“We need a fascist government in this country... to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America.” (Gerald MacGuire, Commander, Connecticut American Legion, 1934)
Fascism: A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism. (1983 American Heritage Dictionary)
A common theme among current Republican campaign ads and speeches is the call to save us from Communism and/or socialism. These terms are never clearly defined; we’re just supposed to be really scared.
To save us from Communism, today’s Republicans appear ready to implement a 90-year-old tactic: embracing fascism. In 1919, Benito Mussolini founded what became the National Fascist Party of Italy. On Oct. 31, 1922, he was appointed Prime Minister of Italy. In 1925, Mussolini ended Italian democracy and formed a dictatorship, with him in total control.
On Jan. 30, 1933, Adolph Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. On March 22, 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was opened outside Munich. Hitler built it to imprison those who disagreed with him, including journalists and teachers. However, since both countries were prospering economically, many people admired what these men were doing.
In the United States, a group of businessmen decided that a fascist form of government was necessary to keep America great. Gerald MacGuire, quoted above, had travelled to Italy to study Mussolini’s fascist government in person. He was impressed and wrote that the United States needed to implement this type of government, to save us from Communism.
To accomplish this, in 1933 a group of prominent American businessmen developed a plot to overthrow President Franklin Roosevelt. The goal was to impose fascism as our form of government; the plot came close to succeeding.
This attempt failed, thanks to General Smedley Butler, but the push towards fascism didn’t disappear. In 1936, William Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, wrote to Roosevelt: “A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.... A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies.”
Even American hero Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, got swept into this belief. He visited Germany in 1936 and was impressed with Germany’s industrial progress. He said, “Europe, and the entire world, is fortunate that a Nazi Germany lies, at present, between Communistic Russia and a demoralized France.”
He visited Germany again in 1938 and was awarded military honors. In September 1940, the “America First” Committee was formed in the U.S., opposing American involvement in World War II. Lindbergh spoke to this group on April 23, 1941, praising Hitler and emphasizing Lindbergh’s opposition to America doing anything to stop the Nazis.
Today, MacGuire and Lindbergh’s political heirs are continuing this tradition. American right-wingers continue to praise Putin of Russia, Erdogan of Turkey, and Orban of Hungary, dictators who imprison anyone who protests against them. They stifle the free press and pass laws to restrict elections to one-party rule. These dictators are continuing the traditions of Hitler and Mussolini, crushing American-style democracy.
Their American admirers are still working to overthrow the 2020 election, claiming it’s necessary to protect us from the “socialists.” They are willing to subvert the Constitution and impose a fascist form of government in order to “save” us.
They are passing laws undermining our First Amendment rights. They are banning books, firing teachers, censoring speech, criminalizing protests, and chipping away at voting rights.
Methodist minister Halford E. Luccock recognized this poison in a sermon on Sept. 11, 1938: “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.’”
Sadly, that spirit is still alive. Right-wingers are willing to give up fundamental rights to support a dictator who will keep them safe. The people of Italy and Germany made that choice and it ended tragically for the world. Let’s be very careful about the choices we make in the next election.
Jeanette Strong, whose column appears every other week, is a Nevada Press Association award-winning columnist. She may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.
