Henry A Wallace on the danger of American fascism

[ashling]

http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm

an excerpt from a New York Times piece April 9, 1944

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 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.

***

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.

***

[tk2kewl]

1. Dangerous as these people may be,

Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned.

[RufusTFirefly]

2. Henry Wallace is one of this country's unsung heroes

He's definitely one of mine.




It would be hyperbole to liken him to Benjamin Franklin, but in certain respects he was almost as versatile and visionary.

[Jenny_92808]

3. Fits Trump to a tee

"...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"

[Jenny_92808]

4. K & R

Thank you Ashling for posting this. We need to learn from history.