Days after print publication, Bill Knight’s syndicated newspaper column, which moves twice a week, will appear here. The most recent will appear at the top. (Columns before Sep. 11, 2017, are archived at http://billknightcolumn.blogspot.com/).

Sunday, April 12, 2020

An early warning about U.S. authoritarianism


Bill Knight column for 4-9, 10 or 11, 2020   

Seventy-six years ago this week, U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace wrote a New York Times piece about fascism that not only stirred red-white-and-blue fervor during World War II, but now seems both timeless. And timely. And troubling.
The April 9, 1944, essay said, “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 supreme god of a fascist … may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.
“It is an infectious disease,” he continued, “and we must all be on our guard against intolerance, bigotry and the pretension of invidious distinction. Every Jew-baiter, every Catholic hater, is a fascist at heart. The hoodlums who have been desecrating churches, cathedrals and synagogues … are ripe material for fascist leadership.”
Wallace especially targeted those who exploited the media.
“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,” he wrote. “His method is to poison the channels of public information.”
Investigative journalist I.F. Stone wrote, “Let no one call Henry Wallace an ineffectual dreamer. In this town [Washington, D.C.], which worships 'toughness' but usually mistakes the loudmouthed for the strong, this is an achievement.”
Twenty years ago, John Culver and John Hyde published their definitive biography “American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace,” showing Wallace as a cerebral country boy who rose to national prominence as a friend of farmers and workers and a progressive who denounced racial segregation.
Born of Scottish ancestry on an Orient, Iowa, farm, Wallace was the son of Harry Wallace, a Republican who started the premier agriculture journal of its time, Wallaces' Farmer, co-founded the American Farm Bureau, and was Secretary of Agriculture for President Harding. Henry was a solid journalist and scientist, a gifted gardener and inventor who launched the Hi-Bred seed company (later Pioneer) and in 1936 became a Democrat. But he was considered an outsider by party bosses. Nevertheless, Franklin D. Roosevelt had made Wallace his Agriculture Secretary from 1933-1940, and then picked him as a running mate. Wallace served as VP from 1941-45, after which he became Commerce Secretary.
In 1944, weeks after Allied bombers mounted the first full-scale daylight raid on Berlin, Wallace wrote about fascists in general, saying, “Always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.”
Wallace also conceded the existence of authoritarian tendencies in the United States.
“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States,” Wallace wrote. “There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful.
“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion,” he added.
Favored by an ailing Roosevelt to return as VP, Wallace later that year was betrayed by Democratic Party insiders allied with conservative interests, ironically foreshadowed in his 1,843-word essay.
“American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the KKK-type of demagoguery.”
His writing was as inspiring as his 1942 speech “Century of the Common Man,” which moved composer Aaron Copland to write “Fanfare for the Common Man.” But following his failed third-party run for the presidency as a Progressive in 1944, he nominally returned to the Republican Party and eventually supported Eisenhower, yet consulted with Kennedy and Johnson before being stricken with ALS (“Lou Gehrig’s Disease”) and dying in 1965.
But his life was as an idealist.
“If we put our trust in the common sense of common men and ‘with malice toward none and charity for all’ go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.”

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