference to the Nuremberg Trials with many suggesting that a similar domestic tribunal will be in order following the past year’s reckless ICE activity in the United States. An interview with Gen-Z republicans by City Journal showed respect for Hitler and animosity for Jews.

The new film Nuremberg (2025), which was criminally shut out of the Oscars, is worth noting for bringing history to life in the present. Nuremberg focuses on the psychological struggle between U.S. Army psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) and imprisoned Nazi leader Hermann Goring (Russell Crow) after World War II. Assigned to determine whether Nazi officials are mentally fit to stand trial, Kelley finds himself drawn into a tense battle of wills with Goring, who uses charm, intimidation, and intellect to manipulate those around him.

The film argues that Goring and the other defendants are not insane monsters but rational men who knowingly chose evil, a realization that deeply unsettles Kelley and shapes the prosecution’s strategy at the Nuremberg Trials. Rather than emphasizing courtroom spectacle, the film centers on the disturbing idea that ordinary human psychology can coexist with extraordinary cruelty, leaving Kelley emotionally scarred by what he uncovers.

Based on Jack El-Hai’s 2014 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg is captivating and its history still very much alive in the present. Like any great work of historical adaptation, the film gives us enough to spark curiosity to learn more. Dramatic films about history often have to invent dialogue and condense the timeline, all part of artistic license. After watching Nuremberg, I wanted to know more about Douglas Kelley and his work, which wasn’t well received because he was showing how the rise of fascism could happen anywhere…even here.

The rising popularity of authoritarianism and fascism in the US and around the globe has sparked renewed interest in movies about Nazi Germany. Films like The Zone of Interest (2023) offer a glimpse into the life’s of those who stood by and “let it happen” while a film like Civil War (2024) provides and uncomfortably prescient take on what our future could look like.

The dialogue in Nuremberg feels very present because films are always informed by the surroundings of their creation. “He made us feel German again,” Goring told Kelley, “we can reclaim our former glory.” The story is ripe with contemporary parallels and the film ends with a prescient quote form historian RG Collingwood: “history is for human self-knowledge. The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.”

After the trial, Kelley penned a book titled 22 Cells in Nuremberg. It was poorly received because it offered a sobering reminder that the US is, in fact, was no better than Germany. Kelley simply argued that it can happen here.

Most damning is the concluding chapter that focuses solely on what his findings mean for the United States. “This [Nazi] political machine had been developed legally – even democratically,” wrote Kelley,” Once in power, however, it rolled like a juggernaut over the rights of the people.” Kelley was very clear in his observation that the Nazis he interviewed were painfully normal, showing how what happened in Germany could occur anywhere, even the United States: “The Hitlers and the Goerings, the Goebbels’ and all the rest of them were not special types.”

Writing in the late 1940s, Kelley was “convinced that there is little in America today which could prevent the establishment of a Nazi-like state.” Nazi officials were “strong, dominant, aggressive, egocentric” and similar people “can be found anywhere in the country [USA] – behind big desks deciding big affairs as businessmen, politicians, and racketeers.” They had “overwhelming ambition, low ethical standards, a strongly developed nationalism which justified anything done in the name of Germandom.”

While Kelley wasn’t received warmly, people should have remembered the rallies for America First in the 1930s and early 40s, the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, the rise of radio preacher and ardent racist Father Charles Coughlin, the renewal of the KKK via the Black Legion, German-American Bund camps that resembled Hitler youth camps. All of this was at the time recent memory.

After World War II, the US War Department pivoted from training and moral-building films to make educational films that helped the public make sense of what happened in Germany. One of them, aptly titled Don’t Be a Sucker, spoke directly about how citizens can be radicalized against “others” and how others follow along until it impacts them directly. The film features an important conversation where a man has his eyes opened by a Hungarian immigrant who saw the Nazis take Berlin. The lesson was that in order to take over a unified country, it must be broken down. The Hungarian man, now a US citizen, said the Nazis “used prejudice as a practical weapon to cripple the nation.”

After Germany was fractured, the “pure” Germans were propped up and boosted as stronger, smarter, and better without any evidence to support superiority. Impressionable people took the bait. “They gambled with other people’s liberty, and of course they lost their own” said the Hungarian immigrant, “A nation of suckers. Hitler needed these people.” Any institution (church, university, union) or group of people that could enact resistance, was attacked and dismantled.

