June 9, 1944 NY Times Op Ed VP Henry Wallace – What is Facism
The NY Times asked then sitting Vice President, Henry Wallace three questions; “What is Facism, how many do we have in America and how dangerous are they.”
He responded: “The really dangerous American Facists are not hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis, the FBI have their finger on those. The dangerous American Facist is the Facist who wants to do in an American way what Hitler did. Not to use violence, but to poison the channels of public information. It’s never about how best to present truth to the public, but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the Facist group more money and more power.”
To further paraphrase – A Facist is one who puts money and power ahead of human beings. The are ruthless and deceitful in times of peace and super patriotic in times of war. In times of peace, they follow power and the dollar wherever that may lead. They pay lip service to democracy. Big business’ dislike democracy because it stands for fair and equal. They will play upon fears and vanities of different groups to gain power and growth of prejudice. This is similar to Hitler when they preach discrimination. They demand “free enterprise”, or these days they call it “free market”, but are actually the spokespersons for monopoly and vested interests. They claim to be super patriots while destroying every liberty guaranteed by our constitution. Their final objective towards which all of their deceit is directed is to capture political power in order to use the power of the State and power of the market in order to keep the common man in eternal subjection.
They will deliberately pervert the truths and facts, carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity and crack in common front – use every opportunity to impugn democracy which pretending to be super patriot
It may just be me, but this sounds strangely similar to what we are experiencing today in the United States, which should scare the living daylights out of any rational thinking person. I realize many of our "friends" on the other side of the divide in this country tend to disregard rational thought as a Liberal creation, but it's served me well. I recently heard that facts are the basis of all rational thought, so it should not be surprising to anyone that many on the right tend to react or speak irrationally most of the time for they base their entire belief system on lies and myths.