Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra

A devastating explosion rips through a munitions plant in a small New Jersey town. And the American public is left with the chilling fact that the federal government had been warned about such an attack almost a year prior. The tip had come from a private spy ring operating in Los Angeles that was intent on doing what law enforcement had largely failed to do. Infiltrate far-right groups plotting violence across the country, and foi...

A paid agent of Hitler's government ramps up a targeted propaganda effort aimed at weakening democracy and supporting the fascist cause in America. His base of operations... the center of American democracy itself -- the United States Congress. Sitting members of Congress, and the America First movement, take part in an elaborate scheme to subvert democracy. Laundering millions of pieces of Nazi propaganda through Congress and into...

The walls begin to close in on members of Congress, and members of the America First movement, who are actively involved in a Nazi plot to spread misinformation and propaganda across the country. With a crusading newspaper reporter and a Justice Department prosecutor each peeling back the layers of the scheme, the members of Congress involved in the plot launch a desperate effort to shut down both the reporting and the federal inve...

The most high-profile sedition trial in American history kicks off inside a Washington, DC federal courtroom. The members of Congress who attempted to quash the investigation are now faced with a super-charged indictment and a brand new Justice Department prosecutor who is battle tested and up for the challenge. What he finds as the curtain rises on the trial, though, is something that he is wholly unprepared for: pre-planned, unmi...

The largest mass sedition trial in American history churns on. And continues descending into chaos. But the dozens of sedition defendants attempting to wreak havoc on the proceedings would soon get a high-profile assist. From serving members of Congress injecting themselves into the trial and coming to the defense of the accused seditionists standing trial. Before a verdict can be reached, one final twist calls into question whethe...

In the wake of the sedition trial's collapse, Justice Department prosecutor John Rogge travels overseas and uncovers a bombshell. He finds evidence of a coordinated effort to subvert American democracy… as well as the names of high-profile Americans involved. Rogge then returns to America... and goes rogue. Risking his career as a prosecutor, he makes public what he's discovered about the fascist threat and the Americans who suppor...

As a new authoritarian movement rises in American politics, stoked by one of the country’s most outrageous demagogues, there is an all-out international manhunt for an American traitor. The U.S. Army’s Nazi war crimes trials in Germany have been infiltrated by a spy -- a mole for the other side. A gruesome foreign influence operation unfolds in Washington. A blackmail plot turns deadly in the U.S. Senate. A Hail Mary scheme to stop...

The sudden and shocking suicide of a popular Democratic Senator, inside his Senate office, stuns the country and the nation’s capital. And soon, a series of bombshell revelations concerning the circumstances around the senator’s death will start to reveal a web of troubling forces at work on the American ultra right in the post-war 1950s.

This episode contains descriptions that reference self-harm. If you or someone you know is in c...

Elements of the American ultra right -- including the trailing ends of the America First movement -- begin taking up a strange new cause after the war... sympathy for Nazi war criminals. The surprising efforts to oppose the Nazi war crimes trials, and advocate for individual Nazis at home and abroad, will involve some of the most high-profile voices on the American right, and will jumpstart the career of one rising Republican star,...

As Sen. Joseph McCarthy's activities -- and his troubling connections to those on the ultra right -- are exposed in the press, Democratic Sen. Lester Hunt launches a final effort to take McCarthy on and rein in his abuses. In response, McCarthy and his allies launch a coordinated blackmail campaign against Hunt, using his own family, that will ultimately end in tragedy.
 

This episode contains descriptions that reference self-harm. I...

With Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy facing the most serious challenge of his political life -- a looming censure vote in the U.S. Senate -- McCarthy's most fervent supporters raise up an army to fight in his defense. The effort, which draws together mainstream Republicans and McCarthy's most radical followers on the ultra right, will involve threats of violence, harassment, and an armed show of force on the steps of the U.S. Capit...

With the backing of an eccentric billionaire and powerful voices on the American far-right, a high-stakes effort to make Sen. Joseph McCarthy president surfaces at the Republican convention, as the years-long manhunt for American fascist Francis Yockey finally reaches its strange and dramatic end. Francis Yockey and Joe McCarthy become martyr figures for an ascendant and aggressive ultra-right intent on reshaping American life and ...