Another story from that same era that is also eerily accurate today.
This story ran in the New York Times in 1944.
Draw your own conclusions and compare Henry Wallace's analysis
to the situation we find ourselves in today.
http://truthout.org/docs_03/082103F.shtml___________________________________________________________________
The Danger of American Fascism
By Henry A. Wallace
The New York Times
From Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944),
edited by Russell Lord, p. 259.
Sunday 09 April 1944
On returning from my trip to the West in February, I received a
request from The New York Times to write a piece answering the
following questions:
What is a fascist?
How many fascists have we?
How dangerous are they?
A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an
intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes,
religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his
use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist,
to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a
class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture,
religion, or a political party.
The perfect type of fascist throughout recent centuries has been the
Prussian Junker, who developed such hatred for other races and such
allegiance to a military clique as to make him willing at all times to
engage in any degree of deceit and violence necessary to place his culture
and race astride the world. In every big nation of the world are at least
a few people who have the fascist temperament. Every Jew-baiter, every
Catholic hater, is a fascist at heart. The hoodlums who have been
desecrating churches, cathedrals and synagogues in some of our larger
cities are ripe material for fascist leadership.
The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and
in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous
as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other
people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists
are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI
has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants
to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a
Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence.
His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist
the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how
best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and
his group more money or more power.
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts
money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several
million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred
thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their
search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American
fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing
this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections
with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in
time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of
peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.
American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful
coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information,
and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.
The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious
postwar threat to us via Latin America. The effect of the war has been to
raise the cost of living in most Latin American countries much faster than
the wages of labor. The fascists in most Latin American countries tell
the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of
goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn
to speak and act like natives. Our chemical and other manufacturing concerns
are all too often ready to let the Germans have Latin American markets, provided
the American companies can work out an arrangement which will enable them to
charge high prices to the consumer inside the United States. Following this war,
technology will have reached such a point that it will be possible for Germans,
using South America as a base, to cause us much more difficulty in World War III
than they did in World War II. The military and landowning cliques in many
South American countries will find it attractive financially to work with
German fascist concerns as well as expedient from the standpoint of temporary
power politics.
Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States
will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.
Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to
democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and
the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the
laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American
fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts
before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after
"the present unpleasantness" ceases:
The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted
to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified
by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and
vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence
that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the
growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to
realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler
when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic
groups. Likewise, many people whose patriotism is their proudest boast
play Hitler's game by retailing distrust of our Allies and by giving currency
to snide suspicions without foundation in fact.
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion
of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure
of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity
to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism.
They cultivate hate and distrust of both Britain and Russia. They claim to be super-patriots,
but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.
They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.
Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political
power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously,
they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
Several leaders of industry in this country who have gained a new vision
of the meaning of opportunity through co-operation with government have
warned the public openly that there are some selfish groups in industry
who are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain
some temporary advantage. We all know the part that the cartels played in
bringing Hitler to power, and the rule the giant German trusts have played
in Nazi conquests. Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy
because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position
against small and energetic enterprise. In an effort to eliminate the possibility
of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.
It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates
dictatorship. What we must understand is that the industries, processes,
and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or
liberate. The choice is up to us. The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded
many people. It was Mussolini's vaunted claim that he "made the trains run on time."
In the end, however, he brought to the Italian people impoverishment and defeat.
It was Hitler's claim that he eliminated all unemployment in Germany.
Neither is there unemployment in a prison camp.
Democracy to crush fascism internally must demonstrate its capacity to
"make the trains run on time." It must develop the ability to keep people
fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human
beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and
not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or
industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels. As long as
scientific research and inventive ingenuity outran our ability to devise
social mechanisms to raise the living standards of the people, we may expect
the liberal potential of the United States to increase. If this liberal
potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the
United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social i
nvention in the service of the welfare of all the people.
The worldwide, agelong struggle between fascism and democracy will not
stop when the fighting ends in Germany and Japan. Democracy can win the
peace only if it does two things:
Speeds up the rate of political and economic inventions so that both
production and, especially, distribution can match in their power and
practical effect on the daily life of the common man the immense and growing
volume of scientific research, mechanical invention and management technique.
Vivifies with the greatest intensity the spiritual processes which are both
the foundation and the very essence of democracy.
The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international
relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny.
This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to
the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to
teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy. Until democracy in
effective enthusiastic action fills the vacuum created by the power of modern
inventions, we may expect the fascists to increase in power after the war
both in the United States and in the world.
Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon
imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists
are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for
their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.
It should also be evident that exhibitions of the native brand of fascism
are not confined to any single section, class or religion. Happily, it can be
said that as yet fascism has not captured a predominant place in the outlook
of any American section, class or religion. It may be encountered in Wall
Street, Main Street or Tobacco Road. Some even suspect that they can detect
incipient traces of it along the Potomac. It is an infectious disease, and
we must all be on our guard against intolerance, bigotry and the pretension
of invidiousdistinction. But if we put our trust in the common sense of
common men and "with malice toward none and charity for all" go forward
on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy
a practical reality, we shall not fail.
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