Ur-Fascism: The Signs

Review by Bill Doughty

In Umberto Eco's "Five Moral Pieces" (RCS Libri / Harcourt, 1997) we get five short dense essays with a scholarly perspective on Clausewitz and war, media responsibility, emergence of the "Other," migration vs. immigration, and the signs of eternal fascism ("Ur-Fascism").

Eco, who died in 2016, was professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna – a deep thinker who used history, psychology, literature and philosophy to analyze the world and predict the future.

Haitians get shelter material from DOD and International Organization for Migration in 2010 after an earthquake. (DVIDS)

His conclusions can be uber-controversial, such as this one in his essay "Migration, Tolerance, and the Intolerable":

"...[M]igration is certainly different from immigration. We have only immigration when the immigrants (admitted according to political decisions) accept most of the customs of the country into which they have immigrated, while migration occurs when the migrants (whom no one can stop at the frontiers) radically transform the culture of the territory they have migrated to."

He examines both tolerance and intolerance using examples such as (actual) witch hunts, tattoos, American political correctness, Hitler and Mein Kampf, anti-Jacobin theories of Jewish conspiracy, and immigration/migration.

Eco says when intolerance becomes not only inculcated but "uncontrolled," thinking people face a "pure unthinking animality." Then it may be too late, and intellectuals themselves become targets. "It is too late when war is waged on doctrinal intolerance, for when intolerance is transformed into doctrine the war is already lost, and those who ought to fight it become the first victims."

"Therefore," Eco writes, "uncontrolled intolerance has to be beaten at the roots, through constant education that starts from earliest infancy, before it is written down in a book, and before it becomes a behavioral 'skin' that is too thick and too tough."

Mussolini's headquarters in 1934.

Studying and understanding fundamentalism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism can prevent the rise of Fascism, which Eco experienced personally as a boy in Italy during the rise and fall of Mussolini.

His essay on Ur-Fascism comes from a speech Eco gave at Columbia University, April 25, 1995, in commemoration of the liberation of Europe – made possible by the United States military.

"However, it should be borne in mind that the text was conceived for an audience of American students and the speech was given in the days when America was still shaken by outrage over the Oklahoma City bombing and by the discovery of the fact (by no means a secret) that extreme right-wing military organizations existed in America. The anti-Fascist theme, therefore, took on particular connotations in that context, and my historical observations were intended to stimulate reflection on current problems in various countries..."

Eco reveals the signs of Fascism, a movement defeated by the Allies in World War II but unfortunately making a comeback 24 years later. Madeleine Albright calls it the F-word. Today we see totalitarian leaders as well as deranged movements, including white nationalism, rising in Europe and the United States – flirting with Fascism.

Here are the signs:

1. "The first characteristic of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition." No open-mindedness, no advancement of learning, and reliance only on traditional thinking.

The spirit of 1776 and 1789 is rejected by Ur-Fascists.

2. "Rejection of the modern world" that rejects the spirit of 1789, 1776, The Enlightenment and the Age of Reason.

3. "Suspicion of intellectual life," where thoughtless "action for action's sake" is valued and elite thinking is not.

4. No dissent. "For Ur-Fascism, dissent is betrayal."

5. Fear of difference. "The first appeal of a Fascist or prematurely Fascist movement is a call against intruders." This would include a perceived invasion of migrants.

6. "Ur-Fascism springs from individual or social frustration, which explains why one of the characteristics typical of historic Fascist movements was the appeal to the frustrated middle classes."

7. Nationalism and xenophobia. "At the root of Ur-Fascist psychology lies the obsession with conspiracies..." both international and "from the inside," as in an imagined "deep state."

8. Humiliation. "The disciples must feel humiliated by the enemy's vaunted wealth and power" – showing both fear and disdain, victimization and superiority.

9. An "Armageddon complex" and "permanent war." "...There must be a last battle, after which the movement will rule the world."

