{"id":272180,"date":"2025-10-02T15:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T15:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/272180\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T15:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T15:26:09","slug":"jane-fonda-revives-cold-war-era-activist-group-to-defend-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/272180\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Fonda revives Cold War-era activist group to defend free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK — Drawing upon her personal and political past, Jane Fonda<\/a> has revived an activist group from the Cold War era that was backed by her father and fellow Oscar winner, Henry Fonda.<\/p>\n

Jane Fonda announced she had launched a 21st century incarnation of the Committee for the First Amendment, originally formed in 1947 in response to Congressional hearings aimed against screenwriters and directors \u2014 notably the so-called \u201cHollywood Ten\u201d \u2014 and their alleged Communist ties. Signers of the new organization’s mission statement include Florence Pugh<\/a>, Sean Penn,<\/a>Billie Eilish<\/a>, Pedro Pascal<\/a> and hundreds of others.<\/p>\n

Wednesday’s news comes in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s<\/a> brief suspension by ABC over his on-air comments after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s<\/a> assassination. President Donald Trump<\/a> was among those who had wanted Kimmel to be fired.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d the committee’s mission statement reads in part.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe refuse to stand by and let that happen. Free speech and free expression are the inalienable rights of every American of all backgrounds and political beliefs \u2014 no matter how liberal or conservative you may be. The ability to criticize, question, protest, and even mock those in power is foundational to what America has always aspired to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fondas each have had long histories of activism, whether Jane Fonda’s opposition to the Vietnam War or Henry Fonda’s prominent support for Democratic Party candidates, including John F. Kennedy, for whom the elder Fonda appeared in a campaign ad<\/a> in 1960.<\/p>\n

Henry Fonda, who died in 1982, joined the 1947 First Amendment committee along with such actors and filmmakers as Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, Lucille Ball<\/a> and Frank Sinatra<\/a>. Although highly publicized at the time, the committee had a short and troubled history. Bogart and others would find themselves accused of Communist sympathies and would express surprise when a handful of the Hollywood Ten, including screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, turned to have been Communist Party members at one time or another.<\/p>\n

By the following year, Bogart had published an essay in Photoplay magazine entitled \u201cI’m No Communist,\u201d in which he confided that \u201cactors and actresses always go overboard about things\u201d and warned against being \u201cused as dupes by Commie organizations.\u201d Trumbo and others in the Hollywood Ten would be jailed for refusing to cooperate with Congress and found themselves among many to be blacklisted through the end of the 1950s and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — Drawing upon her personal and political past, Jane Fonda has revived an activist group from…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":272181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[141245,347,411,413,171,57,118,23515,80,61,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-272180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-141245","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-censorship","11":"tag-civil-rights","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-human-rights","15":"tag-journalism","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-u-s-news","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115305276084459995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}