AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to the Oscar-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda relaunching her father’s free speech organization, Committee for the First Amendment, which Henry Fonda established in 1947 to combat the rise of McCarthyism.

In a statement, the committee said, quote, “The federal government is once again engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry. We refuse to stand by and let that happen,” unquote.

Before Jane joins us, I want to turn to part of a radio program produced by the original Committee for the First Amendment for ABC in 1947. This is singer and actress Judy Garland.

JUDY GARLAND: This is Judy Garland. Have you been to a movie this week? You’re going to a movie tonight and maybe tomorrow? Look around the room. Are there any newspapers lying on the floor, any magazines on your table, any books on your shelves? It’s always been your right to read or see anything you wanted to.

But now it seems to be getting kind of complicated. For the past week in Washington, the House Committee on Un-American Activities has been investigating the film industry. Now, I have never been a member of any political organization, but I’ve been following this investigation, and I don’t like it. There are a lot of stars here to speak to you. We’re show business, yes, but we’re also American citizens. It’s one thing if someone says we’re not good actors. That hurts, but we can take that. It’s something else again to say we’re not good Americans. We resent that!

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Judy Garland, who, together with Henry Fonda, helped to establish the Committee for the First Amendment, established by Henry Fonda in 1947 to combat the rise of McCarthyism.

Jane, it’s great to have you back on Democracy Now! You’re relaunching your father’s organization. Why now? And how do you think what we’re going through now compares to what your father went through?

JANE FONDA: Well, you know, people who have expertise in authoritarianism have expressed —

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JANE FONDA: What?

Anyway, as I was saying, people who have expertise in authoritarianism — well, that clip, that sound made me cry — have said that they are really, really concerned about what they see as one of the most rapid, aggressive seizures of power in an industrial democracy. I mean, this is — authoritarians, I’m learning, take about 18 to 22 months to consolidate power. This administration is moving fast, which means we have to move fast. We have to do everything we can to stop what’s happening, before it becomes the norm, before it becomes institutionalized.

And, you know, a lot of sectors of our society are being attacked. But as my father and Judy Garland and scores of other major stars in the '50s knew, freedom is in our bones. Freedom of speech is essential to creatives, to storytellers, as we are. And we're going to fight. And we’re going to show — we have the capacity, because we’re so creative, to come up with CNN, creative nonviolent noncooperation — I guess, resistance — and model that for the rest of the country.

This is a time — you know, when I accepted my Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, I said, “We all watch documentaries of, you know, like, the lunch counter sit-ins in Mississippi and Tennessee, and people being beaten, dogs attacking them, etc., and wondered, 'Would I have been as brave?'” This is our documentary moment right now. We don’t have to ask ourselves anymore: Are we going to be brave enough to stand up? Because the only thing that can stop this is this massive movement of people, nonviolent and unified. And that’s what we’re trying to encourage and inspire.

And we’re starting with a — well, we’re doing it within the entertainment industry, and hopefully it will be inspiring.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to — 

JANE FONDA: Let me [inaudible] this, Amy. You know, I think we had about 550 people signed on when we launched yesterday. Within hours, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds more people from the industry were signing on. It’s exciting and makes me really hopeful.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to May, when we interviewed the esteemed historian, a historian on McCarthyism, Ellen Schrecker, and I asked her about the piece she wrote in The Nation headlined “Worse Than McCarthyism: Universities in the Age of Trump.”

ELLEN SCHRECKER: The main thing that happened then to universities was that about a hundred faculty members, most of them with tenure, were fired and blacklisted. That happened in every major institution of civil society within the United States. And although the universities pride themselves on academic freedom — whatever that means — they collaborated with the forces of repression through — that were actively imposing a climate of fear and self-censorship throughout American society.

