Brando Flirted with Fascism?

In Marlon Brando’s early years, he could have made the ideal Aryan superman. Brando was tall and handsome which would make him suitable for being the poster boy of an American Nazi movement. The reality is, however, that Brando has always taken up the liberal and civil right causes. In body he may have been Aryan but in mind is a completely different story. With Marlon Brando’s acting abilities, it’s apparent that he was a very emotive person who lacked the ideal stoicism for someone of his appearance. Brando was the great American “rebel” and new kind of man that Hollywood pushed. Marlon’s brilliant and suave performance in The Wild One made it cool to be a rebel and even cooler to do it with style.


Marlon Brando starred in the banal American World War II propaganda film The Young Lions. The highlight and only redeeming quality of the film is seeing Brando in a Nazi officer uniform. In the film, Brando carries a horrible German accent and his hair is bleached a peculiar blond. Marlon plays a tragic character in The Young Lions that starts out as an ambitious German peasant who wants to bring up his social status which National Socialism has promised him. Essentially, Marlon Brando is the “nice” Nazi who “sold his soul” to the evil Third Reich and pays for his mistake with his life in the end. The Young Lions even features an obviously Yiddish Jewish actor playing a Nazi concentration camp leader who brags about all the Jews that have been gassed.


Marlon Brando was disappointed with the arrogance of the writer of The Young Lions, Irwin Shaw. Brando felt annoyed by the fact that Shaw felt that all Germans were to blame for what came to be know as the Nazi holocaust. Marlon stated about Shaw book, “if you pick out a whole people and say, all the Germans are this, all the Jews do this, that’s exactly what Hitler did. If you start thinking and feeling in broad terms like that then it’s very dangerous, That was clear in Shaw’s book, in his bitterness and anger.” After making statements like this, Marlon Brando would be haunted with the typical slur of being labeled an “Anti-Semite” for the rest of his career. Brando never even knew what the purpose or the real meaning behind the word “Anti-Semite” was. Marlon Brando stated of Anti-Semitism, “Anti-Semitism? I used to have to ask people what that was. I didn’t understand the word, I could never figure it out. It’s still a problem to figure out."

Marlon Brando, Celia Adler, and Paul Muni in A Flag is Born

Knowing Marlon Brando’s track record with the Jewish community and his Civil Rights activism, it would be absurd to call Brando an “Anti-Semite.” Despite whatever things Marlon may have said in his life, his contribution to the Jews and other minority groups rights are tremendous. Brando helped raise money for the Israeli terrorist group Irgun Zvai Leummi by performing in a play called A Flag is Born by Ben Hecht. The profits from the play were used to buy arms and ammunition. Irgun would be responsible for the deaths of many Arabs and British soldiers. Marlon Brando also stated of his involvement with Irgun that, “We had to take six weeks’ course and learn about Israel and how it was formed, how it became a state, the Balfour Declaration and the presence of the British, the position of the Arabs.” For the Jewish community to label Marlon Brando, an early supporter of Israeli terrorism, an Anti-Semite is nothing more than an ungrateful stab in the back.

George Lincoln Rockwell

Marlon Brando was also known for his contribution to and mobilization of Civil Rights activists. In California in 1963, Brando led a small group of CORE marchers to protest for Civil Rights. Also present at the event were troops of George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party. One of the American storm troopers carried a sign that stated “Marlon Brando is a Nigger-Loving Creep.” It is a surprise that none of the American Nazi Party members carried a sign about Brando’s alleged homosexuality. Brando would later pay his respects to the American Nazi Party by portraying George Lincoln Rockwell in the television adaptation of Alex Haley’s book Roots.



Marlon Brando in Roots

Marlon Brando’s performance as George Lincoln Rockwell in Roots is strange to say the least. Brando portrays Rockwell as a slurring deranged racist who likes to hide in the shadows of swastikas. Brando acts nothing like the real Rockwell whose father was a vaudevillian comedian. Rockwell’s father “Doc” was friends with such vaudevillian Jewish performers as Benny Goodman, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, and the perverted propagandist Walter Winchell. George Lincoln Rockwell was more a gag comedian than he was a Nazi leader. As a joke and to discredit the holocaust, Rockwell once wrote a bunch of lies about Nazi medical experiments pretending to be an SS officer. He sent the article to the Jewish magazine Sir! and they published it even including stock holocaust death camp photographs. George Lincoln Rockwell also was known for his offensive cartoons of stereotypical Jews and Negroes. Despite inaccurately portraying George Lincoln Rockwell as a humorless psycho in Roots: The Next Generations, Brando won an Emmy for the performance for “Outstanding Supporting Actor.”


The same year he won the Emmy award for his performance in Roots: The Next Generations, Marlon Brando was once again labeled an “Anti-Semite” because of a Playboy Magazine article he did. In the article Marlon Brando stated, "You've seen every single race besmirched, but you never saw an [unfavorable] image of the kike because the Jews were ever so watchful for that—and rightly so. They never allowed it to be shown on screen. The Jews have done so much for the world that, I suppose, you get extra disappointed because they didn't pay attention to that." Almost twenty years later, in 1996 Marlon Brando’s thought on the Jews and Hollywood didn’t change. On Larry King live in April 1996 Brando stated, “"Hollywood is run by Jews; it is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue — of people who are suffering. Because they've exploited — we have seen the Nigger and Greaseball, we've seen the Chink, we've seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap, we have seen the wily Filipino, we've seen everything but we never saw the Kike. Because they knew perfectly well, that that is where you draw the wagons around." By now Brando should have known that without mentioning the Jews unless it’s in regard to their “suffering” or “achievements” is borderline “Anti-Semitism.”


Marlon Brando was easily one of America’s greatest acting sons and possibly an “Anti-Semite.” Brando was a rebel in the truest sense in that he sought to destroy whatever institution or group was dominant whether it be through protest or financial support. Marlon Brando is the perfect example of someone who has suffered from the irrational and childish slander technique of being labeled with stereotypical “Anti-Semite” canard. Brando was sure no fascist as he was a strange and peculiar individualist. Hollywood should be roman saluting his grave for all the help Brando gave them whether it be moneymaking, activism, or political subversion.

-Ty E