10. "Scorn for the weak." Power taken and enforced by force is based on a "weakness of the masses." Under an authoritarian hierarchy "each subordinate leader looks down on his inferiors, and each of his inferiors looks down in turn on his own underlings. All this looking down reinforces the sense of a mass elite."

Orwell (top right) served in the British Home Guard during WWII.

11. A "cult of heroism" closely aligned to a "cult of death." "The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, it should be noted, he usually manages to make other die in his place."

12. Sex as a power issue. "This is the origin of machismo (which implies contempt for women and a non-conformist sexual habits...)" Think antifeminism and a woman's right to choose as well as LGBTQ persecution.

13. Populism over democracy. "Every time a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament (Congress) because it no longer represents 'the voice of the people,' there is a suspicion of Ur-Fascism."

14. "Ur-Fascism uses newspeak." Coined by George Orwell in "1984," newspeak describes the language used by dictatorships to create distrust and mistrust. "All the Nazi and Fascist scholastic texts were based on poor vocabulary and elementary syntax, the aim being to limit the instruments available to complex and critical reasoning." Newspeak can be uttered by a leader or by state media, even in the "innocent form of a popular talk show."

Eco had two homes, one with 20,000 books and another with 30,000.

These ideas are informed by Eco's life experiences and through his collection of 50,000 books.

Interestingly, a scandal hit the authoritarian populists in Europe this week. Bloomberg reports on a video sting that caught far-right politicians Heinz-Christian Strache and Johann Gudenus drinking vodka and making deals with a woman they thought was the niece of Russian oil and gas billionaire Igor Makarov. They allegedly tried to bribe her to provide funding to their party and invest in a far-right newspaper. The resulting videos caused resignations and a delay in elections in Austria.

"Nationalist populists often agitate against entrenched, corrupt elites and pledge to drain various swamps," Bloomberg reports. "In the videos, however, Strache and Gudenus behave like true swamp creatures, savoring rumors of drug and sex scandals in Austrian politics and discussing how to create an authoritarian media machine like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s."

Nevertheless, far-right leaders, including Italy's Matteo Salvini, France's Marine Le Pen and Holland's Geert Wilders, vow to "change history" in Europe again in this century.

FDR and his secretaries on Nov. 4, 1938.

Eco, who not only studied but also lived history, evaluates the various strains of fascism that arose in Europe in the last century in "Ur-Fascism."

He uses the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt at two critical junctures: (September 23, 1944) – "The victory of the American people and their allies will be a victory against Fascism and the blind alley of despotism that it represents." And (November 4, 1938) – "I dare to say that if American democracy ceased to progress as a living force, seeking night and day by peaceful means to improve the condition of our citizens, the power of Fascism would grow in our country."

Can greater democracy, human rights and education provide a wall against Ur-Fascism and a solution to refugee migration?

Haitian women queue to receive plastic sheeting and water in Port-au-Prince. The intergovernmental organization International Organization for Migration passes out supplies Feb. 24, 2010, as United Nations forces from Sri Lanka provide security and prevent refugee migration. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development are in Haiti supporting Operation Unified Response, a multinational, joint-service operation to provide humanitarian assistance to Haitians affected by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck the region, Jan. 12, 2010. (DVIDS courtesy photo)

'F-Word' Questions

Review by Bill Doughty

Our answers to ten questions can provide "reassurance or a warning we dare not ignore," says Madeleine Albright, author of "Fascism: A Warning" (Harper Collins, 2018).

Albright tracks the ebb and flow of fascism, "the F-word" she says, through history – taking root in modern times in the fertile period of discontent and upheaval between the two World Wars in the 1920s and 30s. 

Italian Mussolini arose in the Fasces movement, born nearly 100 years ago and modeled after concepts from the Roman Empire. Their symbol was a "fasces," a tight bundle of sticks with an eagle-headed scepter tied with an axe, an implement carried by Roman consuls. Germany's Hitler and Mussolini, at first, marched in lockstep.

