Just as Progressives were generally enthusiastic about socialist movements in the Soviet Union and Europe, they were also overwhelmingly supportive of the Fascist movements in Italy and Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. In many respects the founding fathers of modern liberalism, the men and women who laid the intellectual groundwork of the New Deal and the welfare state, thought that Fascism sounded like ... a worthwhile 'experiment':
-FDR's National Recovery Act Study: "The Fascist principles are very similar to those which have been evolving in America and are of particular interest at this time."
-Harry Hopkins (new deal Communist): "That we (those in FDR Administration) are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have lawyers who will declare anything you want to do legal."
- H. G. Wells, one of the most influential Progressives of the 20th century, said in 1932 that Progressives must become “liberal Fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.” Regarding totalitarianism, he stated: “I have never been able to escape altogether from its relentless logic.” Calling for a “‘Phoenix Rebirth’ of Liberalism” under the umbrella of “Liberal Fascism,” Wells said: “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.”
- The poet Wallace Stevens pronounced himself “pro-Mussolini personally.”
- The eminent historian Charles Beard wrote of Mussolini’s efforts: “Beyond question, an amazing experiment is being made [in Italy], an experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism.” “Fascism is an amazing experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism."
- Muckraking Progressive journalists almost universally admired Mussolini. Lincoln Steffens, for one, said that Italian Fascism made Western democracy, by comparison, look like a system run by “petty persons with petty purposes.” Steffens referred to the “Russian-Italian” method as if the two were flip sides of the same coin. Steffens and his fellow Progressives generally saw Mussolini, Lenin, and Stalin as three men pursuing a similar objective: the fundamental transformation of corrupt and outdated societies. Mussolini, Steffens proclaimed reverently, had been “formed” by God “out of the rib of Italy.” About Russia -"I have seen the future and it works."
- McClure’s Magazine founder Samuel McClure, an important figure in the muckraking movement, described Italian Fascism as “a great step forward and the first new ideal in government since the founding of the American Republic.”
- After having visited Italy and interviewed Mussolini in 1926, the American humorist Will Rogers, who was informally dubbed “Ambassador-at-Large of the United States” by the National Press Club, said of the Fascist dictator: “I’m pretty high on that bird.” “Dictator form of government is the greatest form of government,” Rogers wrote, “that is, if you have the right dictator.”
- Reporter Ida Tarbell was deeply impressed by Mussolini's attitudes regarding labor, affectionately dubbing him “a despot with a dimple.”
- NAACP co-founder W. E. B. DuBois saw National Socialism as a worthy model for economic organisation. The establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, he wrote, had been “absolutely necessary to get the state in order.” "Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th Century approach his stature. The formation of the Nazi dictatorship was absolutely necessary to get the state in order." "I stand in wonder...as a Bolshevik." In 1937 DuBois stated: “there is today, in some respects, more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past.”
- John Maynard Keynes: "Eugenics is the most important significant..and genuine branch of sociology and Germany has perfected in with the Aktion T4 programme.”
- George Orwell: "Much of what H.G. Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany.”
- FDR adviser Rexford Guy Tugwell said of Italian Fascism: “It's the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious.” “I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary.... Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has.”
- New Republic editor George Soule, who avidly supported FDR, noted approvingly that the Roosevelt administration was “trying out the economics of Fascism.”
- Playwright George Bernard Shaw hailed Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini as the world’s great “Progressive” leaders because they “did things,” unlike the leaders of those “putrefying corpses” called parliamentary democracies. "Eugenics must be the central tenant of any true successful socialism."
-Fortune Magazine: "The corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt"
-Nazi newspaper: "Roosevelt is as a man of irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will... with a profound understanding of social needs...with nationalist socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies."
-Mussolini: "America has a dictator in FDR"
- Journalist J. T. Flynn – perhaps the best-known anti-FDR muckraker of the 1930s, foresaw that American Fascism might one day manifest itself as “a very genteel and dainty and pleasant form of Fascism which cannot be called Fascism at all because it will be so virtuous and polite.”
- John Maynard Keynes: "Eugenics is the most important significant..and genuine branch of sociology and Germany has perfected in with the Aktion T4 programme.”
- George Orwell: "Much of what H.G. Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany.”
- FDR adviser Rexford Guy Tugwell said of Italian Fascism: “It's the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious.” “I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary.... Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has.”
- New Republic editor George Soule, who avidly supported FDR, noted approvingly that the Roosevelt administration was “trying out the economics of Fascism.”
- Playwright George Bernard Shaw hailed Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini as the world’s great “Progressive” leaders because they “did things,” unlike the leaders of those “putrefying corpses” called parliamentary democracies. "Eugenics must be the central tenant of any true successful socialism."
-Fortune Magazine: "The corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt"
-Nazi newspaper: "Roosevelt is as a man of irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will... with a profound understanding of social needs...with nationalist socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies."
-Mussolini: "America has a dictator in FDR"
- Journalist J. T. Flynn – perhaps the best-known anti-FDR muckraker of the 1930s, foresaw that American Fascism might one day manifest itself as “a very genteel and dainty and pleasant form of Fascism which cannot be called Fascism at all because it will be so virtuous and polite.”
- New Republic founder Herbert Croly one of the most important voices in American intellectual history and a leftist icon for more than a century. Specifically, Croly embraced economic socialism; promoted febrile nationalism; said that a “great” and heroic revolutionary leader was needed in order to restore American pride; rejected the concept of parliamentary democracy; believed that society could be guided to enlightenment by an intellectual elite – a cast of “social engineers” whose “beneficent activities” could bring about a “better future”; and rejected individualism, saying that “an individual has no meaning apart from the society in which his individuality has been formed.” He said that these ideals were, by definition, both Fascist and Progressive.
