Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

by Jonah Goldberg

  * I believe in upholding the right of private property yet of controlling it for the public good.

  * I believe not only in the right of the laboring man to organize in unions but also in the duty of the Government which that laboring man supports to protect these organizations against the vested interests of wealth and of intellect.

  * I believe in the event of a war and for the defense of our nation and its liberties, if there shall be a conscription of men let there be a conscription of wealth.

  * I believe in preferring the sanctity of human rights to the sanctity of property rights. I believe that the chief concern of government shall be for the poor, because, as is witnessed, the rich have ample means of their own to care for themselves.30

  The following month Coughlin issued another seven principles, to elaborate exactly how the NUSJ would combat the horrors of capitalism and modern commerce. These were even more explicitly anticapitalist. Thus it was the government's "duty" to limit the "profits acquired by any industry." All workers must be guaranteed what we would today call a living wage. The government must guarantee the production of "food, wearing apparel, homes, drugs, books and all modern conveniences." "This principle," Coughlin rightly explained, "is contrary to the theory of capitalism."31

  The program was largely derived from the prevailing views of the liberal wing of the Catholic Church, the Minnesota Farmer-Labor and Wisconsin Progressive labor parties, and Coughlin's own well-worn themes. That his economic doctrine should be influenced from the disparate branches of American populism shouldn't be a surprise. From the outset, Coughlin's ideological roots intermingled with those of many New Dealers and progressives and populists. At no time was he ever associated with classical liberalism or with the economic forces we normally connect with the right.

  This returns us to one of the most infuriating distortions of American political debate. In the 1930s, what defined a "right-winger" was almost exclusively opposition to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The muckraking journalist J. T. Flynn, for example, is often labeled a leading light of the Old Right for no other reason than that he was a relentless FDR critic and a member of America First (indeed, he was one of the most articulate voices decrying the incipient fascism of the New Deal). But Flynn was no classical liberal. He had been a left-leaning columnist for the New Republic for much of the 1930s, and he denounced Roosevelt for moving in what he considered a rightward direction. As for his isolationism, he considered himself a fellow traveler with Norman Thomas, head of the American Socialist Party, Charles Beard, and John Dewey.

  Senator Huey Long, the archetypal American fascist, is likewise often called a right-winger by his detractors--though his place in the liberal imagination is more complicated. Many Democrats, including Bill Clinton, still admire Long and invoke him very selectively. Long inspired Sinclair's It Can't Happen Here as well as the far superior All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, and his larger-than-life persona elicits an ambivalent reaction from liberals who admire his economic populism but dislike his unrefined demagoguery. But leaving all that aside, what cannot be denied is that Long attacked the New Deal from the left. His Share the Wealth plan was pure booboisie socialism. His well-documented opposition to the actual Socialist Party was entirely cultural and pragmatic, not ideological. "Will you please tell me what sense there is in running on a socialist ticket in America today?" Long quizzed a reporter from the Nation. "What's the use of being right only to be defeated?" Meanwhile, Norman Thomas was regularly beseeched by his rank and file to show more sympathy to Coughlin and Long. "Now I am a socialist," an Alabama man wrote Thomas in 1935, "have been for thirty five years...[Long] is telling the people the things we have been telling them for a generation. They listen to him...while they thought we were fools."32

  What makes Long so recognizable as a fascist was his folksy contempt for the rules of democracy--"the time has come for all good men to rise above principle"--and his absolute faith that he was the authentic voice of the people. His rule over Louisiana certainly transcended that of a mere political boss. He had an authentic organic connection with his constituents that seemed to exceed anything Americans had seen before. "There is no dictatorship in Louisiana. There is a perfect democracy there, and when you have a perfect democracy it is pretty hard to tell it from a dictatorship."33 Oddly enough, what may have allowed so many liberals and socialists to recognize the fascism in Long's politics was their own elitism and cosmopolitanism. Long had no use for pointy-headed experts and elites. His was an undiluted populism of the sort that throws aside dogma and celebrates the wisdom of the mob above all else. He appealed to the narcissism of the masses, proclaiming that through his own will to power he could make "every man a king." He had a relationship with his folk more akin to Hitler's relationship to the Volk than FDR could ever manage. As such, many liberals saw it as threatening, and rightly so.