Albright, an immigrant from Czechoslovakia who became U.S. Secretary of State, shows that fascism can come from either the right or the left. She identifies North Korea as an completely outright-fascist nation.

Another F-word: Fear

Fear is fascism's oxygen. "Fear is why fascism's emotional reach can extend to all levels of society," Albright says.

The America First movement in the late 1930s, founded in fear, culminated with the formation of the America First Committee in 1940. AFC "brought together pacifists, isolationists and Nazi sympathizers to fight against the country's prospective entry into World War II," she writes. "Four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Hitler declared war on the United States the AFC soon disbanded."

Chaplin as Hitler; Oakie as Mussolini in "The Dictator."

Albright gives poignant history of modern fascism, largely but not exclusively from a European perspective. We "meet" Mussolini and Hitler, and we come face to face with Venezuela's Chavez, North Korea's Kim Jong-il (who Albright met 20 years ago), Hungary's Orbán, Turkey's Erdogan, Duterte of the Philippines, and Russia's Putin, a man she describes as "small and pale, so cold as to be almost reptilian."

One way to fight fear and fascism is with fun, making fun of falsehoods by a cult of personality. That's what Charlie Chaplain did in the 1930s, helping Americans understand the flaws in Hitler's and Mussolini's vision and resulting idolatry of their followers.

Fight for Freedom

She also introduces us to heroes of freedom and true representational government who were willing to fight racism and fascism.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mandela

Consider South Africa's Nelson Mandela.

"(In 1962) Nelson Mandela began serving twenty-seven years, the prime of his life, in prison. His crime was to oppose the racist oppressors who had secured a monopoly on power and privilege in his country. The courageous dissident had a profound cause for grievance, a legitimate reason for bitterness, and thousands of days behind bars to cultivate hate. Instead he chose to spend time learning about the people who had put him in jail – the Afrikaners. He studied their language, history, resentments and fears. When the long-awaited day came and he was finally released, Mandela not only understood those who had thrown him into prison; he was able to communicate with them, find common ground with them, and – most astonishingly – lead them. As president, Mandela pushed back against the many in his party to wanted immediate justice for the multitude of wrongs done to members of the anti-apartheid movement. He appointed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that received testimony from all sides. Unlike so many, he found the trappings of high office eminently resistible and refused to stand for a second term."

We also meet a founder of an independent Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, a believer in constitutional democracy 100 years ago. Albright writes:

"In 1918, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was sworn in as president of an independent Czechoslovakia. With his erect bearing, old-world manners, modern outlook, and fearless commitment to democratic principles – including feminism and pluralism – Masaryk commanded a global reputation, despite the modest dimensions of the nation he led. Due to his age, his health declined even as the threat from the Third Reich grew – in the 1930s, no fully democratic nation was more endangered. His response, when asked to explain what was at stake: 'Democracy is not a form of state, it is not just something that is embodied in a constitution; democracy is a view of life, it requires a belief in human beings, in humanity ... I have already said that democracy is a discussion. But the real discussion is possible only if people trust each other and if they try fairly to find the truth.'" For all its shortcomings, there is no other form of government to which such words apply. It is up to us to remedy democracy's faults when and wherever we can, but never to forget the underlying strengths. Up to us, as well, to realize that democracy has enemies who do not advertise that fact."

Above all, Albright warns against complacency and taking our democracy for granted.

She notes the watershed event for Americans in the previous century as the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941 forcing the United States into a two-front war. That war ultimately defeated fascism in Imperial Japan and in Germany and Italy. In 2018 all three of these former enemies of liberty are free, prosperous and democratic societies.

Albright provides decades of examples of the rise of despotism that seem to chip away at democratic nations – away from, in her words, "the wisdom of Lincoln or Mandela's largeness of soul." "Lincoln and Mandela fought with monsters; neither became one."

