{"id":197180,"date":"2025-10-02T13:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T13:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/197180\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T13:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T13:06:07","slug":"jane-fonda-revives-cold-war-era-activist-group-following-jimmy-kimmel-suspension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/197180\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Fonda revives Cold War-era activist group following Jimmy Kimmel suspension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drawing upon her personal and political past, Jane Fonda 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<\/a> 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\u2019s mission statement include Florence Pugh, Sean Penn, Billie Eilish, Pedro Pascal and hundreds of others.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s news comes in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s brief suspension<\/a> by ABC over his on-air comments after conservative activist Charlie Kirk\u2019s assassination. President Donald Trump was among those who had wanted Kimmel to be fired.<\/p>\n

Jane Fonda at The Wallis Delivers: A Benefit Evening to Support Wildfire Recovery held at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on April 30, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. Variety via Getty Images<\/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\u2019s 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

Jane Fonda with father Henry Fonda circa 1979 in New York City. Getty Images<\/p>\n

US actress Jane Fonda addresses an anti-war demonstration on the National Mall in Washington 27 January 2007. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Fondas each have had long<\/a> histories of activism, whether Jane Fonda\u2019s opposition to the Vietnam War or Henry Fonda\u2019s prominent support for Democratic Party candidates, including John F. Kennedy, for whom the elder Fonda appeared in a campaign ad 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 and Frank Sinatra. Although highly publicized at the time, the committee had a short and troubled history. <\/p>\n

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

Actress Jane Fonda at Bloomberg Green in Seattle, Washington, on Monday, July 14, 2025. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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By the following year, Bogart had published an essay in Photoplay magazine entitled \u201cI\u2019m 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 <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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":"Drawing upon her personal and political past, Jane Fonda has revived an activist group from the Cold War…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[17235,236,39642,88,24550,17114,194],"class_list":["post-197180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-activism","tag-celebrities","tag-cold-war","tag-entertainment","tag-jane-fonda","tag-jimmy-kimmel","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}