The following was written by American Vice President Henry Wallace. The text was taken from
this website:
- An article in the New York Times, April 9, 1944.
From Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944), edited by Russell Lord, p. 259.
- 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.