Ten F-word Warnings + Five More

Her ten "right questions" to us are directed to current and potential leaders to identify and fend off fascism as it develops:

• Do they cater to our prejudices by suggesting that we treat people outside our ethnicity, race, creed, or party as unworthy of dignity or respect?
• Do they want us to nurture our anger toward those who we believe have done us wrong, rub raw our grievances, and set our sights on revenge?
• Do they encourage us to have contempt for our governing institutions and the electoral process?
• Do they seek to destroy our faith in essential contributors to democracy such as an independent press and a professional judiciary?
• Do they exploit the symbols of patriotism – the flag, the pledge – in a conscious effort to turn us against one another?
• If defeated at the polls, will they accept the verdict or insist without evidence that they have won?
• Do they go beyond asking for our votes to brag about their ability to solve all problems, put to rest all anxieties, and satisfy every desire?
• Do they solicit our cheers by speaking casually and with pumped up machismo about using violence to blow enemies away?
• Do they echo the attitude of Mussolini: 'The crowd doesn't have to know,' all it has to do is believe and 'submit to being shaped'?
• Or do they invite us to join with them in building and maintaining a healthy center for our societies, a place where rights and duties are apportioned fairly, the social contract is honored, and all have room to dream and grow?

She praises George W. Bush for his even-keeled rejection of fear and hate in the wake of 9/11. We are reminded of the late Sen. John McCain's honorable stance against racist hatred when he politely but firmly corrected a supporter who attempted to slander his opponent, Barack Obama. McCain's concession speech is a much-cited example of grace, humility, honor, courage and commitment to the Constitution.

Albright and McCain discuss the legacy of Czechoslovakia's late President Václev Havel at the Library of Congress in 2014.

Albright said this about McCain in a tribute published by BBC: "I will remember him as one of the most valiant, patriotic and dedicated public servants I've ever met, somebody who understood the honor of serving his country and who served his country with honor." Albright and McCain traveled to her country of birth, Czechoslovakia, in 1990 to monitor fair elections.

Former U.S. Navy POW John McCain; Sen. McCain's strategist Steve Schmidt

McCain's former Republican campaign strategist was Steve Schmidt.

Schmidt sees a simple formula that explains the rise of fascism wherever it occurs, threatening and sometimes ending democracies. 

Would-be strongmen, he says: (1) incite "fervor in a base through constant lying" + (2) scapegoat "minority populations" + (3) allege "conspiracies" + (4) spread "a sense of victimizations among those fervent supporters" + (5) assert "the need to exert heretofore unprecedented power" to protect the victim class from the scapegoated minority.

"Through all of history," Schmidt says, when totalitarianism rises and democracies fall, "you will find those five behaviors." Schmidt warns of leaders who use fear, falsehoods and fake pronouncements that they are above the law. He also warns of attacks on a free press and the rule of law.

Attacks on truth, justice, accountability and the free press are steps on the road to an acceptance of fascism.

How can we fend off fundamental attacks on freedom? By recognizing attempts to influence us with Orwellian attempts at creating hyper-nationalism through fear and feelings over critical thinking and reason.

A Final Word

Scholar and modern philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, author of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind," "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" and "21 Lessons for the 21st Century," gives compelling advice for the Information Age in this TED talk: "Why fascism is so tempting -- and how your data could power it."

From TED Talks: 

"In a profound talk about technology and power, author and historian Yuval Noah Harari explains the important difference between fascism and nationalism – and what the consolidation of our data means for the future of democracy. Appearing as a hologram live from Tel Aviv, Harari warns that the greatest danger that now faces liberal democracy is that the revolution in information technology will make dictatorships more efficient and capable of control. 'The enemies of liberal democracy hack our feelings of fear and hate and vanity, and then use these feelings to polarize and destroy,' Harari says. 'It is the responsibility of all of us to get to know our weaknesses and make sure they don't become weapons.'"