  Within the White House, Long and Coughlin were seen, along with other populist and radical movements and leaders--including Upton Sinclair's 1934 campaign for the governorship of California and Dr. Francis Townsend's bizarre pension movement, which swept the country in the 1930s--as dangerous threats to the control and rule of New Deal planners.34 But only the most sloppy and circular thinking--the sort that says right-wing equals bad, and bad equals right-wing--would label such radicals and collectivists as anything but creatures of the left.

  In 1935 Roosevelt was sufficiently worried about these various threats from the left that he ordered a secret poll to be conducted. The results scared the dickens out of many of his strategists, who concluded that Long could cost FDR the election if he ran on a third-party ticket. Indeed, Roosevelt confessed to aides that he hoped to "steal Long's thunder" by adopting at least some of his issues.

  How did FDR hope to steal the thunder of incipient fascist and collectivist movements in the United States? Social Security, for starters. Although the extent of its influence is hotly debated, few dispute that the national-socialist push from below--represented by Long, Coughlin, and Townsend--contributed to the leftward tilt of Roosevelt's "Second Hundred Days." FDR the Third Wayer aped the Bismarckian tactic of splitting the difference with the radicals in order to maintain power. Indeed, just when Long's popularity was spiking, Roosevelt unexpectedly inserted a "soak the rich" bill into his list of "must pass" legislative proposals. How things would have played out over time is unknowable because Long was assassinated in September 1935. As for Coughlin, his problems accelerated as he became ever more of an economic radical and ever more sympathetic to the actual, name-brand, foreign fascism of Mussolini and Hitler. His anti-Semitism--evident even when Roosevelt and New Deal liberals welcomed his support--likewise became ever more pronounced. During the war FDR ordered his Justice Department to spy on Coughlin with the aim of silencing him.

  How much electoral support Long, the Coughlinites, and the rest would have garnered had Long survived to challenge Roosevelt at the polls remains a matter of academic speculation, but it is somewhat irrelevant to the larger point. These populist leftists framed the public debate. That Coughlin garnered 40 million listeners in a nation of only 127 million and that his audience was largest when he was calling the New Deal "Christ's Deal" should tell us something about the nature of FDR's appeal, and Coughlin's. Even those New Dealers who despised Long and Coughlin believed that if they didn't steal their thunder, "Huey Long and Father Coughlin might take over." What's more, there was precious little daylight between the substantive ideas and motivations of "street" or "country" fascists like Long and Coughlin and those of the more rarefied intellectuals who staffed the Roosevelt administration.

  REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN MAN

  One can easily make too much of the parallel chronology of Hitler's and Roosevelt's tenures. But it is not a complete coincidence that they both came to power in 1933. Though obviously very different men, they understood many of the same things about politics in the mass age. Both owed their elections to the perceived exhaustion of traditional l
iberal politics, and they were the two world leaders who most successfully exploited new political technologies. Roosevelt most famously utilized the radio--and the Nazis quickly aped the practice. FDR broke with all tradition to fly to the Democratic National Convention to accept his party's nomination. The imagery of him flying--a man of action!--rather than sitting on the porch and waiting for the news was electrifying, as was Hitler's brilliant use of planes, most famously in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Take away the text of New Deal, Soviet, and Nazi propaganda posters and other artwork, and it's almost impossible to tell whether the bulging-biceps laborers are the New Soviet Man, the New Nazi Man, or the New Deal Man. Max Lerner observed in 1934, "The most damning blow that the dictatorships have struck at democracy has been the compliment they have paid us in taking over (and perfecting) our most prized devices of persuasion and our underlying contempt for the credulity of the masses."35

