The great Henry Wallace predicts America's corporate fascist future ~ 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 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.