Today, we watch universities threatened and some dismantled, witness skyrocketing xenophobia, and see media institutions bullied into genuflection. In recent weeks, non-violent protesters have been murdered in Minneapolis at the hands of ICE brownshirts. The protestors/observers were labeled domestic terrorists while video evidence countered every official White House talking point. The tide appears to be turning. Many wonder why it needed to get so bad before people woke up.

I’m reminded of a scene from an under-appreciated Civil War (2024), where a group of journalists find themselves getting grilled by an ICE-like citizen-turned-soldier. The journalists say they are Americans but the soldier responds by asking, “What kind of American are you?” Such questions presuppose a dangerous hierarchy that we see increasingly and relentlessly deployed in the United States. A country divided cannot stand, as history has taught us over and over again.

Human nature always runs the risk of falling into authoritarian traps, but, as Rauch pointed out in his column this week, just because Trump is a fascist in nature does not make us a fascist country. Conservatives have been breaking ranks with the King in increasing numbers. We have people and institutions that can serve as a bulwark against bullies. In the coming months and years we’ll see how strong we really are as a nation, if we’re really better than those who came before, or if Douglas Kelley was right, we may never become stronger than Nazi Germany unless “we, as a people, individually develop beyond our present emotional adolescence.”

“indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude. It’s a form of ingratitude,” argued historian David McCullough in 1995.

McCullough understood that history gives us a sense of proportion. It shows us how our lives compare to those lived before us. Context is always essential and is something in short supply within our algorithmically-controlled age of communication. As the Pulitzer-winning author of books such as John Adams, Truman, and 1776, McCullough’s passion for the past is contagious. It’s in his writing, of course, but also in his spoken word. Listening to his narration or lectures is endlessly captivating. A series of the author’s lectures and interviews has just been published as the aptly titled History Matters.

Speaking at the National Preservation Conference in 1991, McCullough described himself, “I am a short-range pessimist and long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.” When reading this it felt like I finally understood a piece of myself, and the world, for the first time. Many of my favorite historians are admirably measured in tone - something we should all strive for. I’ve asked myself why can I be so pessimistic and optimistic at the same time? McCullough outlined it perfectly. It’s easy to be frustrated with what’s in front of us, but when we see the larger picture - how we’ve gotten in and out of bad situations throughout history - it’s easier to have confidence that there is more good yet to come.

The author also instructs us to “Be generous. Give of yourselves. Count kindness as all-important in life. Take interest in those around you.” He knew that stories where everywhere, waiting to be unearthed. “Try to keep in mind that everyone you encounter along the way, no matter their background or station in life, knows something you don’t. Get in the habit of asking people about themselves, their lives, their interests, and listen to them. It’s amazing what you can learn by listening.”

Researching the past really is about listening. We cannot lecture back at the past, we can only observe. The best historians spend the time seeing what the archives show, sitting with the material, letting is wash over them. Some biographers like McCullough as well as Robert Caro famously spent great amounts of time where their subjects traveled and lived. Of course, only very few writers can afford such dedication, but it certainly adds a layer to your research when you can connect as directly as possible with the past. It would be difficult for me to have written my biography of the Warner brothers having not spent time in Los Angeles and on their studio lot.

McCullough famously gave up on a biography of Picasso, simply because the author didn’t like the subject. This is respectable in many ways, because we see a number of books seemingly hate-written by folks who want to trash their subject. McCullough likened writing a biography to that of “picking a roommate.” You’ll be spending a lot of time with this person, in a sense, so you should be at the very least intrigued by some piece of their life.

As McCullough has stated, “history is people.” That’s what motivated my own research, learning about the human reasoning behind consequential actions in the past. Why were the Warners intrigued by technology, drawn to socially-relevant stories, and unafraid to speak out adjacent fascism when other studios were silent? Also, was Jack Warner the tyrant his employees spoke of? Was Harry Warner the great, undervalued (today) leader my research showed? Why do we know so little about Albert? What else can we know about Sam besides his interest in sound films? Speaking with the relatives of the Warner family offered a great reminder that these historical figures were people like us and finding that grounding factor motivated me through the project.

