Knowing of What We Speak

Shortly after that fateful and tragic September day that changed America forever, I began noticing some very troubling signs. Renditions, detainees with no rights to a jury, wiretaps on the American people, the end of habeus corpus, to name a few. All of these and many more, instituted without question, or with little opposition, raised red flags for me and caused me no small amount of concern.

I'd seen this before. An attack on a nation, hysteria, the resulting nationalism, and the "sacrifice" of basic rights in a time of war. While government, industrialists and corporatists, and a powerful minority, consolidated ever more power.

As a child I'd spent many nights watching documentaries on the second world war with my father, who enjoyed anything historical. And we rarely missed any rare opportunity in those days before cable TV. I'd often curl up on the carpet in front of the television and see the images of war, Hitler, Mussolini, the Nazis, and fascism. And though my father never made a point to teach me exactly what those images meant, I absorbed enough over time to recognize characteristics and the signs of danger wherever they happened to appear.

In the days following 9-11, there were clearly similar signs. The power grabs by the executive branch, the attempts to silence and intimidate dissent, the extreme propaganda, and the nationalistic fervor which branded so many as unpatriotic (not to mention the creepiness of anything which begins with Homeland), were enough to make me believe we were at last making our own march towards fascism.

But I tend to be the type that doesn't "brand" anything unless I know what I'm talking about. So I began reading whatever I could get my hands on which might provide me with some insight into this evil known as fascism. I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer's definitive work on Hitler and Nazi Germany, along with works on Mussolini and Franco of Spain. I moved through Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism, Heywood Broun's The Fight, and John Strachey's The Menace of Fascism. I even read the speeches of the world's leaders of the time, including Franklin D. Roosevelt (as well as Mussolini and Hitler, themselves). These were all individuals who lived through the specter of the rise of fascism, and who likely knew it better than anyone. That was important, considering how many generations soon forget.

What I learned during that time justified my initial suspicions and concerns. We are indeed moving towards fascism. Whether it reaches fruition is largely left to us. But it's abundantly clear that the conditions for its arrival are in place.

Unfortunately, we tend to toss around the terms fascism, socialist, Nazi, and Hitler the way we would any derogatory term, with little understanding and simply as a means of "branding" something as evil. The danger which lies in this ignorance is, while we may be correct in the terms we use, we may be grossly misdirected in those we apply it to. (And often, it is those to whom it more aptly applies that are directing us to point the finger at everyone else.)

In my upcoming posts I'll be sharing what I have learned about fascism, and the reasons why I believe we are as near to it as we have ever been. And if I am wrong, I will rejoice. But if I am not, then we all need to learn to recognize it. And then to stop it.

In the meantime, here are some quotes which are as instructional as they are notable, from many who were there ... and know of what they speak:


Heywood Broun, The Fight, May, 1936 -

First of all we need a definition. Fascism is dictatorship from the extreme right, or to put it a little more closely into our local idiom, a government which is run by a small group of large industrialists and financial lords. Now one of the first steps which Fascism must take in any land in order to capture power is to disrupt and destroy the labor movement. It must rob trade unions of their power to use the strike as a weapon.


U.S. Army: Army Talk, Orientation Fact Sheet 64, March 24, 1945 -

Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze; nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy ... Points to stress are: (1) Fascism is more apt to come to power in time of economic crisis; (2) Fascism inevitably leads to war; (3) it can come in any country; (4) we can best combat it by making our democracy work.


Bertrand Russell, Freedom, 1940 -

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.


Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress proposing the Monopoly Investigation, 1938 -

Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.


Ernest Hemingway, Address to the American Writers Congress, 1937 -

There is only one form of government that cannot produce good writers, and that system is Fascism. For Fascism is a lie told by bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live or work under Fascism. Because Fascism is a lie, it is condemned to literary sterility. And when it is past, it will have no history, except the bloody history of murder.


Victor Margueritte, Oration, French Academy -

The fascists cannot argue, so they kill.


Harold Ickes, Address to the A.C.L.U., December 8, 1937 -

As a matter of fact, it is the fascist-minded men of America who are the real enemies of our institutions. They have solidarity, a common interest in seizing more power and greater riches for themselves, and ability and willingness to turn the concentrated wealth of America against the welfare of America. It is these men who, pretending they would save us from dreadful communism, would superimpose upon America an equally dreaded fascism.


John Lewis, AFL Convention, 1947 -

The Taft-Hartley Statute is the first ugly, savage thrust of fascism in America. It came into being through an alliance between industrialists and the Republican majority in Congress, aided and abetted by those Democratic legislators who still believe in the institution of human slavery.


And finally, and most ironically:


U.S. Army, Classes in Citizenship and War Issues, (issued during World War II) -

To gain the backing of powerful industrialists ... a form of society is offered which will protect their objective; disunity is created by playing political groups against each other, religious groups against each other, social and economic groups against each other. A confused and disunited people can offer no effective resistance to the seizure of power by this newly-merged oligarchy.