This Week in People’s History, Oct 15–21, 2025
Charlie Chaplin’s Timeless Attack on Dictatorship
OCTOBER 15 IS THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY of the 1940 premiere of “The Great Dictator,” written, directed, produced and starring Charlie Chaplin. It has always been a film for the ages, but at this moment, when the occupant of the White House makes no bones about his admiration for dictators, Chaplin’s moving defense of democracy and his searing satirization of fascist posturing is amazingly up-to-date.
Chaplin decided to make a feature film lampooning fascism after seeing Leni Riefenstahl’s powerful 1935 pro-Nazi epic, “Triumph of the Will.” Chaplin decided it was essential to produce a similarly powerful cinematic defense of democracy, and devoted himself to the project for more than three years. It premiered more than a year after the beginning of World War 2 and six months after German troops occupied western Europe. For an examination of the importance of “The Great Dictator” and reflection on its place in Chaplin’s career, visit https://portside.org/2014-04-19/charlie-chaplins-legacy-looms-large-he-would-have-been-125-april-16
The still image, showing Chaplin’s spot-on impersonation of the Hitleresque “Adenoid Hynkel,” which is full of touches like his uniform’s stained crotch and shirtfront.
U.S. Anti-War Rally Was Record-Big, but Not for Long
OCTOBER 16 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of the First International Days of Protest Against American Military Intervention. Three days of events in 1965 were coordinated by the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam and by the Vietnam Day Committee. More than 100,000 people joined protests throughout North America, Europe and Japan.
As the New York City-based weekly National Guardian reported under the headline “Vietnam war now a national debate” the protests brought “almost 90,000 people in at least 93 American cities into the streets to demonstrate their opposition to U.S. policy in Vietnam.”
The largest demonstrations took place in Manhattan, where some 30 thousand people marched down Fifth Avenue, and in Berkeley, California, where 14 thousand attempted to march from the University of California to the Oakland Army Base, but were prevented from crossing into Oakland by hundreds of police massed at the city line.
Calling the Manhattan event the “biggest anti-war rally ever in the U.S.,” the National Guardian also devoted a full page to listing demonstrations in 37 locations in 21 U.S. states, adding that it lacked space to list at least 40 more. In addition, demonstrations against U.S. policy took place in Toronto, Mexico City, London, Dublin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Rome and Tokyo. https://depts.washington.edu/moves/antiwar_map_protests.shtml
Revolutionary Stirrings in Manhattan
OCTOBER 19 IS THE 260TH ANNIVERSARY of the adoption of the Declaration of Rights and Grievances by the Stamp Act Congress, an extra-legal 1765 convention in New York City of 27 delegates representing nine of the 13 colonies. Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia did not send delegates. The congress was the first such meeting of colonial delegates since 1754.
According the the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, colonists had the right to trial by jury, Parliament could not rule the colonists unless the colonists had the right to elect members of Parliament, there should be no taxation without representation in Parliament, and only colonial assemblies had a right to tax the colonies.
Even though Parliament rejected the assertions in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, only six months later it repealed the taxes that the colonists objected to, while at the same time asserting it had the right to impose new taxes in the future. https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/stamp-act-congress
Permission to Come Aboard, Who Needs It?
OCTOBER 20 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of a 1960 confrontation between a dozen members of the Committee for Non-Violent Action and the crews of two nuclear submarines moored in the Thames River at the U.S. Navy’s New London submarine base.
When the CNVA members paddled across the river from downtown New London in broad daylight, three of them were able to manifest their strong opposition to nuclear-missile armed submarines by jumping from their boats and hauling themselves aboard two of the subs, the USS George Washington and the USS Patrick Henry.
The surprised crew of the submarines’ harbor watches eventually used fire hoses to force the demonstrators back into the water, leaving them free to return to where they started, dry off, and celebrate their success. The damage to the Navy’s dignity and its reputation for tight security took longer to be restored. https://web.archive.org/web/20061206035450/http://www.ajmuste.org/ajmbio.htm
Is the C.I.A. Is a Law Unto Itself?
OCTOBER 21 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of shocking 1975 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee by former CIA Director Richard Helms. He revealed that the CIA had illegally opened and read at least 215 thousand letters destined for addresses in the Soviet Union in a secret program that started in 1953 and was alleged to have ended in 1973.
In addition to the Soviet-bound letters that had been opened and read, the envelopes of another 27 million letters had been photographed, also illegally.
Helms told the committee that he was not aware of any legal authorization for the mail interception, but he “assumed” that at least one of the men who had preceded him as CIA director had received authorization from a President or an Attorney-General.
Helms also testified that when he had signed a statement in 1970 informing President Richard Nixon that the mail opening program had been ended, he had been referring – without saying so – to an FBI program, and that the CIA program continued until 1973. He added that if he had misled Nixon with his 1970 statement, he had not intended to do so. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
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