Military Role in Fascism ‘Prequel’

Review by Bill Doughty––

It wasn’t until Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the United States in December 1945, that the burning embers of fascism dimmed and hot coals of active antisemitism, Christian nationalism, and Nazi support –– even in the U.S. Congress –– lost their glow.

But the fire never completely went cold.

Prior to World War II and even after, brave Americans sought to root out the supporters of fascism who went so far as to try to recruit members of the military as well as military veterans to their cause. One fighter of domestic fascism was a WWI veteran named Leon Lewis. 

Lewis sought to uncover a conspiracy of violent extremism targeting Jewish Americans and institutions. It’s one of the stories recounted in “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” by Rachel Maddow (Crow, Penguin Random House, 2023).

“What Leon Lewis decided to do was something incredible. And incredibly dangerous. He went out and recruited a small group of men, picked from the exact same pool the Nazis were after –– disgruntled non-Jewish American veterans of the recent war [World War I],” Maddow writes.

“But the Lewis operation did more than simply investigate and report. Before long, Lewis and his team scuttled a plot by U.S. Marines to sell guns and ammunition to the American fascists. Lewis and his underground team could not be credited in public for their part in this operation, but it did earn them the enduring and crucial admiration of high-ranking naval intelligence officers. They also exposed an elaborate inside-job scheme to take control of U.S. military armories on the West Coast. That plan was run by Dietrich Gefken, a German national who had been one of the early organizers of Hitler’s Brownshirts in Munich. After joining the California National Guard and inventorying the cache of rifles, machine guns, and coastal artillery pieces on hand at the San Francisco armory, Gefken had drawn up ‘the Armory plans, floor plans, location of ammunition and lockers and rifles, the list of addresses of the officers and all that was needed to take over the Armory on a given notice.’ Lewis’s spies handed over their evidence of Gefken’s plot to military intelligence officials, who shut it down.”

How Naval intelligence officers at the Navy base in San Diego helped bring the wider plot to light is almost an aside, but the story should be of great interest to military readers.

On the East Coast, more than 20,000 people attended an antisemitic pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. One of the banners visible in the above photo reads, "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America." The rally was dubbed a patriotic pro-American event tied, without irony, to George Washington’s birthday. [General/President Washington rejected calls from supporters to become dictator of the young United States.]

How could the rising flames of fascism in the United States in the 1930s be forgotten in time? In interviews promoting “Prequel,” Maddow notes how the bigger story of the war in Europe (and the Pacific) eclipsed the story of homegrown fascism and Nazism and the quiet patriots who battled the threat to democracy here.

Brave and truly patriotic men such as Lewis, O. John Rogge, Dillard Stokes, Henry Hoke, Eric Sevareid, Drew Pearson, and William Power Maloney stood up and spoke out against antisemitism and against indifference and obstruction by the Truman Administration, as demonstrated by Attorney General Francis Biddle and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Federal prosecutor Rogge

“The plain truth is that the FBI was missing in action as fascism and Nazism took root and grew  in the United States in the mid-1930s,” Maddow notes.

Despite having the rug pulled out from under them in their prosecution of the fascists, both Maloney and Rogge continued with honor, courage, and commitment to uncover and report domestic enemies and violent extremists.

“Maloney and his investigators had discovered the double helix of the violent, Nazi-supporting, and Nazi-supported threat in the United States; it was part foreign and part domestic, part propaganda and part armed paramilitary movement.” He had led the investigation into Nazi propagandists using frank privileges at taxpayers’ expense. After federal service, he continued a career as a colorful and successful prosecutor.

“Rogge’s new charging document, like Maloney’s, alleged violations of the Smith Act –– an effort to demoralize America’s armed forces. But Rogge had sharpened the case, alleging targeted effort by the defendants to recruit National Guardsmen, reservists, and even active-duty U.S. troops into these ultra-right groups, where they could use their military skills, connections, and access to weapons to help arm and train paramilitary fascists for the overthrow of the U.S. government.”

