Facts and Fascism by George Seldes

[more_pain_please]

Some excerpts from chapter 2, of Facts and Fascism




...To know what Fascism really is and why we must fight it and destroy it here in America, we must first of all know what it is we are fighting, what the Fascist regimes really are and do, who puts up the money and backs Fascism in every country (including the United States at this very moment), and who owns the nations under such regimes, and why the natives of all Fascist countries must be driven into harder work, less money, reduced standard of living, poverty and desperation so that the men and corporations who found, subsidize and own Fascism can grow unbelievably rich...

...It requires neither integrity nor courage today to say that Hitler was made the Fuehrer of Germany by the biggest industrialists of his country. (It does require integrity and courage even today to relate the German men and forces to those in America, to point out the equivalents, and that is why no commercial newspaper or magazine has ever done so.) But as early as Summer, 1933, in the Week-End Review, a light which shows up Fascism as nothing but a military-political-economic movement to grab all the money and resources of the world was already focused on Germany by the man who wrote under the name of "Ernst Henri."

He denies, first of all, the myth that Naziism is a "rebellion of the middle classes." The middle classes, it is true, were most united and outspoken for Hitler, they did in fact send in their contributions, but when "these sons of butchers and publicans, of post office officials and insurance agents, of doctors and lawyers" imagined they were fighting for their own interests, when "they swarmed out of the Storm Troops barracks and struck down defenseless workers, Jews, Socialists and Communists" they would not have been able to do it, had they not been mobilized by other sources. "Hitler, the idol of this mass, and himself only a petty bourgeois-a petty bourgeois posing as a Napolean-in reality followed the dictates of a higher power."..

...."Never yet in modern history has the middle class, relying solely on itself and without an alliance with other social strata, successfully played an independent role or triumphed in the social struggle. . . . The Nazi leaders did not hesitate one moment in their decision when the big industrialists and bankers began to complain. One after another, Hitler, Goering and Hess in May, June and July, 1933-issued sharp warnings against 'attacks on business'; and Hess ordered all activities against department stores to cease. . . . Already by August, 1933, the high hopes which millions of little people had pinned on Hitler had been rudely shattered. . . . Leaders of the struggle of the middle class against the trusts . . . were sent to concentration camps. Before the month had ended the Fighting League of the Middle Class was no more. . . . The massacre of the entire leadership of the Storm Troopers on the pretext of homosexuality closed the short chapter of independent action by the middle class with a smashing political victory by Big Capital. . . . The department store of the Jewish owner Tietz was handed over to a consortium consisting of the three largest banks, the Deutsche Bank, the Dresdener Bank and the Commerz-und Privatbank. . . . The large department store Karstadt . . . of its eight directors four are big bankers, one a large exporter and a sixth an influential figure in the Deutsche Bank. . . .

more here

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/George_Seldes/Facts_and_Fascism.html

-----------

some more links

http://www.brasscheck.com/seldes/
----------------------------

as well a very good short film on Seldes

"You Can't Print That: Conversations with George Seldes"

http://com.castleton.edu/seldes

-----------------



http://www.brasscheck.com/heartfield/gallery.html

[Eloriel]

1. Some more links for you

Fascism Anyone? by Laurence W. Britt
http://secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm

Wake Up and Smell the Fascism
(examples of Britt's 14 points)
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

They Thought They Were Free
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html


WAKE UP! - Strauss / Neocons and Terror PLUS dire warnings
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1780890#


March 16, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm

When Democracy Failed - 2005
The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0222-22.htm
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm

The NASCAR Nazi
Bush is creating an un-American America
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/04/38/lost-washburn.php

Nazification of America Phase 3
http://www.hermes-press.com/nazification_step3.htm

The Reichstag Fire and 9/11; Pretexts for Dictatorship and the Fourth Reich
Includes: Parallels between the Third Reich and the Bush Regime; 9/11 and the Reichstag Fire; What was the Reichstag Fire; Nazis in America; Poland 1939, Iraq 2003 http://www.oilempire.us/reichstag-fire.html

The Rise of the Fourth Reich
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/reich.html

Bush's 9/11 Reichstag Fire by Harvey Wasserman
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0913-03.htm

