FASCISM IN AMERICA

By Robert P. Bomboy

I have been reading the best-selling author Ken Follett’s 2012 book, Winter of the World. It’s about the rise of Fascism under Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and its world-destroying domination in the early 1940s.

            As I went through it, page after page, I recognized the words of Donald Trump, as if his words and ideas were hateful echoes of Fascism and the demon who bestrode the world 75 years ago.

Listen to the thoughts of a German woman at that time: “The man’s whole life had been based on arrogantly shouting that he was boss. How could such a man admit that he had been wrong, stupid, and wicked?”

Trump has won the Liar of the Year award from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tampa Bay Times. Journalists and news organizations throughout the nation have caught him in hundreds of lies that he has repeated again, and again, and again.

It appears that he may be following the formula first espoused by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister in Nazi Germany, who was known for his virulent anti-Semitism. It was he who said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the [totalitarian] State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Ken Follett’s book portrays Fascism not only in Germany but also in England before World War II. Follett mentioned a wealthy Fascist, who lived in an English mansion. A young woman who worked at the man’s house said, “He’s a pig. He paws maids.”

A man who had witnessed Hitler’s rise in Germany, spoke at a London meeting and said: “Fascism is dangerously attractive. It’s a lie, but an alluring lie. It gives false hope to the unemployed. It wears a spurious patriotism, as the Fascists themselves wear imitation military uniforms.”

And consider these scenes from the book, which Follett wrote in 2012, three years before Trump stepped to the front of the stage:

In 1933 a German Fascist said to a woman journalist, "I was sorry to see you writing disrespectfully about our chancellor."

"Do you think journalists should write respectfully about politicians?" the woman replied. "That's radical. The Nazi press would have to be polite about my husband! They wouldn't like that." Her husband was a member of the liberal Social Democratic Party, which the Fascists would soon ban, along with all other opposition parties, imprisoning and murdering their members.

"Not all politicians, obviously," the Fascist said.

The journalist continued: "Isn't it better for the press to be able to criticize everyone equally?"

"A wonderful idea," the Fascist said sarcastically. "But you socialists live in a dream world. We practical men know that Germany cannot live on ideas. People must have bread and shoes and coal. You overrate freedom. It doesn’t make people happy. They prefer leadership. I want my children to grow up in a country that is proud, and disciplined, and united.”

         “And in order to be united, we need young thugs in brown shirts to beat up elderly Jewish shopkeepers?” the journalist asked with a groan.

         “Politics is rough. Nothing we can do about it,” the Fascist answered.

     At a public meeting in 1936, a member of the British Parliament pointed out that Fascism offered false solutions, simplistically blaming Jews and other groups for complex problems such as unemployment and crime. At that time, she made merciless fun of Hitler and Mussolini, likening them to playground bullies. They claimed popular support but banned all opposition.

     

      The member of Parliament asked rhetorically:

“Why do the Fascists want violence? Because, when there is fighting in the streets, they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are required to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include banning democratic political parties, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial – people such as us whose only crime is to disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, or unlikely –something that could never happen? Well they used exactly those tactics in Germany – and it worked.”

      In London, during an anti-government rally in 1936, Fascists chanted:

                  “One, two, three, four,

                  “We’re gonna get rid of the Yids!

                  “The Yids! The Yids!

                  “We’re gonna get rid of the Yids!”

      At the Trump rallies, different words perhaps, but the chants came from similar throats, and their tenor was the same:

                  “Jail her!  Jail her!  Jail her!”

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