What Should Be Old is New Again: The Return of Proto-Fascist Control

While watching reproductive rights come under total assault, it's time to look back on the energies that inspired the rise of fascism the first time

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A couple of years back an audience member approached me after a talk I had given regarding my book American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People. This man was kind and patient, but he wanted to know something. Earlier, during my Q&A session, someone had asked me to expand on the history of how the United States had helped inspire the Nazi and Fascist parties in Europe. Briefly, I got into the role Americans like Lothrop Stoddard (author of The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy) and Madison Grant (The Passing of the Great Race) had in both inspiring militant white supremacy and in promoting eugenics in culture and the U.S. legal system, which would eventually be imported by the proto-fascists, but what this man wanted to know was how this history had been forgotten.

“I guess what I’m asking,” he said, “is was this unintentional and accidental or did someone make this decision?”

The answer was both. Writing history is difficult. You make decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Sometimes it’s easy for the minutiae that really matters to fall by the wayside. And, other times, you can’t deny a heavy, intentional hand. When it came to America’s proto-fascism and its influence on Germany and Italy, it was rather unpleasant. Much easier to take the momentum of “saving the world” from Nazism and Fascism and discard the ugly truth of how those threats came to be. Not to mention America’s love affair with the Nazis and Fascists, including support for Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and the widespread popularity of American fascism prior to Pearl Harbor.

“But,” the man continued, “wouldn’t people want to be honest about what happened so they could…avoid it happening again?”

A hell of a question. And logically, the answer should be a resounding yes. A crisis like World War II should have prompted a deep self-reflection, a period of intense scrutiny and change. But instead, the U.S. and Great Britain quickly embraced former Nazis and Fascists as they believed it was necessary begin a confrontation with the Soviet Union. In that pursuit, they systematically undermined democracy, relentlessly destroyed any semblance of Leftism, be it labor unions or reformers, and were more than happy to utilize limited dictatorships in order to prop up a world system to their liking. In other words, telling the truth about what had happened, and how it happened, was not in their best interest when it came to power.

And because that decision was made, we are currently facing the same terrible circumstances once more. Rather than understanding that authoritarianism isn’t relegated to Western Europe in the 20th century, that it is a problem of the human heart that must always be opposed, we are struggling through the muck.

Once more, in order to protect ourselves, and protect the future, we must understand our past.