- The education reformer and socialist John Dewey spoke of the “social possibilities of war” and the “immense impetus to reorganisation” that it afforded. He added, with an air of hopefulness, that the conflict might force Americans “to give up much of [their] economic freedom”; to abandon their “individualistic tradition” and “march in step”; and to recognize “the supremacy of public need over private possessions.”
- The Progressive financier George Perkins said the “great European war … is striking down individualism and building up collectivism.”
- Grosvenor Clarkson, Chairman of the Federal Interdepartmental Defense Board, said the war effort “is a story of the conversion of a hundred million combatively individualistic people into a vast cooperative effort in which the good of the unit was sacrificed to the good of the whole.”
- The social worker Felix Adler said the regimentation imposed on society by the war effort was helping America create the “perfect man…a fairer and more beautiful and more righteous type than any…that has yet existed.”
- Arthur Bullard, journalist and statesman, chronicle the major world political and economic events relating to World War I and its aftermath: "[In Germany], any citizen who did not put the state first is merely dead weight."
- Harold Laski: (friend to FDR and other American Democrats) "Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the state short shrift and the nearest lamppost."
- Progressive Charles Van Hise: "we know enough about eugenics so that if the knowledge were applied the defective classes would disappear within a generation"
- Isaac F. Marcosson: in the NY Times, "Mussolini is a Latin Teddy Roosevelt."
- Will Rogers: "I'm pretty high on Mussolini 'Dictatorship' is the right form of government if you have the right dictator."
- John Patrick Duggins: Columbia University is "Fascism's veritable home in America and a school house for budding fascists ideologues."
- Nicholas Butler: (President of Columbia University) received a signed photo from Mussolini thanking him for his, "most valuable contribution to the promotion of understanding between Fascist Italy and the United States.”
- Progressive journalist Lowell Thomas, the journalist in Lawrence of Arabia: "He (Mussolini) stands out like a Modern Caesar - the answer to America's needs.”
- The education reformer and socialist John Dewey spoke of the “social possibilities of war” and the “immense impetus to reorganisation” that it afforded. He added, with an air of hopefulness, that the conflict might force Americans “to give up much of [their] economic freedom”; to abandon their “individualistic tradition” and “march in step”; and to recognize “the supremacy of public need over private possessions.”
- The Progressive financier George Perkins said the “great European war … is striking down individualism and building up collectivism.”
- Grosvenor Clarkson, Chairman of the Federal Interdepartmental Defense Board, said the war effort “is a story of the conversion of a hundred million combatively individualistic people into a vast cooperative effort in which the good of the unit was sacrificed to the good of the whole.”
- The social worker Felix Adler said the regimentation imposed on society by the war effort was helping America create the “perfect man…a fairer and more beautiful and more righteous type than any…that has yet existed.”
- Arthur Bullard, journalist and statesman, chronicle the major world political and economic events relating to World War I and its aftermath: "[In Germany], any citizen who did not put the state first is merely dead weight."
- Harold Laski: (friend to FDR and other American Democrats) "Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the state short shrift and the nearest lamppost."
- Progressive Charles Van Hise: "we know enough about eugenics so that if the knowledge were applied the defective classes would disappear within a generation"
- Isaac F. Marcosson: in the NY Times, "Mussolini is a Latin Teddy Roosevelt."
- Will Rogers: "I'm pretty high on Mussolini 'Dictatorship' is the right form of government if you have the right dictator."
- John Patrick Duggins: Columbia University is "Fascism's veritable home in America and a school house for budding fascists ideologues."
- Nicholas Butler: (President of Columbia University) received a signed photo from Mussolini thanking him for his, "most valuable contribution to the promotion of understanding between Fascist Italy and the United States.”
- Progressive journalist Lowell Thomas, the journalist in Lawrence of Arabia: "He (Mussolini) stands out like a Modern Caesar - the answer to America's needs.”
- Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein: called Mussolini the hero of Culture
- Puccini and Toscanini: both were pioneering Fascists of Mussolini
- McClures magazine: "Fascism is a 'great step forward' and the first new idea in government since the founding of the American Republic"
- James Farrell: (head of US Steel) Mussolini is the "greatest living man"
- Walter Lippman: called on FDR to be a Fascist "dictator."
-National Recovery Act Study: "The Fascist principles are very similar to those which have been evolving in America and are of particular interest at this time"
- Saturday Evening Post: gave Mussolini biggest advance ever on article he wrote about himself.
- Jane Addams: "the individual must lose the sense of personal achievement" "In Italy they are called Fascists; in Germany they are called Nazis; in America they are called Progressives"
- Walter Rauschenbusch: "individualism means tyranny"
- Stuart Chase: "[Nazi] Party officials...create a new heaven on earth" and "why should Russia have all the fun of remaking a world?"
- Father Coughlin: "capitalism is doomed"
- Nazi newspaper: described Roosevelt as a man of irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will... with a profound understanding of social needs...with nationalist socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies"
-Harry Hopkins: (New Deal Communist) "that we (those in FDR Administration) are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have lawyers who will declare anything you want to do legal"
- Sidney Webb: "no socialist eugenicist can be a Laissez Faire individualist... the result is this country gradually falling to the Jews and Irish"
- "When the Nazi took over they replaced the traditional infrastructure of the state and churches with a Nazi monopoly on charity."
- Mein Kampf is replete with attacks on dividend hungry businessman whose greed, ruthlessness and short sighted narrow mindedness were ruining the economy. The Nazi Party labor union threatened to put business leaders in concentration camps if they didn't increase workers' wages."
-Foreign Affairs: "The Italian (fascist) system treated workers better"
No comments:
Post a Comment