LIBERAL FASCISM: The Secret History of the AMERICAN LEFT from MUSSOLINI to the POLITICS OF MEANING

by Jonah Goldberg

  So what was the essence of this “revolution from above”? In the economic sphere it was most often called “corporatism,” a slippery word for dividing up industry into cooperative units, guilds, and associations that would work together under the rubric of “national purpose.” Corporatism simply seemed like a more honest and straightforward attempt at what social planners and businessmen had been groping toward for decades. Other names proliferated as well, from “syndicalism” to “national planning” to, simply, the “Third Way.” The new sense of national purpose, it was thought, would allow business and labor to put aside their class differences and hammer out what was best for everyone, in much the same way the war planners had in Germany. America, and throughout the West. The Third Way represented a widespread exhaustion with politics and a newfound faith in science and experts.

  The image of the fasces conjures the spirit of the idea: strength in unity. Corporations or syndicates representing different sectors of the economy would, like the sticks around the fasces, bind tightly together for the “public interest.” Fascists agreed with Marxists that class conflict was a central challenge of economic life; they merely differed—often only at a theoretical level—on how the conflict should be resolved. By making citizens see themselves as Germans or Italians rather than as workers or bosses, corporatists hoped to make Hitler’s declaration “There are no such thing as classes” a reality. Hitler in fact believed in classes—siding culturally and politically with the workers over the rich—but he, like most fascists, believed that class differences could be subordinated to the common good through nationalistic fervor. Under the Third Way, society would get all the benefits of capitalism with none of the drawbacks. The market would exist, but it would be constrained within “healthy” and “productive” borders. As the Italian Fascist procurator general Senator Silvio Longhi put it. “The state recognizes and safeguards individual property rights so long as they are not being exercised in a way which contravenes the prevailing collective interest.”

  “I believe,” proclaimed FDR in 1932, “that the individual should have full liberty of action to make the most of himself; but I do not believe that in the name of that sacred word, a few powerful interests should be permitted to make industrial cannon fodder of the lives of half of the population of the United States.” Such Third Way rhetoric had a familiar echo in much Nazi propaganda as well. In a typical editorial, written on May 27, 1929, Goebbels explained that the party “was not against capital but against its misuse...For us, too, property is holy. But that does not mean that we sing in the chorus of those who have turned the concept of property into a distorted monstrosity...A people of free and responsible owners: that is the goal of German socialism.”

  THE NAZI GLEICHSCHALTUNG

  Fascism is the cult of unity, within all spheres and between all spheres. Fascists are desperate to erode the “artificial,” legal, or cultural boundaries between family and state, public and private, business and the “public good.” Unlike communist Jacobinism (or Jacobin communism, if you prefer), which expropriated property and uprooted institutions in order to remake society from the ground up, fascism pragmatically sought to preserve what was good and authentic about society while bending it to the common good. Interests or institutions that stood in the way of progress could be nationalized, to be sure. But if they worked with the regime, if they “did their part,” they could keep their little factories, banks, clubs, and department stores.

  It’s revealing that coiporatism has many of its roots in Catholic doctrine. The 1891 papal encyclical Re rum novanmi proposed corporatism or syndicalism in response to the dislocations of the Industrial Revolution. In 1931 an updated encyclical. Quadragesima anno, reaffirmed the principles of Rerum novanmi. The two documents formed the backbone of progressive Catholic social thought. The Church’s interest in corporatism stemmed from its belief that this was the best way to revive medieval social arrangements that gave man a greater sense of meaning in his life.

  In short, corporatism was in large measure a spiritual project. Both the cold impersonal forces of Marx’s history and the unloving dogma of Adam Smith’s invisible hand would be rejected in favor of a Third Way that let the “forgotten man” feel like he had a place in the grand scheme of things.

