When Fascism Almost Came to America

In the 1930s, Fascism was surprisingly popular in the US. Then a World War made the word anathema, but wanting a strongman to make everything better for us is getting more popular. Believe in our liberal institutions is in decline. Are we getting more tolerant of totalitarianism?

Show Notes:

American Fascism: It Has Happened Here

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/12/these-are-the-three-reasons-that-fascism-spread-in-1930s-america-and-might-spread-again-today/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/493879

https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-18-what-is-the-future-of-italy-(1945)/the-rise-and-fall-of-fascism

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/03/the-last-time-democracy-almost-died

What’s the point?

-Weird one-sided obsessions:

Communism on the right
Fascism on the left

We’ve shown a few times on ReConsider that the flavor of totalitarianism doesn’t matter all that much. Both are brutally repressive, bring the economy and all of society under the state and party, crush freedom of thought, murder a ton of people, start big wars.

The big difference is that Fascism is nationalistic, Communism is internationalistic. We talked about this on our episode “Nazis, Communists, and Free Speech”

Both could come about when there is a small group of people with enough power to do what they want.

How do you get that? Crises that we feel that liberal institutions can’t fix.

The Romans had 6-month Dictatorships for just this kind of thing. It wouldn’t work today. The Romans also lost their Republic because the Senate and Assembly failed to deal with various crises that led to civil wars.

We talked about this in our episode, “The Effectiveness of Political Violence in History.” Typically, when political violence becomes the norm, regular people get sick of it and welcome a strongman to fix things. Dictatorships and Totalitarian regimes emerge.

Totalitarian regimes can only rise with a lot of popular support. Not total support–Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini all rose to power on minority support–but large support. And what gives them support is people checking out of the current system and deciding they need a strong-man, for whatever cause. Revolutionary thinking is extraordinarily dangerous.

Next time I want to talk about revolutions through history and how they turned out. There’s a lot of revolutionary thinking in the US right now, and I’m pretty sure those who are excited about it have not done their homework.

Erik Fogg

Erik Fogg is co-author of ReConsider’s written work, co-host of the ReConsider podcast and author of Wedged: How you became a tool of the partisan Political Establishment and How to Start Thinking for Yourself Again. Erik has a masters degree in political science from MIT and has spent years working with various NGOs, Harvard, MIT, United Nations and various private advocacy groups organizations. He’s ghost-written published books. He’s now running a software startup. Erik grew up in a very red part of Pennsylvania and moved to a very blue part of Massachusetts. Having a foot in both worlds has enabled Erik to see how both sides of the political spectrum caricature the other and has sparked his mission to create a real dialogue that cuts through the noise. Erik podcasts from his office in suburban San Mateo, surrounded by 17th and 18th-century European art, a costume-construction toolkit and table, a VR kit, and a small bed for his Boston Terrier, Oscar.