The Life and Times of Noam Chomsky: A Brief History of America's Leading Dissident
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/26/1936241&mode=thread&tid=25transcript:
http://www.democracynow.org/static/chomskymit.shtml<snip>
"In fact, the New Deal was called fascist in those days by many people without, you know, without any particular program. It was just one of the versions of this form of social and economic organization that was spreading over the world with some hideous parts like Hitler and some parts like Italy, which were actually approved.
Mussolini was quite popular in the United States over a broad spectrum, including labor. Roosevelt called him "that admirable Italian gentleman." As late as 1939, he was saying that fascism in Italy was an experiment that was worthwhile and had to be carried out, and distorted later by its association with Hitler, but -- in fact, the U.S. business community loved it. Investment in Italy just shot up after Mussolini took over, same after Hitler took over. In fact, if you look back at the records, which are now available, there was really never -- what's now called appeasement is a very misleading term. I mean, it was supported.
Hitler was described by the State Department into the late 1930s, 1937, as kind of a moderate standing between extremes of left and right you've heard this many times since --
who was protecting the West against the terrible threat of the working class and the Bolsheviks, and a possible revolution which might overturn the core of civilization, meaning capitalist civilization. So, appeasement is very strange. I mean, after Munich in 1938, Roosevelt's closest associate, Sumner Wells, reported back that it's a tremendous achievement. This is what destroyed Czechoslovakia, turned it over to Hitler. Great achievement. Now we have a chance for real peace in the world under the moderate Nazis who have programs that we can work with. It gets worse as -- this is from memory, it might be slightly wrong, but George Cannon, who was one of the leading post-war planners and very much on the humanist liberal side, he was American Consul in Berlin, I think until mid-1941, I think sending back pretty favorable reports that you shouldn't be too extreme in condemning the Nazis, and Italians, certainly not. I mean, in the early 1930s, I remember Fortune magazine, a main business magazine, had an issue with the cover saying something like "The wops are unwopping themselves." These backward dirty Italians are finally learning how to do something right. This was -- it was not -- I mean, I thought that -- I didn't know most of this, but I knew enough to see that there was no serious opposition to fascism, and it was, for me and people like me, it was a scandal."
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