Iowa Class War TV

“Damnation,” Netflix series created by Tony Tost, 2017-2018

Television is full of stupid fucking middle class people.  But not this show.  They may be starting a new Hollywood Black List after this series, though it was stopped after 1 season.  No surprise.  It is based on real history – a Farmer’s Holiday strike in Plymouth County, Iowa during the 1930s.  But in this case it is called Holden County.  That strike is only an inspiration, and not what fully transpires in this much more violent series.  There is even a bit of Robin Hood here. The villains are strike-breaking Pinkertons and Burns’ employees and the Black Legion, who mostly go around killing labor organizers.

Armed Farmers in "Damnation"

 A Pinkerton thug gives intelligent counsel to the businessmen opposed to the corn and milk farmers strike.  He suggests splitting the strikers by making a deal with the dairy farmers, while stiffing the corn farmers.  An illustration of ‘divide and conquer.’ The “Black Legion” – a northern version of the Ku Klux Klan, make violent appearances and become the main bulwark against a farmer’ strike for better prices.  They were real racist and anti-labor terrorists in the 1930s, who were involved in the burning of Malcom X’s father’s home in Michigan.  The famous song “Which Side Are You On?” is sung in this series, written during the Harlan County miner’s strikes.  Auto-worker organizing in Detroit is also a brief part of the story.  The actions of armed farmers to buy foreclosed farms for 1 cent is depicted, along with road blockades to enforce a harvest strike.  So is the reality of a ‘church’ that was formed to foment class war, based on a real church established by the Communist Party in Alabama, where the majority of CP members were black. In this series, the ‘preacher’ becomes a sort of Christian socialist with a revolver.  There is a reference to Thorstein Veblein’s ‘Theory of the Leisure Class” in a newspaper headline.  A ‘farm collective’ is formed.  Nothing on TV has ever been quite like this.

This is a form of ‘reckoning’ on the corrupt businessmen, bankers and fascists of ‘America.’  Even the electoral system comes in for shade. The emotional issues are manhood, a brutal father, subterranean love and brotherhood.  The plot is somewhat overly convoluted.

The Real Farmers' Holiday - a Strike!

It is transparent that this virtually revolutionary series also makes allusions to the present, with modern chants, words and situations. In a way, this is how veiled allusions are necessary in the context of cultural censorship and filtering in the U.S.  

In a continuing farce, the local paper in Holden County never mentions the farmer’s strike, but instead covers various trivial events.  The local reporter is a budding ‘novelist’ who follows his boss’s orders and does what he is told, but then is recruited to the other side by the most intelligent woman of all.  So the mainstream press comes off as similar to the present corporate press.  The local sheriff is behind an illegal speakeasy and brothel in town, and plays a somewhat neutral role, evidently hoping the two sides kill each other off.  But he has the misfortune’ of falling in love with a black singer and this changes everything for him due to his mixed child.  The local banker has called in the Pinkertons to help him cut the money paid for farmers’ produce, and then foreclosing on their farms for a hidden industrialist, who buys up land cheap for oil or industrial concerns.  The small businessmen in the farm town are not allies of the farmers, which is somewhat predictable.

You are waiting for unity between the businessmen, the Pinkertons, the Black Legion and the Sheriff, but as among workers, the capitalists also have divisions that are useful. But eventually most of this begins to happen.  Guns are plentiful on all sides, and this seems a bit over the top – at one point the astounding accuracy of the Pinkerton’s handgun, at another an unbelievable armed assault by the Black Legion.

The real issue is ‘Who is Tony Tost?” He’s the producer and originator of this series.  He’s a southern writer from a proletarian background.  His bio avoids any relation to left-wing politics, so for him this series seems mostly to be an ‘aesthetic’ choice – in line with some kind of ‘labor noir’ genre. But he’s definitely here on the right side of the class war.

As they say on this series, “Who Need Jesus Christ When You Have Henry Ford?”

Anyway, watch it if you can, on Netflix or on tvonline.cc.

Other series covered below: ‘Vikings,’ ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Golden Age of U.S. Television,’  ‘Fargo,’ ‘Treme,‘ ‘Bad Cops’  or use the terms ‘noir’ or ‘television.’

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