Rogge uncovered evidence against American fascists and Nazi-supporters when he provided support to the Nuremberg trials after the war.

Men of character like Lewis, Rogge, Stokes, Hoke and others were seemingly outnumbered by questionable characters –– men (and some women) who placed greed, power, and religion above the Constitution, people like:

• George Deatherage: “He saw himself a red-blooded, real-American patriot, a dedicated Christian, a fierce protector of (white) Western civilization.”
• Huey Long: This Louisiana politician was an early version of the charismatic narcissistic populist and would-be dictator who formed his own militia and embraced violence against his detractors.
• Father Charles Coughlin: The Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones of his generation, he was a Catholic priest with a wildly popular radio show who called for violence against “tyrants” after naming FDR and jews as tyrants.
• John Cassidy: He was a self-described "Christian martyr" who wanted to become the "American Fuhrer."
• Senator Ernest Lundeen (R) of Minnesota: Was as corrupt as they come, even taking payroll kickbacks from his own staff, instrumental in promoting support for Hitler in America. Maddow’s description of his death in a suspicious plane crash is as graphic and horrible as can be imagined. Readers may want to look away.
• George Sylvester Viereck: The Nazi agent. He was convicted in June 1943 for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. While he was in jail, Viereck's eldest son and namesake, a corporal in the U.S. Army, fought and died for the Allies in Italy.
• Major General George Van Horn Moseley: He was pro-gun but against FDR and anti-redistribution of wealth; he called for the sterilization of any jews who immigrated to the United States.
• Senator Robert Rice Reynolds (D) of North Carolina: He wanted to build a wall around the entire United States, in part to keep out Jews.
• Representative Hamilton Fish (R) of New York: He supported Hitler’s Germany and “was hopeful that tensions over Germany’s designs on Poland could be resolved peacefully, and that Germany’s claims were ‘just.’” His calls: “AWAKE CHRISTIAN AMERICA” and “LET’S SAVE U.S. FOR US.”
• Senator William “Wild Bill” Langer (R) of North Dakota: As governor he was charged, convicted, and sentenced to 18 months in prison, but who declared martial law and tried to declare North Dakota’s independence from the United States. As senator, he sabotaged the investigation of rising fascism.
• Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D) of Montana: an isolationist and propagandist for Germany who was eventually accused of treason. He attempted to use his position in Congress to influence the military, especially the Lend-Lease Act, and prevent America’s support to Britain in WWII.
• Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh: Both were champions of Adolf Hitler and vice versa. Lindbergh zeig heiled at an America First rally with Wheeler. Ford was lauded by Adolf Hitler, who kept a photo of the white Christian nationalist CEO in his office.

America Firsters Wheeler and Lindbergh

There were many more who sought to weaken the Constitution and democracy in favor of autocracy and theocracy.

Expressions of outright antisemitism and fascism by elected officials led to plots of violence on the home front.

Groups such as the “Christian Front” and “Country Gentlemen” planned an armed insurrection, including bombings of Jewish and Leftist establishments as well as newspaper offices. Their hope was similar to Timothy McVeigh’s goal –– to start a race war that would bring down the federal government.

“It was what we’d call today an ‘accelerationist’ strategy,” Maddow explains.

“Much as white supremacists hope terroristic, spectacular, cruel acts toward racial minorities will provoke retaliation and reprisal to touch off a wholesale race war that they are sure they will win, the Christian Fronters believed American could easily be tipped into a war against Jews and communists in which they themselves not only would end up on the winning side, but would be hailed as a heroic vanguard.

“George Van Horn Moseley’s name kept coming up in planning meetings for the attack, because they were still counting on the general to take the reins as America’s new military dictator after the coup was complete.”

There are numerous parallels from the 1930s and ‘40s that continue to smolder: the coup attempt of January 6, other acts of violent extremism in the name of the former President (who calls opponents “vermin” that poison the “blood” of America), and Trump’s desire to call for the Insurrection Act in order to use the military against U.S. citizens in violation of posse comitatus.