20 Comparisons by Barrie Zwicker
http://www.deceptiondollar.com/news/BloorRemarks911-03.htm

The Bush Plan for America: The Rise of an American National Security State
By Jennifer Van Bergen, 14 December 2003 http://www.ftaaimc.org/en/2003/12/3232.shtml

America, We Have a Problem
http://www.moderateindependent.com/v2i4dodd.htm

Fascism and America Today
by Aldo Vidali
http://www.apj.us/20010312fascism.html

Roads to Fascism: Sixty Years Later
by Roderick T. Long
http://www.lewrockwell.com/long/long7.html

This is the Fight of Our Lives by Bill Moyers
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0616-09.htm

Published on Monday, July 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here"
by Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-15.htm

Jim Macgregor
Neo-fascism in America
http://www.surfaceonline.org/essayamerica6.htm

E-book - It Can't Happen Here b y Sinclair Lewis
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/l/lewis/sinclair/happen/
Also read: The Iron Heel by Jack London and
"Der Fuhrer" by Konrad Heiden and "The Plague" by Camus
discussed here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2344349#2344364

"Now and Then"- Part 1
by W. David Jenkins and Sara DeHart June 6, 2002
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/dave300019.htm
"Now and Then"- Part 2: The Propaganda Machine
by W. David Jenkins and Sara DeHart June 14, 2002
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/dave300020.htm
"Now and Then"- Part 3
Hitler's Playbook: Bush and the Abuse of Power
by W. David Jenkins III and Sara DeHart July 4, 2002
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/dave300021.htm

It is ABSOLUTELY appropriate to make Nazi comparisons
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3921556

[more_pain_please]

3. Wow, that's allot of links thanks, n/t

[wli]

5. fascism is on the goose-step indeed, good links n/t

[Blue_Tires]

2. good stuff...i'll mark this for later n/t

[more_pain_please]

4. Lords of the Press

Some more Seldes

from ch 3 Lords of the Press


...tests for the publishers which every reader can insist on:

http://www.brasscheck.com/seldes/lords3.html

1.) Give equal space to the political parties.
2.) Give some space to minority parties, at least space relative to their strength. (These two tests will put the majority of our press, which styles itself independent, on the spot.)
3.) Publish the Federal Trade Commission Reports. (These reports are not enough, but they do expose many of our greatest manufacturers of food, drink, clothing, tobacco, milk, etc., as fraudulent.)
4.) Tell the truth about cigarettes and automobiles, the two largest advertisers.
5.) Give the consumer a square deal. (Publish the same reports on consumers' goods which only the liberal and left weeklies publish nowadays.)
6.) Reject organized pressure. (Inform the American Legion, the Catholic Church organizations, the business and advertising organizations, an all the other sacred cows, bulls and elephants of journalism, they will no longer influence the news. If all publishers in any one town agree on this, no losses can follow.)
7.) Publish the labor news. Give labor a square deal. (Everyone admits that the press has fallen down worse in the labor field than elsewhere.)
8.) Throw Mr. Hearst out. (The Associated Press accused Hearst of theft of the news. It won its case. But it did not throw him out. Neither did the A.N.P.A. No press organization can make any ethical claims so long as it has a Hearst around.)
9.) Stop defending child labor because of the few dollars you save on newsboys.
10.) Print both sides of a controversy. (The New York Daily News published both a "Presidential battle page" in the Roosevelt-Landon campaign and an "economic battle page" on labor. It offered them free, but only a few papers took them. No paper can claim to be free if it refuses to publish both sides.)

These are ten simple tests which come to me on the spur of the moment. Other newspapermen will think of better ones, no doubt.* But all of them look fair to me. If a paper announces itself as a Republican sheet and wants to publish nothing but Republican party news, that is fair and honest, but few newspapers so announce themselves. Not only the self-styled independent paper but any paper which claims it is a newspaper, must publish the news, and that is all that one can ask.

But if it claims it is a free paper it must give equal space to both sides.

I know that no newspaper in America will publish anything like Consumers Union's Reports on foods, automobiles, cigarettes, but it is reprehensible of them to refuse

* The following tests for a free press have been suggested by newspapermen, editors, and school of journalism professors who have read this manuscript:
1. Defend public welfare instead of public utilities.
2. Publish the facts about radicals, "Reds," etc. without Red baiting.
3. Discover the co-operative movement in America.
4. Run the advertisements of Consumers Union.
5. Stop publishing letters which agree with editorial policy only....