www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-15.htm
org The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here" by Thom Hartmann The Republican National Committee has recently removed from the top-level pages of their website an advertisement interspersing Hitler's face wit h those of John Kerry and other prominent Democrats. This little-heralde d step has freed former Enron lobbyist and current RNC chairman Ed Gille spie to resume his attacks on Americans who believe some provisions of B ush's PATRIOT Act, his detention of American citizens without charges, h is willingness to let corporations write legislation, and the so-called "Free Speech Zones" around his public appearances are all steps on the r oad to American fascism. The RNC's feeble attempt to equate Hitler and Democrats was short-lived, but it brings to mind the first American Vice President to point out the "American fascists" among us. Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D Roosev elt's Vice President when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman Presiden t), Roosevelt had two previous Vice Presidents - John N Garner (1933-19 41) and Henry A Wallace (1941-1945). In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The N ew York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axi s powers of Germany and Japan. "The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those w ho are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to d o in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. H is method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascis t the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but h ow best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist an d his group more money or more power." In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" - the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented t he word. In a 1923 pamphlet ti tled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People - instead, it would be a government of, by, and f or the most powerful corporate interests in the nation. In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when h e dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the "Camera dei Fasci e dell e Corporazioni" - the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their mon ey to folks like Tom DeLay and covertly write legislation, they were ope nly in charge of the government. Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his con cern about the same happening here in America: " If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts m oney and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly severa l million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hun dred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. They a re patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, b ut in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead." Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who had run for political office, and, in Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate ca rtels. " Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest th at fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the w ar" and will manifest "within the United States itself." In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative sou thern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show ho st portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American. When Windrip becomes President, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention c enter, and the viewpoint character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution under new "patriot ic" laws that make it illegal to criticize the President.
An d, President "Windrip's partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or , familiarly, the 'Corpos,' which nickname was generally used." Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous b y 1944, as was his book "It Can't Happen Here." And several well-known a nd powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in t he early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing busi ness with Hitler. These events all, no doubt, colored Vice President Wal lace's thinking when he wrote: " Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service t o democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to ev ade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extorti on. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with the ir German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to re sume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases."
com) notes, fascism/corporatism is "an atte mpt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state." Feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyr annies (kingdoms, theocracies, feudalism) that ruled nations prior to th e rise of American republican democracy, and can be roughly defined as " rule by the rich." Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Tho mas Frank, who notes in his new book "What's The Matter With Kansas" tha t, "You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in midd le America - 'going out of business' signs side by side with placards su pporting George W Bush." The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, u sually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Walla ce wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage."
In an effort to eliminate the poss ibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democr acy itself." But American fascists who would want former CEOs as President, Vice Presi dent, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legisla tion with corporate interests in mind, don't generally talk to We The Pe ople about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses an d working people. Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders an d the Jews, they point to a "them" to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies. In a comment prescient of George W Bush's recent suggestion that civiliz ation itself is at risk because of gays, Wallace continued: " The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapte d to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be ide ntified 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 n o coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. " But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to t he people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations - who could gain control of newspapers an d broadcast media - they could promote their lies with ease. "The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate per version of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and ...
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