PLAIN TALK ABOUT FASCISM
Plain Talk About Fascism Hats Off To The War Department! CAN fascism be identified? What political touch-stones can be used to tell what individuals and what groups are fascist in their political...
...Issued to aid troops in the field to an understanding of fascism, the War Department document could stand some home front discussion, for it deals quite candidly with the prospects and dangers of American fascism...
...These are questions being asked by many Americans despite the fact that their country is now in the fourth year of a war that has for its announced purpose the eradication of fascism...
...Fascism is always ready to provide one...
...In many countries, anti-Semitism is a dominant device of fascism...
...They become frightened, angry, desperate, confused...
...Fascism came to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan at a time of social and economic unrest...
...The fascist philosophy is international...
...Lots of things can happen inside of people when they are unemployed or hungry...
...It does not exist only in the 3 countries with which we are at war...
...In South America, the native fascists use the same scapegoats except that they substitute anti-Protestantism for anti-Catholicism...
...Pitting of religious, racial, and economic groups against one another in order to break down national unity...
...Norway, Belgium, France, Holland, America, and other countries have their native fascists...
...They also smashed trade unionism...
...Fascism is government by the few and for the few," which is more apt to come into power at a time of great economic crisis...
...Many, in their misery, seek to find somebody to blame...
...Whenever free governments anywhere fail to solve their basic economic and social problems, there is always the danger that a native brand of fascism will arise to exploit the situation and the people...
...What political touch-stones can be used to tell what individuals and what groups are fascist in their political philosophy...
...A small group of men, supported in secret by powerful financial and military interests, convinced enough insecure people that fascism would give them the things they wanted...
...In the United States, native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-labor, anti-foreign born...
...Fascism cannot tolerate such religious and ethical concepts as the 'brotherhood of man.' "3...
...In Europe they promised small business the elimination of big business competition, but when they came to power they carried out their secret promises to their big industrialist backers and wiped out the middle class of small businessmen...
...FASCISM, the statement declares, is a way of running a country that is precisely the opposite of democracy...
...The people run democratic governments but fascist governments run the people...
...It remained for the War Department, much criticized for its failure to comprehend the professed ideological nature of this war, to issue one of the most comprehensive and forthright statements on fascism, its causes and characteristics, yet to come out of any official Government department...
...It is a favorite trick of the native fascists...
...They look for a scapegoat as a way out...
...Fascists, the document goes on, attain power by promising everything to everyone, by playing economic, racial, and religious groups against each other...
...Indiscriminate pinning of the label 'Red' on people and proposals which one opposes is a common political device...
...Up until just recently their Government had given them little assistance in the search for an answer to these troublesome questions...
...Their Government, it seemed, was too busy fighting fascism to give them a comprehensive definition of the evil it was fighting...
...At the very time that the fascists proclaimed that their party was the party of the average citizen, they were in the pay of certain big industrialists and financiers who wanted to run the people with an iron hand...
...Here are some of the War Department's touchstones for identifying people who are in a "mental state that lends itself to the acceptance of fascist aims": "1...
...In its bid for power, it is ready to drive wedges that will disunite the people and weaken the nation...
...BUT the soundest advice given in the War Department document is the prescription for the prevention of fascism in America: "The only way to prevent fascism from getting a hold in America is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 21
