Jane Fonda’s New Committee is Hanoi-ing
Hollywood Once Fought Blacklists — Now It’s Creating Them
When Jane Fonda announced she was relaunching the Committee for the First Amendment, I knew this was going to be annoying. Inspired by her father, Henry Fonda, who spearheaded a free speech initiative in response to McCarthyism, she’s borrowing her daddy’s gravitas in the hopes of summoning the weight of 1947, when liberal actors and writers banded together to oppose the House Un-American Activities Committee. Back then, the government was dragging people into hearings, demanding they “name names,” and destroying careers. Henry Fonda’s Committee stood against blacklists, against silencing, against fear itself.
Fast forward to Jane’s Un-American Lite version: you can’t compare apples to prunes. No, we’re not “here again,” Jane. To invoke Henry’s heroic stand—the one that helped Hollywood salvage its reputation against Joe McCarthy’s obsession with communists—is shameful. What we have now is the opposite. Hollywood is proving to be feckless when it comes to defending certain people’s inalienable rights.
Case in point: last week, more than 5,000 Hollywood creatives signed a boycott against Israel—let’s call it what it is, a new blacklist, a Jew List—targeting Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers and Israel’s creative industries. You can’t claim to defend the First Amendment while stifling the rights of people in your own industry. Goose—Gander—Hello! The people being targeted are literally building the only shared cultural spaces in the Middle East, fostering cooperation across the divide. Yet they’re the ones being shamed and put at risk.
The original Committee had guts. In the thick of the Red Scare, celebrities risked their livelihoods to stand against government overreach. Whether or not you agreed with the accused, the principle was clear: the First Amendment belongs to everyone.
Compare that to today’s revival. Relaunched as a reaction to the Trump Administration, it’s not about defending unpopular voices—it’s about amplifying grievances. They rail against “censorship” when it hits their allies, but when dissenting views—especially Jewish and many Christian voices after October 7—are drowned out or attacked, their silence is deafening.
[SIDEBAR] On the very same day Jane and her comrades opened fire at the Trump Administration, the Brandeis Center warned Hollywood that participating in this “Hollywood Blacklist” would be blatantly illegal, in violation of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1964, and state laws in California and New York. In other words, this isn’t just immoral. It’s unlawful.
Now, the targets aren’t Communists accused of being anti-American. They’re Jews. And not just any Jews, but those working in industries that already model coexistence. Worse still, the crossover between the Jew List signatories and this new Free Speech Megillah makes the whole thing unbearably ironic.
Many of these Hollywood types are marching in lockstep with Hamas—Islamists who openly scream “Globalize the Intifada,” which, to be clear, means “Death to America.” Make this make sense!
If the relaunch were truly about defending free expression, its members would be standing up for the very artists they’ve chosen to demonize. Instead, it takes civil rights lawyers to remind Hollywood it’s against the law.
You don’t get to cosplay 1947 bravery while ignoring the blacklists of 2025. You don’t get to wrap yourself in the First Amendment while tolerating intimidation campaigns against Jews. Back then, Hollywood’s defenders risked everything to say: this is wrong, even if I disagree with you. Today, they say: this is wrong, but only when it hurts us. That isn’t defense of free speech. That’s brand management.
So, Hanoi Jane if you’re going to relaunch the Committee, prove it’s more than a sad attempt to rage against the machine to prove Hollywood still matters. It doesn’t—if all you’re really saying is: “Free speech for me, but not for thee.”
Peace….literally and figuratively…ABE
Brilliant as always!
Abe-men!