The United States of Fascism
The struggle between Fascists and Antifascists still continues but, echoing recent events, became a real coup attempt in 1934...
Smedley Butler is one of the unsung heroes of our history. Although he is never even mentioned in the history books taught in our schools he really deserves a long and thoughtful chapter devoted to his interesting life and revelations. Decorated during the first part of his life (he received two Medals of Honor for separate acts of outstanding heroism) he was later denigrated and publicly ridiculed for being the whistleblower who stopped a fascist coup against FDR by powerful financial interests who still exert their power over the world today.
Humanity lived through the rise of the Axis dictators 80 years ago but not many are still alive to remember how each step was small enough to get by and set a new normal. Many Americans, then as now, wholeheartedly supported it. People did not stop it in time then and 100 million people died. Do we really just want to repeat that history just because authorities tell us to? It's worth remembering (once again) that the root word of "authority" is "author" - it's a matter of whose story we choose to manifest. Ideologies do not exist in the physical world - they are fictions that only inhabit minds - but the actions of people controlled by them physically impact everyone they touch.
In 1933-34 a group of right-wing financiers (The American Liberty League - virtually all of them founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations) picked retired Marine general Smedley Darlington Butler (with General Douglas MacArthur alleged to be the back-up leader if Butler declined) to lead a coup against FDR and put in place a fascist, military-type government, complete with concentration camps for “Jews and other undesirables.” They considered FDR to be a socialist that would destroy their wealth and power.
Butler was promised an army of 500,000 men (mostly unemployed WWI veterans) for a march on Washington, D.C., and financial backing ($3 million as starters and an additional $300 million later - a huge amount in that day). The League was headed by the DuPont and J.P Morgan cartels and had major support from Andrew Mellon Associates, Pew (Sun Oil), Rockefeller Associates, E.F. Hutton Associates, U.S. Steel, General Motors, Chase, Standard Oil and Goodyear Tires.
Money was funneled thru the Senator Prescott Bush-led Union Banking Corporation (which was later shut down for being a tool of the Nazis) and the Prescott Bush-led Brown Brothers Harriman. Senator Prescott Bush was the father of President George H. W. Bush and grandfather to President George W. Bush. The plotters bragged about Bush’s Hitler connections and even claimed that Germany had promised Bush that it would provide matériel for the coup. A year earlier, Chevrolet president William S. Knudsen (who himself had donated $10,000 to the League) went to Germany and met with Nazi leaders and declared upon his return that Hitler’s Germany was “the miracle of the twentieth century.” At the time, GM’s wholly-owned Adam-Opal Co. had already begun producing the Nazi’s tanks, trucks and bomber engines. James D. Mooney, GM’s vice-president for foreign operations was joined by Henry Ford and IBM chief Tom Watson in receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler for their considerable efforts on behalf of the Third Reich.
Butler listened to what they were planning but he saw it as treason and he reported it to Congress. Congress (and even FDR!) felt that it would be too great a blow to the ailing economy to pursue actions against them - THEY WERE TOO IMPORTANT TO FAIL! Although Butler testified in detail, all of the names he gave were redacted from the record and not a one of them was ever charged with a crime or even called to testify.
Butler gave secret testimony before the McCormack-Dickstein committee which predated the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In his testimony he stated that he had been approached by Gerald P. MacGuire of Wall Street’s Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. with the plot. After his testimony there was an orchestrated campaign using the mainstream press to discredit and downplay the story. From 1934 through 1936, the League got thirty-five pro-League front page stories in the New York Times. TIME ridiculed Butler in a Dec. 3, 1934 cover story, even though Butler’s story was corroborated by VFW head James E. Van Zandt, who also said he was approached to lead the coup. The Scripps-Howard papers were the only press that backed FDR and presented the truth.
The League promoted itself as a bastion of all concerned about “burdensome taxes imposed upon industry for unemployment insurance and old age pension.” The League sought to “combat radicalism” and to “teach respect for the rights of persons and property, and generally to foster free private enterprise.” FDR called the plotters “economic royalists”
William S. Knudsen was the sole inside plotter who turned against the plot and later championed workers rights leading the way to the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, union organizing rights, and pensions. As president of General Motors, GM went on to become the world’s top corporation for 40 years, the country saw the rise of a middle class and wealth disparity was at the lowest levels ever in the US although he also was also later instrumental in the rise of the Military Industrial Complex. Knudsen, a Danish immigrant, become the first civilian commissioned as a U.S. Army General.
Today, the “royalists” now own the government, both major political parties, as well as the mainstream press and their own armies. War profiteering still tops the agenda, followed closely by attacks on workers’ wages, pensions, and health care. The Nazis, not so much Hitler who was just their front man but those who actually propped him up, didn't lose the war, they just changed their approach after they milked all they could out of WWII. Today they have social and surveillance tools that were unimaginable at that time but the goal is still wealth and power over others.
Henry Wallace in his April 1944 New York Times editorial “The Danger of Fascism” wrote:
"A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends."
"The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press - Dangerous as these people may be - the really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
Somehow it is never enough and now it appears that those same interests are ramping up for a new holocaust for the world. It can be stopped. We have the knowledge and the means. Do we still have the will?