Germany justified war in Europe based on grievances and a Big Lie about Jews. Putin did the same thing. And Trump builds his power and funding on perceived grievances and the Big Lie of a stolen election. It is no accident that Trump launched his current presidential campaign at Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the Branch Davidian tragedy, which was the basis for Timothy McVeigh's grievances.

There are other parallels and similarities linking past and present. Accusers and their two dozen or more sympathizers in Congress chose to investigate the investigators. They called for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s impeachment based on conspiracies and conjecture without evidence. They used various tactics to disrupt and delay justice in the courts. And they attacked the free press.

The propagandists supported Germany’s efforts to divide American citizens: “A partisan, bickering, demoralized America, the Nazis believed, would be incapable of mounting a successful war effort in Europe.”

Fascists and fundamentalists –– past and present –– tried to recruit military service members and veterans. Eighty and ninety years ago a disproportionate number of law enforcement (“law and ORDER”) personnel supported fascists. Meanwhile, Hollywood –– led by MGM –– and the mainstream media –– led by the Washington Post –– shined a light on the lawbreakers and seditionists. When caught up in the scandal, perpetrators tried to burn evidence, (albeit not in a White House fireplace).

In 1942, federal prosecutors indicted 28 people and charged them (almost RICO-style) with sedition with “intent to interfere with, impair, and influence the loyalty, morale, and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States.” Prosecutors received hate mail and death threats.

Greedy and self-serving politicians stoked conspiracies and fears to hold on to power, especially fear of immigrants, communists, socialists, and Jewish people. Father Coughlin and others attempted to form a third party of Christian nationalists to compete against President Roosevelt, claiming FDR was a Jew.

But there could be signs of hope: The election of Nov. 7, 1944 proved the strength of democracy over the glowing coals of fascism, when FDR won a landslide victory. “The president who had been leading the country in the war against the Nazis, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, won an unprecedented fourth term, with 432 electoral votes to Thomas E. Dewey’s 99,” Maddow writes. “Roosevelt’s Democrats gained twenty-two seats in the House and protected their whopping nineteen-vote cushion in the Senate.”

Rachel Maddow speaks with Lt. Col. Andy Gerlach of the South Dakota Army National Guard in Afghanistan in July 2010. (Sgt. Rebecca Linder)

Maddow is also author of “Bagman” and “Drift.” She is a big supporter of military service members, veterans, and the Constitution. She bemoans the gap between civilians and their military, and she calls for accountability, transparency, and maximal diplomacy before American men and women are sent into war.

Both the Prequel book and preceding Ultra podcast feature Maddow’s storytelling at its best, but the book may better. While the serialized Prequel podcast broke ground on the compelling story of the threat to democracy from within, the book really fleshes out the story as only a book can, complete with extensive notes, a helpful index, compelling photos, and detail we can read and will want to re-read. This is a book that can help every American understand the threat of the fires of antisemitism, fascism, and authoritarianism.

In 2023 and 2024 the embers are glowing brighter.

Toni Morrison and War Against Error (and Fascism)

by Bill Doughty

Toni Morrison wrote:

"I think it is time for a modern War Against Error. A deliberately heightened battle against cultivated ignorance, enforced silence, and metastasizing lies. A wider war that is fought daily by human rights organizations in journals, reports, indexes, dangerous visits, and encounters with malign oppressive forces. A hugely funded and intensified battle of rescue from the violence that is swallowing the dispossessed." 