  The Nazis had a word for this process: Gle’tchschaltung. A political word borrowed—like so many others—from the realm of engineering, it meant “coordination.” The idea was simple: all institutions needed to work together as if they were part of the same machine. Those that did so willingly were given wide latitude by the state. “Islands of separateness”—be they businesses, churches, or people—were worn down over time. There could be no rocks in the river of progress. In effect, the entire society agreed to the fascist bargain, in which they bought economic, moral, and political security in exchange for absolute loyalty to the ideals of the Reich. Of course, this was a false security; the fascist bargain is a Faustian bargain. But that is what people thought they were getting.

  The Fuhrer Principle was a key mechanism of the Gleichschaltung. Under the Fuhrerptinzip, all of civil society was supposed to operate like a military unit with each cell reporting loyally to its leader, and those leaders to their leaders, all the way up to Hitler himself. For German businesses this was an easy transition because they already implemented something like a Fuhrerprinzip in their organizations. In this sense German business culture contributed to the rise of Nazism, partly by laying the groundwork for a German Swopism. but indirectly as well, by readying the German mind for the sort of social control the Nazis wished to impose.

  The Krupp Konzeni—the reviled armory for the Third Reich—blazed the trail for the fascist bargain in the nineteenth century with Alfred Krupp’s General Regulations. In the 1870s Krupp instituted a health service, schools, life insurance, workmen’s compensation, a pension scheme, hospitals, even an old-age home for his employees. His General Regulations served as a mini social contract between him and his workers. In return for their loyalty—that is, eschewing labor unions and socialist agitation—Krupp provided all the perks the socialists were fighting for. “What may strike the Auslander as odd,” writes William Manchester, “is that Alfred’s General Regulations were regarded—and in Essen are still regarded—as liberal. For the first time a German firm was spelling out its duties to its men.” Krupp’s General Regulations became one of the central progressive documents for reform in Bismarck’s Prussia and, by extension, much of the West. Today companies with similar policies get fawning profiles on 60 Minutes.

  Under the Gleichschaltung, the Nazis merely extended and broadened these arrangements. The state demanded loyalty from Krupp and his ilk in return for the protection of the state. This was merely another way of saying that all of society was to be Nazified—that is, politicized—so that every unit of society did its part for the larger cause. As a result, businesses became transmission belts for Nazi propaganda and values. The Nazi “war on cancer” was taken up by firms that banned smoking. The Nazi war on alcoholism and the Hitlerite emphasis on organic foods slowly pushed the beverage industry away from beer and booze and toward natural fruit juices.. Children were a special priority. In 1933 the Nazis banned alcohol advertising aimed at children. In 1936 a new certification system was implemented that labeled some beverages and foodstuffs “tit” or “unfit” for children. (Coca-Cola was ruled unfit for kids.) That same year a full quarter of all the mineral water produced in Germany came from breweries. In 1938 the head of the Reich Health Office, Hans Reiter. declared that henceforth sweet cider was the official “people’s drink” (Volks get rank) of Germany.

  The Nazis—always disproportionately supported by bureaucrats in the “helping professions”—benefited from particularly eager accomplices in the health-care industry. In a nation where democracy and civil liberties were swept aside and experts—doctors, regulators, and “industrial hygienists”—were promoted to positions of unparalleled authority, the Nazis offered a much-yearned-for
opportunity to “get beyond politics.” For example, the Reich Anticancer Committee proclaimed in its first annual report: “The year 1933 was a decisive one for the war against cancer: the national socialist revolution (Umwdlzung) has created entirely new opportunities for sweeping measures in an area that until now has been rather limited...The energetic and unanimous engagement (Ehisatz) of the medical profession has shown that new avenues have opened for the struggle against cancer in the new Germany.”

  Vast public and moral health campaigns were put in place to promote safe working environments, along with the production of wholesome organic foods, anti-animal-cruelty measures, and other progressive advances. While many of these reforms were imposed from above by social engineers with the willing compliance of businessmen now freed from the usual concerns about such costly modifications, the Nazis also worked tirelessly to cultivate and encourage demand from below for these reforms. Everyone from the lowliest worker to the wealthiest baron was encouraged to believe and enforce the idea that if you weren’t part of the solution, you were part of the problem. German consumers, too, were hectored relentlessly to buy products that promoted the “common good.”