  Where FDR and Hitler overlapped most was in their fawning over "the forgotten man." Fascism's success almost always depends on the cooperation of the "losers" during a time of economic and technological change. The lower-middle classes--the people who have just enough to fear losing it--are the electoral shock troops of fascism (Richard Hofstadter identified this "status anxiety" as the source of Progressivism's quasi-fascist nature). Populist appeals to resentment against "fat cats," "international bankers," "economic royalists," and so on are the stock-in-trade of fascist demagogues. Hitler and Mussolini were surely more demagogic than FDR, but Roosevelt fully understood the "magic" of such appeals. He saw nothing wrong with ascribing evil motives to those who didn't support him, and he certainly relished his role as the wellborn tribune of the little guy.

  Obviously, this wasn't all a cynical act. FDR did care about the little guy, the worker, and the like. But so did Hitler. Indeed, there is a mounting body of scholarship showing that "Hitler's New Deal" (David Schoenbaum's phrase) was not only similar to FDR's but in fact more generous and more successful. Germany prospered under Hitler according to the most basic indicators. The birthrate increased 50 percent from 1932 to 1936; marriages increased until Germany led Europe in 1938-39. Suicide plummeted by 80 percent from 1932 to 1939. A recent book by the German historian Gotz Aly calls Hitler the "feel good dictator" because he was so successful in restoring German confidence.36

  When Hitler became chancellor he focused like a laser on the economy, ending unemployment far faster than FDR. When asked by the New York Times if his first priority was jobs, Hitler boisterously responded, "Wholly! I am thinking first of those in Germany who are in despair and who have been in despair for three years...What does anything else matter?" Hitler said he was a great admirer of Henry Ford, though he didn't mention Ford's virulent anti-Semitism. What appealed to Hitler about Ford was that he "produces for the masses. That little car of his had done more than anything else to destroy class differences."37

  Mussolini and Hitler also felt that they were doing things along similar lines to FDR. Indeed, they celebrated the New Deal as a kindred effort. The German press was particularly lavish in its praise for FDR. In 1934 the Volkischer Beobachter--the Nazi Party's official newspaper--described Roosevelt as a man of "irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will" and a "warmhearted leader of the people with a profound understanding of social needs." The paper emphasized that Roosevelt, through his New Deal, had eliminated "the uninhibited frenzy of market speculation" of the previous decade by adopting "National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies." After his first year in office, Hitler sent FDR a private letter congratulating "his heroic efforts in the interests of the American people. The President's successful battle against economic distress is being followed by the entire German people with interest and admiration." And he told the American ambassador, William Dodd, that he was "in accord with the President in the view that the virtue of duty, readiness for sacrifice, and discipline should dominate the entire people. These moral demands which the President places before every individual citizen of the United States are also the quintessence of the German state philosophy, which finds its expression in the slogan 'The Public Weal Transcends the Interest of the Individual.'"38

  Mussolini was even more assiduous in claiming the New Deal as an incipient fascist phenomenon. He reviewed FDR's book Looking Forward, saying, in effect, "This guy's one of us": "The appeal to the decisiveness and masculine sobriety of the nation's youth, with which Roosevelt here calls his readers to battle, is reminiscent of the ways and means by which Fascism awakened the Italian people." Mussolini wrote that FDR understood that the economy could not "be left to its own devices" and saw the fascistic nature of how the American president put this understanding into practice. "Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism," he wrote. (He later reviewed a book by Henry Wallace, proclaiming, "Where is America headed? This book leaves no doubt that it is on the road to corporatism, the economic system of the current century.") The Volkischer Beobachter also noted that "many passages in his book Looking Forward could have been written by a National Socialist. In any case, one can assume that he feels considerable affinity with the National Socialist philosophy."39

