Hello, everyone. Will here with another of our periodic solo episodes. I've been on a bit of a

Charlie Chaplin kick lately. This isn't unusual. Chaplin is never too far from my thoughts,

but I seem to especially drift towards him in the months after U.S. presidential elections.

The last few cycles have ranged from disappointing to distressing,

and there's something about the eternal quality of Chaplin's films and the issues they raise

that I find grounding. Revisiting Chaplin feels especially urgent right now in the current wave

of Neil McCarthyism surrounding political protest in the

United States. Chaplin was arguably the highest profile and most outspoken casualty of the first

round of McCarthyism. Unlike many Hollywood figures with left-wing sympathies, Chaplin was never

blacklisted, mostly because there would be no point. Since the 1920s, he had self-funded all of his films,

which he released through the distribution company he co-founded United Artists. As his own producer,

Chaplin enjoyed extraordinary freedom to workshop and fine-tune his films for years,

and this unique position was sustained by

how enduringly popular he was around the world. He lived in Hollywood, but he was an industry unto

himself. Chaplin's wealth and much of his global fame survived the McCarthy years, but not his

popularity in the United States, where he became a pariah.

Today, with foreign-born political dissidents in America being detained and deported without

charge or due process, I've been thinking a lot about the events that led to Chaplin's expulsion

from the country in which he had built his fame and fortune.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business.

I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible.

Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.

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