Those are Morrison's words in the essay "The War on Error," presented as a lecture in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 29, 2004, one year after the United States invaded Iraq in response to 9/11 – under the pretense that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Toni Morrison, 1931-2019 (Photo taken by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)

Morrison's essay is one of 43 works published in "The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations," Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

The book includes both poignant reflections and occasional musings about people, art/literature, nature, history and race from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

From another essay, "Racism and Fascism," published in The Nation in 1995 – nearly twenty-five years ago! Morrison writes about the warning signs and steps to fascism:

1. Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.
2. Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.
3. Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works.
4. Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification.
5. Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with this constructed enemy.
6. Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.
7. Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.
8. Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for and rationalize the building of holding arenas for the enemy – especially its males and absolutely its children.
9. Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions: a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press; a little pseudo-success; the illusion of power and influence; a little fun, a little style, a little consequence.
10. Maintain, at all costs, silence.

Morrison writes, "In 1995 racism may wear a new dress, buy a new pair of boots, but neither it nor its succubus twin fascism is new or can make anything new. It can only reproduce the environment that supports its own health: fear, denial and an atmosphere in which its victims have lost the will to fight."

Fascism can come from the left or right, liberal or conservative. "We must not be blindsided" by different labels for "domination agendas," Morrison writes, "because the genius of fascism is that any political structure can host the virus and virtually any developed country can become a suitable home." It's not about ideology, she contends, it's about power.

Signs of fascism as evidenced by the White Power movement and White Nationalism.

Can it happen here? Are we susceptible to what she calls "the forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems"? Do those forces try to make us see immigrants and nonwhites as the Other, worthy of contempt, fear and hate? Will we counter those forces with greater emphasis on education and critical thinking? That's at the heart of Morrison's works and a reasoned response to a "war on error." 

Here's something she wrote about migration, eight months after the attacks of 9/11 (from "The Foreigner's Home" – presented in the Alexander Lecture Series, University of Toronto, May 27, 2002): 

"The spectacle of mass movement draws attention inevitably to the borders, the porous places, the vulnerable points where the concept of home is seen as being menaced. by foreigners. Much of the alarm hovering at the borders, the gates, is stoked, it seems to me, by 1) both the threat and the promise of globalization; and 2) an uneasy relationship with our own foreignness, our own rapidly disintegrating sense of belonging."

President Obama presents Toni Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

After Morrison's death at 88 earlier this month, former president Barack Obama said, "Toni Morrison was a national treasure. Her writing was not just beautiful but meaningful — a challenge to our conscience and a call to greater empathy." 

He continued: "And so even as Michelle and I mourn her loss and send our warmest sympathies to her family and friends, we know that her stories—that our stories—will always be with us, and with those who come after, and on and on, for all time."

The former commander-in-chief began publishing his reading lists during his presidency and continues the tradition. On Aug. 15, Obama shared a list of recommended summer reading books, beginning with the works of Toni Morrison. 

"To start, you can't go wrong by reading or re-reading the collected works of Toni Morrison," he wrote. "'Beloved,' 'Song of Solomon,' 'The Bluest Eye,' 'Sula,' everything else — they're transcendent, all of them. You'll be glad you read them," Obama said.

Here are other books recommended by Obama this year:

"Lab Girl," by Hope Jahren"The Shallows," by Nicholas Carr"Inland," by Téa Obreht"American Spy," by Lauren Wilkinson"Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel"Exhalation," by Ted Chiang"Maid," by Stephanie Land"How to Read the Air" by Dinaw Mengest"Men Without Women" by Haruki Murakami"The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead

CNO Richardson meets with future CNO Gilday in 2017.

Reading promotes critical thinking. And preventing another War on Error requires critical thinking. 

Tomorrow, Aug. 22, Adm. Mike Gilday is scheduled to become the new Chief of Naval Operations, as Adm. John Richardson steps down. During his tenure Richardson has championed reading and thinking. "Remember to never stop striving to expand your mind," he advised on the Navy Professional Reading Program site.

"Warfare is a violent, intellectual contest between thinking and adapting adversaries. The team that can think better and adapt faster will win," Richardson said, adding, "...we must do more to sharpen our thinking, learn the lessons from history, and expand our minds. It is our responsibility as leaders to continue to grow and to always question the status quo."