"Amerika"-14.5 hours of prime-time McCarthyism

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ABC's mini-series "Amerika" is the latest in succession of anti-communist films once again in Though cut from a more sophisticated cloth than "Rambo" or "Red Dawn," it is no less transparent in its reactionary message. Even Elliot Richardson, former attorney general and secretary of defense under Richard Nixon, called the series "xenophobic" and The premise of the series—a Soviet takeover of the United States through Soviet and East German advisers, plus troops from Central America, which now is "Greater Cuba"-is absurd. Its goal is to whip up jingoistic hysteria to justify the Star Wars buildup and U.S. intervention in Central America. After all, isn't But this devastation wasn't caused by the "Russkies," Reagan pushing his war budget precisely to avoid a as "Amerika" would like us to believe. It is the product of an irrational and outdated system of pro -The series is also designed to divert our attention from the great ills caused by capitalism-and to place the Much has been written and said about this series. blame for these injustices in the wrong place. The Some decry the portrayal of the United Nations troops as America of 1997 in ABC's series bears a striking Soviet "pawns." Others regret that this series is cutting resemblance to the America of 1987. There is high across the possibilities of "détente" with the Soviet unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction, homeless on the streets scrounging for food, and farmers who have What bothered me the most was the Cold War identification of socialism-of Lenin and the Russian Richard Wright's brilliant and intensive masterwork, "Native Son," is the most crucial literary indictment of racial and class oppression I have ever read. Now a movie The setting is Chicago during the Great Depression.

Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the novel, lives in a one-room, rat-infested tenement with his mother, sister, and brother. They are faced with the absurdity of having to eke out an existence on "relief" in the most technologically advanced country on the planet.

Bigger, in his own way, understands that he and his relatives are victims of institutionalized racism. It is all the more galling to him that he has to take a job as chauffeur to the Daltons, the family that owns the tenement the Thomas family lives in. Bigger feels his right to manhood has been usurped. Usurpation of a person's rights by those in power is a recurrent theme in Bigger's duties involve driving Mary Dalton, the dilettante communist daughter of the family, to a rendezvous with her communist lover. Mary gets drunk, and in the 1980s.

"McCarthyesque." "Soviet takeover" of the continent? gone bankrupt. has been made of the novel.

MOVIE REVIEW the book and film. a long vogue duction-capitalism. with Stalinist oppression. the socialist movement. people.