This movie couldn't be more salient and relevant to our times. The "John Doe Clubs" had the appearance of embodying the disgruntled sentiments of the "Little Man", just like the "Tea Party Movement" today (which one quipster rightly has called "an exercise in mass false consciousness"). These movements of the "little man" have a long history in the US and Europe (in the US, the "Know-Nothings" of the 1850s & Father Coughlin of the 1930s, in France, the "Poujadistes", in Italy the "Qualunquisti"); and all of them end up diverting attention away from the real enemies of little people, the fat cats at the top--in Capra's movie wonderfully incarnated in Edward Arnold's character, D.B.Norton (the real-life counterparts today to D.B. Norton, and who've done a fab job of manipulating "the little people", are the Koch brothers). Capra rightly sensed that the little man's rage at being buffeted about by forces bigger than himself was exploited by the fascist movements of Europe to create right-wing mass parties which, in the end, served to protect the privileges of the wealthiest social classes from revolutionary egalitarian movements.
Review of Meet John Doe
