Friendly Fascism by Bertram M. Gross

Author:Bertram M. Gross
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Sociology, Economics, Philosophy, United States, Fascism, Political Science, Politics, History
ISBN: 9781497689404
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1980-01-24T13:00:00+00:00

THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE RADICAL RIGHT

Leadership in the right has fallen to new organizations with lower profiles and better access to power … What is characteristic of this right is its closeness to government power and the ability this closeness gives to hide its political extremism under the cloak of respectability.

WILLIAM W. TURNER12

By 1976 the New Right had helped to elect almost 25 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives.

SASHA LEWIS13

With stagflation, alienation, and frustration a growing part of life in Western Europe, many neofascist groups are openly rearing their heads. A so-called “World Union of National Socialists” boasts branches in many countries. The members of its British branch wear Nazi uniforms and distribute Nazi literature. The German neo-Nazis specialize in desecrating Jewish cemeteries. Its French members vow to “exterminate all Jews and generalize the system of apartheid throughout the world.” The Italian neo-fascists practice open terrorism.

In the United States, there is also a resurgence of what might be called—in the American tradition—“Know Nothing nut power.” Small groups of Nazis parade in public. The Ku Klux Klan organizes in the North as well as the South, and has units among American soldiers and policemen. Secret groups throughout the country launch attacks against both blacks and Jews. “The vision of a fascist future may seem idle,” write two reporters, Joseph Trento and Joseph Spear, “but Willis Carto, now in his mid-forties, is working every day to make it come true. And more frightening than the remote possibility Carto will realize his dream is the current power of the (Liberty Lobby) apparatus he has built to bring himself and his ideas into power.”14 The Falangist Party of America openly proposes “an authoritative, one-party government.” Claiming that frustrations “need a channel,” it argues that “the Falangist can cut the two-party system to ribbons with the inflation issue.”15

Although most of these right-wing extremists avoid open identification with the classic fascists, the similarities with the early fascist movements of the 1920s are clear. Small clusters of highly strung, aggressive people think that if Hitler and Mussolini (both of whom started from tiny beginnings) could make it into the Big Time under conditions of widespread misfortune, fortune might someday smile on them too.

I doubt it. Their dreams of future power are illusory. To view them as the main danger is to assume that history is obliging enough to repeat itself in unchanged form. Indeed, their major impact—apart from their contribution to domestic violence, discussed in “The Ladder of Terror,” (Chapter 14)—is to make the more dangerous right-wing extremists seem moderate in comparison.

The greatest danger on the right is the rumbling thunder, no longer very distant, from a huge array of well-dressed, well-educated activists who hide their extremism under the cloak of educated respectability. Unlike the New Left of the 1960s, which reached its height during the civil rights and antiwar movements, the Radical Right rose rapidly during the 1970s on a much larger range of issues. By the beginning of the 1980s, they were able to look back on a long list of victories.

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