  Language itself was bent to what could only be called Nazi political correctness. Victor Klemperer. a professor of Romance languages at the University of Dresden fired for his Jewish ancestry in 1935, dedicated himself to chronicling the subtle transformations of speech and daily life brought about by the Gleichschaltung. “The mechanization of the individual,” he explained, “first manifested itself in ‘Gleichschaltung.’ ” He watched as phrases like “Hitler weather”—to describe a sunny day—crept into everyday conversation. The Nazis “changed the values, the frequency of words, [and] made into common property words that had previously been used by individuals or tiny troupes. They confiscated words for the party, saturated words and phrases and sentence forms with their poison. They made the language serve their terrible system. They conquered words and made them into their strongest advertising tools, at once the most public and the most secret.”

  Popular culture, from television and film to marketing and advertising, was an essential tool for this process. Movie studios in particular were eager to work with the regime and vice versa. Goebbels put a great deal of stock in the medium, believing that “film is one of the most modern and far-reaching means of influencing the masses.” But he assured the film industry that the government would not be taking over. Rather, this would be a public-private partnership. “We have no intention of obstructing production,” he told studio heads in his first address to the industry, “neither do we wish to hamper private enterprise: On the contrary, this will receive a great deal of impetus through the national movement.” The film industry worked with the government, formally and informally, releasing mostly escapist fare for German audiences as well as a steady stream of allegorically worshipful films about Hitler. Movie audiences were subtly encouraged to change their thinking not merely about, say, Jews and foreign policy, but about what it meant to be a human being in the modern world.

  Despite the Nazis’ complete control of society, many still felt that big business was getting away with murder. Himmler was particularly vexed by the slow pace of his efforts to transform the way Germans ate: “The artificial is everywhere; everywhere food is adulterated, filled with ingredients that supposedly make it last longer, or look better, or pass as ‘enriched,’ or whatever else the industry’s admen want us to believe...[W]e are in the hands of the food companies, whose economic clout and advertising make it possible for them to prescribe what we can and cannot eat...[A]fter the war we shall take energetic steps to prevent the ruin of our people by the food industries.” Here we can see the inexorable undertow of Third Way totalitarianism. Every problem in life must logically be the result of insufficient cooperation by institutions or individuals. If only we could turn the ratchet one more notch, then—click!—everything would fall into place and all contradictions would be eliminated.

  Obviously, the Jews bore the brunt of the Gleichschaltung. They were the “other” against whom the Nazis defined their organic society. Given Jewish economic success, the business community of necessity played a central role in the “Aryanization” of society—a convenient excuse for businesses to seize Jewish holdings and for German professionals to take Jewish jobs in academia, the arts, and science. A great many Germans simply refused to make good on their debts to Jewish creditors. Banks foreclosed on mortgages. Vultures seized Jewish businesses or offered to pay pennies on the dollar for them, knowing full well that Jews had no recourse. Or they informed on their competitors, charging that Firm X was insufficiently committed to purging the stain of Judaism from its business.

  Nothing so horrific happened in the United States, and it’s unlikely that it would have, even if Hugh Johnson’s darkest fantasies had been realized. But the practices of the Nazis and Johnson’s NRA were more similar than different. Johnson’s thugs broke down doors and threw people in jail for not participating with the Blue Eagle. Hitler’s goons did likewise. “Those who are not with us are against us.” Johnson roared, “and the way to show that you are a part of this great army of the New Deal is to insist on this symbol of solidarity.” The New Dealers’ slogan “We do our part” echoed the Nazi refrain “The common good before the private good.” After all, it was Stuart Chase, not Albert Speer, who argued in his Economy of Abundance that what was required was an “industrial general staff with dictatorial powers.”