What brings history to life is the human element and David McCullough was an expert in extracting humanity from the past. Anyone who has read his book on John Adams or watched the accompanying HBO series knows this first-hand.

Understanding history is also a duty that too many US citizens ignore. For example, we always hear about the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. How many of us have read the founding documents? I’ve only been a tourist in that period of history a few times, which is why I’ve recently made a point to read the material for myself. We have no shortage of expert guides ranging from Jill Lepore to Jon Meacham and many others. We shouldn’t trust the politicians to know the history they build upon, don’t take their word for it, read it for yourself.

History Matters is a concise and accessible reminder that the past is always present, there’s always more to learn, and we should never stop striving to make the world better.

“I still believe he is a little man, but I see that he is really a great demagogue,” said legendary Journalist Dorothy Thompson about Adolf Hitler in 1933.[i] Thompson didn’t take Hitler seriously because she could see through his fascist façade. Thompson serves as an essential historical benchmark for seeing through the fog in our current political turmoil.

As far back as 1931, Thompson publicly criticized Hitler. She wrote columns for Cosmopolitan Magazine, as well as a book. I Saw Hitler, a short critique of the fuhrer, is difficult to find today but one delicious quote can be found in William C. White’s 1932 New York Times column. “He is a little man,” wrote Thompson, “whose countenance is a caricature…a drummer boy risen too high.”[ii] Thompson explained how Hitler was giving hyperbolic and dangerous explanations for justified concerns. Thompson saw that the Fuhrer’s insecurities would drive his entire being. Germany remained in a post-World War I hangover and the solution was a charismatic and commanding leader to offered oversimplified explanations for the lowest common denominator – it was the communists, the Jews, and if we root them out all will be well.

Thompson was assigned to dual roles as the European Bureau Chief to multiple newspapers and in 1934 was kicked out of Germany for sinning against the king. The official crime was billed as “hostility to Germany” and justified “for reasons of national respect.”[iii] Criticism of Hitler was no longer tolerated. Thompson saw this march towards fascism and made such terrifyingly prophetic observations as "The classical end of all pure democracy is the popular tyrant.” As the New York Times noted in 1934, Hitler did away with any foreign press, such as The Times of London, who did not “fully regard Nazi doctrines as the height of political wisdom.”[iv]

Thompson’s response to her expulsion was clear to point out the impossible nature of finding the truth in a country “where there is a fast mechanism for the suppression of all except official information and where all criticism is interpreted as high treason.”[v] Even still, Thompson maintained a respect for the German people and for the country, keeping her criticism on the National Socialism brand that she found ill equipped for any kind of meaningful future. “My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all,” Thomson said, “that is a crime in the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a messiah sent of God to save the German people.” One can easily find similar rhetoric from Trump supporting Christians who think Trump’s hate-filled outbursts somehow align with Jesus’ teachings. Trump tested the waters of his base by posting a photo of himself as Pope just days after the progressive Pope Francis died.

Refusing to take Nazism seriously, at least on an intellectual level, allowed Thompson to keep her cool, which resulted in many years of insightful criticism. I Saw Hitler was officially banned in Germany by 1937, the same year that the Buchenwald concentration camp opened its gates. Thompson responded that the five-year delay “impressed her with the slowness of the German censors.”[vi] Germany increasingly cut its citizens off from outside information that was not state-approved. Meanwhile, Thompson served as an outspoken proponent of free journalism as the President of PEN (1936-1939).

Thompson was openly critical of President Roosevelt’s 1937-8 plan to pack the Supreme Court. Thompson’s husband Sinclair Lewis had penned the prescient It Can’t Happen Here in 1935, a book certainly influenced by what Thompson saw and reported in Germany. Thompson was testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee about the risk of slipping into dictatorship. She knew FDR, who she often supported, was trying to sway the Supreme Court into his favor, and he was, which would set a dangerous precedent. “Mr. Hitler took an oath to the Constitution of Weimar,” said Thompson, “he has just obliterated it by a series of decrees backed by a supine parliament.”[vii] The boot-licking parliament was kept in place for backing Hitler, naturally. Hitler “has just changed the rules under which it [the Weimar Constitution] meets and made race and sedition laws which have caused the expulsion and arrest of part of its membership,” Thompson continued, “the courts are all there in Germany, but they are packed.”[viii]