  In a famous interview with Emil Ludwig, Mussolini reiterated his view that "America has a dictator" in FDR. In an essay written for American audiences, he marveled at how the forces of "spiritual renewal" were destroying the outdated notion that democracy and liberalism were "immortal principles." "America itself is abandoning them. Roosevelt is moving, acting, giving orders independently of the decisions or wishes of the Senate or Congress. There are no longer intermediaries between him and the nation. There is no longer a parliament but an 'etat majeur.' There are no longer parties, but a single party. A sole will silences dissenting voices. This has nothing to do with any demo-liberal conception of things." In 1933 members of Mussolini's press office recognized that these statements were starting to hurt their putative comrade-in-arms. They issued an order: "It is not to be emphasized that Roosevelt's policy is fascist because these comments are immediately cabled to the United States and are used by his foes to attack him." Still, the admiration remained mutual for several years. FDR sent his ambassador to Italy, Breckinridge Long, a letter regarding "that admirable Italian gentleman," saying that Mussolini "is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished."40

  Perhaps Norman Thomas, America's leading socialist, put the question best: "To what extent may we expect to have the economics of fascism without its politics?"41

  But the most glaring similarity between Nazi Germany, New Deal America, and Fascist Italy wasn't their economic policies. It was their common glorification of war.

  THE FASCIST NEW DEALS

  The core value of original fascism, in the eyes of most observers, was its imposition of war values on society. (This perception--or misperception, depending on how it is articulated--is so fundamental to the popular understanding of fascism that I must return to it several times in this book.) The chief appeal of war to social planners isn't conquest or death but mobilization. Free societies are disorganized. People do their own thing, more or less, and that can be downright inconvenient if you're trying to plan the entire economy from a boardroom somewhere. War brings conformity and unity of purpose. The ordinary rules of behavior are mothballed. You can get things done: build roads, hospitals, houses. Domestic populations and institutions were required to "do their part."

  Many progressives probably would have preferred a different organizing principle, which is why William James spoke of the moral equivalent of war. He wanted all the benefits--Dewey's "social possibilities" of war--without the costs. Hence, in more recent times, the left has looked to everything from environmentalism and global warming to public health and "diversity" as war equivalents to cajole the public into expert-driven unity. But at the time the progressives just couldn't think of anything else that did the trick. "Martial v
irtues," James famously wrote, "must be the enduring cement" of American society: "intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command must still remain the rock upon which states are built."42

  In Italy many of the first Fascists were veterans who donned paramilitary garb. The fascist artistic movement Futurism glorified war in prose, poetry, and paint. Mussolini was a true voluptuary of battle, rhetorically and literally. "War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it," he declared in a Jamesian spirit in the Enciclopedia italiana's entry on Fascism. Meanwhile, from the movement's origin as the German Fighting League Against Interest Slavery, the Nazis were always a paramilitary organization, determined to recapture the esprit de corps of the Great War, the socialism of the trenches.

  Still, not every Fascist pounding the table about war actually wanted one. Mussolini didn't launch a war until a full sixteen years into his reign. Even his Ethiopian adventure was motivated by a desire to revitalize Fascism's flagging domestic fortunes. Hitler did not commence his military buildup at once, either. Indeed, while solidifying power, he cultivated an image as a peacemaker (an image many Western pacifists were willing to indulge in good faith). But few dispute that he saw war as a means as much as an end.

  With the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the progressives who'd sought to remake America through war socialism were back in power. While they professed to eschew dogma, they couldn't be more dogmatically convinced that World War I had been a successful "experiment." Had not the experiences of the Soviet Union and Fascist Italy in the 1920s proved that America had dropped the ball by relinquishing war socialism?

  During the campaign FDR promised to use his experience as an architect of the Great War to tackle the Depression. Even before he was nominated, he ordered aides to prepare a brief on presidential war powers. He asked Rexford Tugwell to find out if he could use the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act to unilaterally embargo gold exports and extracted an assurance from his intended attorney general that no matter what the arguments to the contrary, the Department of Justice would find that Roosevelt had the authority to do whatever he felt necessary in this regard. Roosevelt's inaugural address was famously drenched with martial metaphors: "I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to the disciplined attack upon our common problems."