The film Oppenheimer begins with a mention of Prometheus, the Greek god who is cursed by Zeus for not abiding by the law, stealing fire and giving it to humans in the form of knowledge.

Oppenheimer is portrayed as a present-day Prometheus who is applauded for using his knowledge of particle physics to produce an atomic bomb to save the world from fascism and is targeted by McCarthyism for standing up against the creation of the hydrogen bomb. The Irish actor Cillian Murphy, who portrays Oppenheimer, handles a range of emotions—despair, self-doubt, arrogance, anger, ecstasy, fear, guilt—with ease.

Oppenheimer was radicalised by his association with Jean Tatlock and helped to raise funds for the Spanish Civil War and anti-fascist struggles. He is asked, after the Manhattan Project, “What will you do with Los Alamos?” With guilt he answers, “Give it back to the Indians.”

It’s not surprising for a scientist, whose job is to find solutions to problems, to find socialism as a solution to the misery (in spite of abundance) of capitalist society. Oppenheimer was never a Communist Party member but was a victim of the anti-communist propaganda of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Cold War. Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Langston Hughes (poet) and Linus Pauling (Nobel prizewinner) were victims of anti-communist hysteria. The motive of McCarthyism was to keep people away from alternative politics and to strangle the trade union movement so that the working class could be freely exploited by capitalists.

The creation of internal enemies was essential to the creation of a fear psychosis among people to keep them away from communism. Trade union leaders and socialists were branded security threats to the United States.

The film exposes how communism was stigmatised during the Cold War years, the hypocrisy of US democracy during the McCarthy era, and the kick-starting of the nuclear arms race after the Second World War.

Pandora’s box was opened, and the world would never be the same.

Editor: Zhong Yao、Deng Panyi

From: https://socialistvoice.ie/2023/08/prometheus-and-the-fire/（2023-8-6）