Fascism Comes to America: A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture

250 Pages·2022·2.223 MB·English

by  Bruce Kuklick

Fascism Comes to America

Fascism Comes
to America
A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture
bruce kuklick
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2022 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical
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Published 2022
Printed in the United States of America
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isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 82146- 7 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 82245- 7 (e- book)
doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226822457.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kuklick, Bruce, 1941- author.
Title: Fascism comes to America : a century of obsession in politics and culture /
Bruce Kuklick.
Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2022012517 | isbn 9780226821467 (cloth) |
isbn 9780226822457 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Language and languages—Political aspects. | Fascism—
United States. | United States—Politics and government—20th century. |
United States—Politics and government—21st century.
Classification: lcc p119.32.u6 k83 2022 | ddc 306.44—dc23/eng/20220316
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012517
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
For Charles Myers
and
Rosemarie D’Alba
’Tis writ, “In the beginning was the Word!”
I pause, perplex’d! Who now will help afford?
I cannot the mere Word so highly prize;
I must translate it otherwise
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
The spirit aids! from anxious scruples freed,
I write, “In the beginning was the Deed!”
goethe, Faust
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it
means just what I choose it to mean— neither more nor less.” “The question
is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”
lewis carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Contents
Introduction: Expressing Fascism 1
part i: 1909–49
Why Fascism? 9
1 Fascism before Fascism, 1909–35 11
2 Franklin Roosevelt and Political Culture, 1932–36 33
3 Perplexity at Home and Abroad, 1934–38 51
4 Foreign and Domestic Contradictions, 1938–40 64
5 The Coming of the War, 1939–42 76
6 Fascism Penetrates Popular Life, 1936–49 98
part ii: 1942–2020
Performing Words 113
7 Fascism on the Right, 1942–70 116
8 Europeans Bring Fascism to the States 133
9 Fascism Triumphs over Communism 145
10 Scholars Approach Fascism 161
11 Fascism Everywhere, 1970–2020 173
12 Democracy and Fascism 185
Conclusion: Fascism without Fascism 193
Notes, Sources, and Methods 199
Notes 205
Acknowledgments 237
Index 239

introduction
Expressing Fascism
Google “fascism comes to America,” or search the same topic on Amazon.
Thousands of entries pop up. Reformers are fascists. Conservatives are fas-
cists. Corporate business leaders are secret fascists. We find crypto- , egalitar-
ian, fastidious, modern, neo- , and respectable fascists. Fascism can creep or
be friendly or feel at home on Park Avenue. It can be sweet or mild and wa-
tery. During the 1930s, US followers of the Russian communist Joseph Stalin
called the communist adherents of Leon Trotsky social fascists. During the
same decade, some citizens dreaded that fascists might declare themselves
antifascists. More certainly, the government later chastised other citizens for
their premature antifascism. During the 1970s, the Black Panthers of Oak-
land, California, identified liberals as fascist pigs, but another Oakland- based
organization, the Symbionese Liberation Army, announced the assassination
of a Black leader for his fascist plan for public school safety.1 Fascism has
functional equivalents. Fascists often reemerge, while some politicians count
as fascist-o id or fascist- like. Roosevelt’s New Deal had fascist affinities, and so
did the Reagan Revolution. The Jim Crow South evidenced fascism, but so
did its opponents in the Civil Rights movement. Barack Obama was a fascist,
but so was John McCain. Donald Trump was undoubtedly a fascist.
Fascism has also implied vague doctrines of subversion and illogical vio-
lence that have marked American literature and culture since Benito Musso-
lini invented himself as a fascist and climbed to rule in Italy in 1922. During
the 1920s, Herbert Croly of the New Republic urged that “whatever the dan-
gers of fascism,” it accentuated a common national purpose that the United
States lacked. In 1934 Edward Dahlberg wrote Those Who Perish, one of the
first novels distressed about the nation’s fascist tendencies. Witter Bynner’s
1946 poem, “Defeat,” about segregation during World War Two, regretted that
2 introduction
in carrying the day over fascism, the United States vanquished the essentially
American: “It is again ourselves who we defeat.” In 1964 the film Dr. Strange-
love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb brought fascism
to the White House, as a Nazi madman by that name counseled the president.
The baseball movie Field of Dreams (1989) introduced an opponent of a high
school curriculum in Iowa; this “Eva Braun” or “Nazi cow” believed in book
burning. In 2004 Philip Roth’s novel The Plot against America fictionalized an
alternative fascist history of the era of Franklin Roosevelt. And The Man in
the High Castle, in which German and Japanese fascists have taken over the
United States, succeeded as a television series from 2015 to 2019.
For the last one hundred years, politicians and political commentators
have compulsively examined fascism and provoked fevered public concerns.
Fiction, cinema, Broadway, radio, television, and most recently blogs have
considered disaster after disaster. Despite the antithesis between democratic
and fascist values, Americans have perceived fascism as a constant presence
or threat. Is the republic as fragile as some witnesses claim— or moderate and
firm, as its existence for 225 years might suggest? Why does the enticing peril
of fascism endure? Because the flame attracts the moth? Because Americans
have nightmares that they will mature into what they truly are? Or because
they fear weakening in the face of evil?
This book explores the spectacle of fascism in the United States—t he
imagination of it in America and the outlook from America. I have perused
political history and the political theory based on this history to determine
what has generated the enchantment and how it has been generated. While
the Europe of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s informed Americans, the horror
over fascism has derived not entirely from distant affairs but also from inter-
nal disputes. Moreover, popular forms of expression have contributed to an
array of fascist portents. Fascism Comes to America reconnoiters print and
internet punditry and nonfiction. Amusements on the screen, on the page,
on television, and on the stage are surveyed to see how they accommodated
fascism. To these sources we must add learned commentary that also requires
study over several decades. Finally, over many years, European savants in the
United States contributed to anxieties by warning that the seeds of fascism
had sprouted in America.
Three themes run through this book. A history first traces how the term
fascism has altered in American English. Thousands of items tell us of fas-
cism. Newspaper articles and editorials—d uring the 1930s, 1950s, 1980s, and
onward— offer summaries of various forms of fascism at the time of the writ-
ing. Erudite volumes that aim at precision and objectivity have produced the-
ories of fascist philosophy and practice up to a given author’s present. Many