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“The Danger of American Fascism,” Henry Wallace (1944)
Henry Wallace was FDR’s vice president from 1941-1945; conservative party leaders
defeated his re-nomination bid in 1944, replacing him on the Democratic ticket with
Harry S. Truman. Wallace would later unsuccessfully challenge Truman in the 1948
election.
According to Wallace, what is an American fascist, and what danger do they pose?
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 superpatriots, 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 invention 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
invidious distinction. 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.
(cbsd.org)