  As for popular culture, there isn’t enough room to discuss the subject as fully as it deserves. The New Deal invested millions of dollars funding artists and writers who repaid this kindness by generating a vast body of artistic and literary work propping up the New Deal. But one episode in particular may shed light on the true nature of the period.

  Like many other leading Americans, the media tycoon William Randolph Hearst believed America needed a dictator. After first backing the America Firster Jack Garner, he switched to FDR (and claimed that he put Roosevelt over the top at the Democratic convention). Deciding that the best way to influence FDR—and the American people—was via Hollywood, he personally reworked a script based on the book Gabriel Over the White House, which became a movie of the same name starring Walter Huston as President Judd Hammond.

  The propagandists nature of the film cannot be exaggerated. Hammond, a Hoover-like partisan hack of a president, has a car accident and is visited by the archangel Gabriel. When he recovers, he is reborn with a religious fervor to do good for America. He fires his entire cabinet—big-business lackeys all! Congress impeaches Hammond, and in response he appears before a joint session to proclaim. “We need action—immediate and effective action.” After this he suspends Congress, assuming the “temporary” power to make all laws. He orders the formation of a new “Army of Construction” answerable only to him. spends billions on one New Deal-like program after another, and nationalizes the sale and manufacture of alcohol. When he meets with resistance from gangsters, presumably in league with his political enemies, he orders a military trial run by his aide-de-camp. Immediately after the trial, the gangsters are lined up against a wall behind the courthouse and executed. With that victory under his belt, Hammond goes on to bring about world peace by threatening to destroy any nation that disobeys him—or reneges on its debts to America. He dies of a heart attack at the end and is eulogized as “one of the greatest presidents who ever lived.”

  One of the project’s uncredited script doctors was the Democratic presidential nominee. Franklin D. Roosevelt. He took time off from the campaign to read the script and suggested several important changes that Hearst incorporated into the film. “I want to send you this line to tell you how pleased I am with the changes you made in ‘Gabriel Over the White House,’ ” Roosevelt wrote a month into office. “I think it is an intensely interesting picture and should do much to help.”

  Ever since, Hollywood has been equally eager to help liberal causes and politicians. The movie D
ave, starring Kevin Kline as a bighearted populist who is asked to impersonate a stricken (conservative) president and engineers a socially conscious coup d’etat, is merely an updating of the same premise.

  THE LIBERAL FASCIST BARGAIN

  Today we still live under the fundamentally fascistic economic system established by Wilson and FDR. We do live in an “unconscious civilization” of fascism, albeit of a friendly sort infinitely more benign than that of Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, or FDR’s America. This is the system I call liberal fascism.

  Just because business thrives under capitalism doesn’t mean businessmen are necessarily principled capitalists. Businessmen—at least those at the helm of very large corporations—do not like risk, and capitalism by definition requires risk. Capital must be put to work in a market where nothing is assured. But businessmen are. by nature and training, encouraged to beat back uncertainty and risk. Hence, as a group, they aren’t principled capitalists but opportunists in the most literal sense.

  Most successful businessmen would prefer not to bother with politics. For years both Wal-Mart and Microsoft boasted that they had no interest in Washington. Microsoft’s chief, Bill Gates, bragged that he was “from the other Washington,” and he basically had one lonely lobbyist hanging around the nation’s capital. Gates changed his mind when the government nearly destroyed his company. The Senate Judiciary Committee invited him to Washington, D.C., to atone for his success, and the senators, in the words of the New York Times, “took a kind of giddy delight in making the wealthiest man in America squirm in his seat.” In response, Gates hired an army of consultants, lobbyists, and lawyers to fight off the government. In the 2000 presidential election, Wal-Mart ranked 771st in direct contributions to federal politicians. In the intervening years, unions and regulators began to drool over the enormous target the mega-retailer had become. In 2004 Wal-Mart ranked as the single largest corporate political action committee. In 2006 it launched an unprecedented “voter education” drive.