I Wouldn’t Go Back to America

I Wouldn’t Go Back to America
Even If Jesus Christ Was President

Charlie Chaplin purposely wrote, acted, edited, and composed many musical scores of his films. He made The Great Dictator because he saw Hitler as a polar opposite. He said in 1940, “My reason for producing this film is that I believe the persecution of any minority is inhuman and unnatural. That belief is timeless and beyond change. The tone of the picture is, of course, anti-militaristic. Our ammunition is laughs, and our target the vanities of men who set themselves above other men.”

This is a colorized version of a scene in The Great Dictator.

Chaplin stood against Hitler's mindset of the Aryan race. The idea that a society can be divided by authoritarians into good people and the scum of the earth rattled Chaplin. Therefore, he was deterred from speaking out about Hitler.

In the late 1800s, Chaplin was born and grew up in the slums and squalor of London. He was able to persevere and emerge as an educated and talented person. Looking back on his early life, Chaplin said, “I have yet to know a poor man who has nostalgia for poverty.” Facing poverty made him understand the suffering of the less fortunate.

However, he was always haunted by the fact that he and Hitler were born in April 1889, only four days between their births. Perhaps that stigma motivated Chaplin to be radically different from Hitler.

It didn’t take long before Chaplin was seen by American movie companies as immensely talented. He started in New York but soon moved to California. For a while, America provided him with money and accolades. Nonetheless, some in America had issues with Chaplin.

It was J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, who hounded him and others in Hollywood for being communists. Hoover also spent a great deal of time wiretapping civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King. Additionally, he also pursued homosexuals, even though he was in a long-term sexual relationship with his assistant, Clyde Tolson. When Hoover died, all of his possessions were left to Tolson.

Finally, Chaplin was tired of Hoover. He left the States and went to Switzerland for the rest of his life.

I no longer have any use for America at all. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President. Yes, I feel bitter – very bitter. But remember that for 15 years I was hounded as a ‘communist’ and persecuted as if I were a criminal – and once faced 25 years in jail for ‘white slavery’ and whatever else they could throw in. I do not need the American market for my films. I will never allow any of my pictures which I control to be shown in America again. [America is] so terribly grim in spite of all the material prosperity. I’m not against materialism but look at what the American kind has done. They no longer know how to weep. Compassion and the old neighbourliness have gone. People stand by and do nothing when friends and neighbours are attacked, libelled and ruined. The worst thing is what it has done to the children. They are being taught to admire and emulate stoolpigeons, to betray and to hate – and all in a sickening atmosphere of religious hypocrisy.

That statement shocked many of Chaplin’s followers.

A dozen years ago, HBO aired The Newsroom. Jeff Daniels played the character Will McAvoy. He and Chaplin had the same thoughts about America.