While Thompson may have underestimated Hitler at first, it didn’t take long for her to see the full threat of his extreme intentions. During a radio broadcast, Thompson warned that Germany is holding Jews “hostage,” and “we who are not Jews must speak, speak our sorrow and indignation and disgust in so many voices that they will be heard.” When Thompson’s book Let the Record Speak was released in September 1939, the New York Times critic Shepard Stone said could have been titled “I told you so.”[ix] By this time, isolationism in the United States gave way to the rise of Nazi front organizations like the German American Bund who hosted 20,000 Hitler supporters at Madison Square Garden in February 1939.

The “father of public relations” and author of the influential Propaganda (1928), Edward Bernays, was joined by Thompson at the Women’s Press Club in New York on February 24^th, 1940. The two influential writers agreed that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were dedicated to pushing for US isolationism, which should be noted as an attempt to deceive that American public for their own purposes. The conversation also mirrored today’s discussions regarding the difficult to find the facts as both authors recommended reading both conservative and liberal perspectives on any given issue of interest.

On New Years Day 1941, Thompson gave a radio address urging Germans to retain faith in democracy. The address was broadcast across the world in various languages. One of her most celebrated columns was published the same year by Harper’s called “Who Goes Nazi?” Her experience showed her who would become Nazis, either those born into hatred, others turned off by democracy, or easily duped fellow-travelers. The ability to see the path towards authoritarianism made it easier articulate criticism of the ideology. Thompson’s column in Harper’s is amusing in structure, as she lays out a game to play at your next gathering to decide who you know that may go Nazi. It’s a game we could, and maybe should, all play today. Thompson considered the types of people she’s met who often fell for fascism, she wrote:

“Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.”

What’s different today is that the “rich and scared speculator” can more easily influence “Bill from City College” to give authoritarianism a chance. The amount of digital disinformation today trounces the propaganda pamphlets and leaflets that floated around in the 1930s and 1940s. Even Depression Era radio Nazis like Father Charles Coughlin pale in comparison to the influence of someone like disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones whose delusional messages are consistently boosted on Elon Musk’s X platform. Trump plays today’s attention economy well, constantly flooding the zone with garbage, creating one massive distraction making it difficult to see through the mess. It takes work to learn how to dismiss even the most compelling misinformation, and once you start it’s easy to spot others who are doing the same.

With an increasing number of historians and columnists comparing our contemporary mores with the 1930s, we can look at Thompson’s documentation and response to the rise of authoritarianism as a guide to our present moment. Her experience is crucial to understanding how authoritarianism unfolds. Look for the signs – polarize the electorate, paint opposition as evil and unpatriotic, use patriotism to gain support until you have enough true believers that let you alter the fabric of the nation to your own vision.

Game over.

Reading Thompson’s work from the 1930s provides a mindset that serves as necessary fuel during the omnipresent grudge match in American Politics. Her fearlessness in the face of Hitler was more powerful because she quickly called it out for what it was – intellectually and emotionally shallow nonsense made to prop up the most insecure leaders to masquerade as supermen. More important was Thompson’s ability to quickly analyze what she saw with a strong sense of history, politics, and wit. As extremism and prejudice drastically increase in the United States, we can only hope US citizens will eventually see through today’s aspiring autocrats.

[i] “Hitler Power Seen in Middle Class,” New York Times, May 12, 133, 12.

[ii] White, William C., “Adolf Hitler, the Man, and His Program,” New York Times, March 6, 1932, BR5.

[iii] Birchall, Frederick T., “Dorothy Thompson Expelled by Reich for “Slur on Hitler,” New York Times, August 26, 1934, 1.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Book on Hitler Banned, New York Times, January 21, 1937, 13.

[vii] “Warns Packing Move Toward a Dictatorship: Dorothy Thompson Cites Germany’s Case,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 1, 1937, 6.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Stone, Shepard, “Dorothy Thompson Calls Turn,” New York Times, September 3, 1939, BR5.