The Danger of American Fascism - Henry Wallace

[Skip_In_Boulder]

The Danger of American Fascism

Henry A. Wallace

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.

1. 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:

1. What is a fascist?
2. How many fascists have we?
3. How dangerous are they?

(snip)

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.

http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm

[rurallib]

1. mark to come back to later.

[fittosurvive]

2. "...poison the channels of public information."

Fortunately, in the US of 2011, there are far too many channels to poison them all.

[EstimatedProphet]

9. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!

[Quantess]

11. Sadly, no.

There are fewer and fewer owners for all the channels, all the media outlets. There is a near monopoly of media in the US.

[fittosurvive]

12. But a citizen of the US is free to watch any television station in the world...

listen to any radio station in the world...read any newspaper in the world.

For this premise to be true, this fantasized fascist would have to control every media outlet in existence.

[Mnemosyne]

15. And it boggles the mind as to why too many watch FOX news anyway, doesn't it? n/t

[fittosurvive]

21. Yes, it does. But freedom means that the other guy gets to choose what he wants to watch too.

[blm]

24. And fascism means a few decide WHAT narrative the majority will access through national newsmedia

that is under their direct control.

[Mnemosyne]

38. Willfull ignorance is no excuse when used to harm others unlike oneself. n/t

[blm]

18. Only a few control most all NEWS outlets with NATIONAL REACH. Your all or nothing narrowing of the

debate is absurdly dense and..... familiar.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[blm]

23. NATIONAL media outlets, the ones that influence the majority of voters. Why the pretense

as if you don't realize the difference?

[fittosurvive]

27. Oh, I realize the difference all right. It's just that I take everything the NATIONAL media outlets

say with a grain of salt.

And I suppose that if someone like me can figure it out, most everyone else gets it too.

[blm]

26. Now you want to narrow it to ME? Ok pal...my source of choice is the National Security Archives

because there is a no more thorough and accurate source for real information about this nation's ACTUAL record. Robert Parry is the most dependable journalist who also relies heavily on NSA.

Fascist NWO types prefer national news networks they control.....not to mention all their fronts and 'alternative' outlets where they cater to the Teabaggers.

Fascists like to use the word freedom as their MASK of choice as they look to shut down net neutrality and advance wars and policies set up to enrich themselves while enslaving the lower 95% of the nation.

[fittosurvive]

28. You sure seem to have a dismal view of your fellow man.

Perhaps I'm being a bit naive, but I have a more optimistic outlook on the ability of people to make the right choices.

[blm]

29. Right choices when PRESENTED with an accurate read of those choices. Fer chrissakes, polls now show

that a majority of people believe the healthcare bill has already been overturned. Most believe Bush was a wartime pilot. Most Republicans believe Saddam was behind Bin Laden on 9-11. They were FED bullshit so bullshit is what is inside them....whether this is about your naivete or not....I doubt that's what it is.....I am more inclined to believe that you don't CARE why people believe what they do and WHY they are lied to as long as it serves the fascist agenda.

Yup....I am NOT naive and wouldn't even PRETEND to be.

[fittosurvive]

30. At any given time, many people believe many false things to be true.,

and for the most part it is harmless. Some learn the truth very quickly, while it takes a bit longer for others to figure it out.

What you have to realize is that everybody may not always want to watch what you want to watch.

[blm]

32. Give your sunshine and lollipops act a rest. I'm not buying it.

.

[Quantess]

33. Do you understand that monopolies sometimes take control, in capitalist systems?

Fine, let's say yes.
Look around you. Look at the tv stations, the cable stations.

Who says there is only one fascist? There are a handful, with the same goal.

[fittosurvive]

39. The only true monopolies I see are those run by the government.

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Quantess]

36. There is a monopoly among US media outlets.

What do you propose we do about it?

[fittosurvive]

40. Monopoly - the market condition that exists when there is only one seller.

Although there has certainly been a great deal of consolidation, there are many, many media outlets in this world. And as I previously state, US citizens have access to every media outlet in the world.

Do you think this media outlet is controlled by fascists? (There really isn't a fascist behind every tree)

[Mnemosyne]

14. Ms. or Mr. Rand, please educate yourself re: propaganda and the control of the media by 5

corporations owned by the wealthy elite. Subliminal comes to mind also. :hi:

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[blm]

16. You have GOT to be joking. There are NOT that many news outlets with national reach.

And those are owned and controlled by only a handful of companies. Fascism.

[upi402]

31. they ARE the poison

98% of them are the poison with few alternatives on poor signal stations and with no promotion or funding.

[Tansy_Gold]

3. ABSOLUTE MUST READ. Thank you , Skip!

More snips:

2. 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.

9. 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.


10. 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.


11. 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.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

5. Yep this is what it is and what we need to be calling it

I get so frustrated, even with left wing talkers, that like to soft peddle this. We refer to it as radical conservatism, corporatism, oligarchy, and on and on but the fact is when you cut to the core of this ideology this is the blatant implementation of fascism in America today. We need to start calling it what it is.

[Tansy_Gold]

7. I've been calling it fascism since early 2000.

Before booosh was nominated, I wrote to a friend living in CA at the time and I warned that if boooosh got the nomination and somehow got into the white house, he would be another Hitler. "I don't know who his Jews will be, but he will start something every bit as horrible as the Third Reich."

And I think cheeeney tried very hard to accomplish that, being stopped only by people like Jim Jeffords and Nancy Pelosi. Had booosh had a majority in both houses all 8 years, things would have been very different, and much worse than they were/are.

We're not out of the woods yet by a long shot.



TG, TT

[Skip_In_Boulder]

8. Good on you. I have been calling it this for years but the unfortunate

fact has always been that people didn't want to hear it. But maybe we are starting to experience enough pain these days, can you say austerity, that maybe people are ready to look at the truth. Wisconsin offers a ray of hope.

[RufusTFirefly]

4. Who knew that Wallace could predict the rise of Fox News?

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.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

6. It was just a matter of time. n/t

[Puregonzo1188]

10. Wallace would have made a great President.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

17. We could sure use someone with his clarity now. n/t

[PufPuf23]

13. Agree Wallace may have made a great POTUS.

We may have avoided much of the Cold War.

The Cold War was spawn of the Allies in WWII.

WWII was born of WWI and lack of economic justice and colonialism.

Since WWII, a sobering amount of wonderous ecosystems that gave humans easy life have been trashed and wasted and pressed to limits once degraded.

I have been using the word fascist for neo-conservatives and neo-liberals for nearly 10 years.

Sorry if the truth hurts and those that deny the reality are Fucking Goofy at Disneyland (FGD) IMO.

[Tashca]

19. Powerful

Thank you for posting. I had not read this.

As I read through I could not help but notice the irony. He was basically taken down with gossip and innuendo. He had too much class to fight it. The monied class would never have tolerated him. If he had been president many people remark that he may not have lived through a term.

Instead while Roosevelt was in a sickly and weak condition he was forced to dumped Wallace for Truman as vice-resident not that long after this was written. Truman was of course much preferred by the money class.

Wallace was a brilliant man.

[Gaedel]

25. I read somewhere

Henry Wallace was a reformer who failed at being a politician.

Franklin Roosevelt was a politician who failed at being a reformer.

[Quantess]

34. K & R

[Jmaxfie1]

35. I was never a big Wallace fan. n/t

[Ichingcarpenter]

37. This has been on du at times and it never fails to get a nom from me

I've posted it myself at times.... The words still hold true
Kick and nom