Today, what’s happening is worse, so much worse that we have to really find a new phrase for it. I don’t know what it’ll be. But during the McCarthy period, it was attacking only individual professors and only about their sort of extracurricular political activities on the left, in the past and in the present, then present. Today, the repression that’s coming out of Washington, D.C., it attacks everything that happens on American campuses.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was professor Ellen Schrecker, the historian. She’s talking about campuses. What happened with your father in Hollywood? Can you talk about the blacklisting of the writers, of the actors, of the playwrights, of what happened to Hollywood during McCarthy, and why you think this is worse now?

JANE FONDA: Well, back then, anybody that had joined any kind of organization was accused of being a communist, was fired from their work. A number of them went to jail, destroyed careers. That’s what my dad and so many others were protesting against. You know, I think that the woman expressed very well: That was individual people that were being attacked and put in jail. We’re seeing this happening now all across the country en masse. We can’t allow this to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: So, from McCarthy, I wanted to turn to the Nixon tape, September ’71, when he mentions you and your dad.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: What in the world is the matter with Jane Fonda? I feel — I feel so sorry for Henry Fonda, who’s a nice man. Yeah, yeah, well, she really is. She’s a — she’s a great actress, and she looks pretty. But, boy, she’s often on the wrong track.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was President Nixon. This is your dad, Henry Fonda, accepting the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1978, when he kind of answers Richard Nixon.

HENRY FONDA: In the years since my dad has left us, I’ve done some things I know that he wouldn’t have approved. I hope I’ve done some that he would have — would defend. I know he’d bust his buttons tonight. He never met my children, but I know he’d be proud. I can hear dad answering somebody criticizing Jane: “Shut up. She’s perfect.”

AMY GOODMAN: “Shut up. She’s perfect,” Henry Fonda said. Jane, people who are listening on the radio can’t see you beginning to cry. But the significance of what your dad said and the faith he had in you?

JANE FONDA: It moves me very much, yeah. What can I say?

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you about Jimmy Kimmel, an emotional Jimmy Kimmel who returned to the airwaves after ABC indefinitely suspended his show following the Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke the broadcast license of affiliates over comments Kimmel made. In his monologue, Kimmel spoke about how foreign comedians look to the United States.

JIMMY KIMMEL: They know how lucky we are here. Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country. And that’s something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American, and it is so dangerous.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was all turned around. Sinclair Broadcasting and Nexstar owned many affiliates. They refused to put him back on the air even when Walt Disney’s ABC did. But then, because of tremendous pushback, which is why Walt Disney did also, Jimmy Kimmel is back. And he was referring to his friend Stephen, of course, who’s Stephen Colbert. He is being let go in May.

JANE FONDA: What’s important to know is that 1.7 million Americans canceled their subscription to Disney. That’s where it matters. That is called noncooperation. And when it hits them in their pocketbooks, this is when it really matters. You know, when Trump was first elected and he issued a Muslim ban, Sara Nelson, the brave head of the flight attendants’ union, she called for a general strike. It’s one of the main things that got — that got the Muslim ban stopped, would have brought air transportation in the country to a halt. When we hit them in their pocketbooks, when we — like with the lunch counter sit-ins in the South during the civil rights movement, it hurt business in downtowns in the South so badly that it was the businesspeople that then pressured elected — local and state elected officials to lift the ban and open up the lunch counters to all people.

That’s what we have to do. And we’re going to do it. I feel very confident. We have never experienced this in this country ever, not in the '20s and ’30s when the U.S. flirted with fascism, not what they did to the Panthers, the violence that was meted down on the Panthers, and not what happened in the ’50s. This is different. And I don't think we’re going to take it sitting down. We have to be informed, and we have to be united. Strength in numbers. You know, the ethos, “every person for himself,” we’re not going to survive as a democracy if we operate that way. We have to unify across sectors. You know, this regime is held up by pillars, military, media, professions and so forth. If each pillar organizes to remove support, we can do it. And we have to do it fast.

AMY GOODMAN: Jane Fonda, we have to leave it there. I want to thank you for being with us, the Oscar-winning actress and activist, also climate activist, now at 87 years old relaunching her father’s free speech organization, Committee for the First Amendment, which Henry Fonda established in 1947 to combat McCarthyism.