Fascist US?

Have the Great Depression drag on and worsen, and its an easy sell. Either Communists or Fascists will come to power in that situation. Likewise, the Business Plot is another good way to get a Fascist US, though that's more a variant ala Nazism to Fascism that the creator of an absolute definable Fascism.

Well, it's sort of what we got. A non-militaristic, democratic fascism. FDR, perhaps unwittingly, assisted in the cartelization and corporatization of the economy such that, post-war, most of the economy was controlled by a small number of very large corporations. We also had the pseudo-syndicalism that fascism sometimes ascribes. Finally, during the late 40's and 50's there was a definite hint of the hard cultural rightism, to the point of being practically reactionary, that is often a hallmark of fascism. So, what you need to do to finish the picture is to get America more permanently militaristic and culturally conservative, instead of the peace and love movement of the 60's. Likewise, you have to get rid of American democracy, which is something of a taller order.
Calling something democratic fascism is like calling something capitalist communism, and even more extreme than that. It walks thin ice, is an oxymoron and is a bad ideological indicator. The New Deal was nothing massively reactionary. Firstly, it was simply intervention and relief programs, albeit on a massive scale; the nation nationalized no industry, nor the like. Secondly, it maintained capitalism, albeit regulated (and regulated capitalism is capitalism nonetheless). Thirdly, the New Deal was little more than a continuation of the Progressive era and the introduction of many programs (Social Security) which had already been in place in the democratic nations of Europe for many years already, and which the US's lack of made it look backward. The "Return to Normalcy" with a Laissez Faire model to beat out the regulated Capitalism one was something reactionary; the New Deal could best be seen simply as a correction of the coarse back to the Progressive era.

Teddy wasn't your typical progressive. He just really wasn't typical of anything, really.

TR believed that industry was good and corporations were good, but that they were also to be monitored and not allowed to grow too massive. That's nothing outside of the Progressive movement.

Honestly, like all things American, it goes very deep because, especially at this time, the American political system was VERY decentralized. You could get a relatively non-racislist progressive grouping in the North East just the same as you'd get a very racist one in the South or Mid-West. You can't ascribe one group of ideals to the entire category, only a vague description of the over-arching ideology (basically, classical republicanism spruced up for the industrial age). I don't agree with calling fascism, I should note, just that you can draw a lot of similarities between the two. Certain strains of progressivism could be said to be proto-fascism ported into turn of the century American political culture. Of course they'll be pro-democratic, democracy was pretty much the assumption underlying all American politics at the time. Of course they'd be about eugenics -- scientific positivism was the word of the day with regards to government policy.
Eugenics didn't evolve from much more than a mixing belief of racism which was pervasive in the culture in all political ideologies with an idea of scientific progress and a belief in the ability of achieving human perfection in body and evolution.

Fascism evolved out of a slew of things, both left and right, but was not the child of Progressivism, and on the contrary was very much a reaction to it, and was in the end a Hard Right philosophy and wholly alien to any ideologies that may have gone into it. Progressivism preached a democratic message of individuality, but with a welfare state to provide that which the citizens could not or could not so well in certain cases, and to regulate capitalism simply to avoid corruption and abuse. Fascism, on the contrary, preached a total and overbearing state, a dictatorial state, an absolute hatred of Liberals and Progressives and Socialists and so forth that did not believe in a despotic government or believe in the individual as something subservient, complete economic control of key industries with men as simply cogs and only those cogs that could prove useful given the benefits of the state, whatever they may be. And anyone else and any sector of the economy not seen as important or key was left to wallow in laissez faire. So in fact, in many ways, you could say Fascism is a Dictatorial Libertarianism (and many Fascists were, believe it or not, rather strong believers in Libertarianism and Laissez faire) because only that the state liked was given any benefit or protection. However, I view that as as much of a stretch as calling it the descendant of Progressivism, so I wouldn't call it that.

Fascists didn't like trade unions because they were a competitor to the power of the state. They didn't mind things like welfare or other worker assistance programs, as long as they were under the exclusive and direct control of the state. Remember, the economics of fascism are basically corporatism, a kind of authoritarian syndicalism.
Welfare was only given to those the state found worthy of it. The ideology of "Survival of the fittest" cannot be understated. Likewise, industries and corporations were free to "break" their workers and rule them with an iron fist to whatever degree they wished as long as things got done.
 
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JJohnson

Banned
Yes, government manipulation of the economy during Wilson was something lauded by FDR who was inspired to go further (he was Ass't Sec of the Navy during that time); the extent of government manipulation during Wilson and FDR was at the least socialistic, if not approaching fascistic - business as partners with government to achieve government ends is what fascists believe - called corporatism.

You don't remember but you had the blue eagle program as part of the War Industries Board, the encouragement of buying only Blue Eagle...

Acting without legislative imperative, in Europe through enabling acts, is actually something done just recently with the auto bailouts (which came from TARP money, and was not authorized for this use), along with the government now seeming to own banks, car companies, and looking to provide nationalized health care, that's what causes some to bring out the fascist term. And associated things like the constant crisis mentality, the compliant media which in some people's minds roots for government intervention in any situation, children singing to their new leader, those look fascist to those who've brought that term out. Fascism, apart from communism, is bred of the desire to act now before it's too late, constant experimentation by the government - the constant crisis mentality of acting before it's too late, just like was encouraged with the passage of TARP last year.

As for Mr. Goldberg, read his book cover to cover before dismissing it. He argues that the totalitarian urge that government provide all solutions to every crisis, constant crisis mentality, and be the focus of all citizens' lives is intellectually the basis of a political movement in the US. If anything it's a new look at history and can provide at least the encouragement to go back and look at the original source documents so you can see for yourself whether he did his job in presenting the truth.

And yes, Wilson, Hoover, and FDR played with the economy. Hoover was not a free-market type. He intervened after the market crashed, and FDR associates from the first administration felt he was simply continuing a lot of Hoover's policies. We don't have the same zeitgeist, but fascism wasn't thought evil at the time. It was the wave of the future and had many fans in the US during the 20s and 30s. There were many favorable articles written about Mussolini and Hitler as they rose to power, and some compared FDR to Mussolini in his first term in office.

But increased government intervention in the economy is a trait of socialism, fascism, and communism - they all advocate it. It's the extent of regulation, tariffs, and day-to-day control exerted that makes it one of those. Those three are politically speaking, kissing cousins, if not siblings.

The Progressive Movement? The movement that sought regulation of trusts and women's voting rights? That's fascistic? Someone's been reading too much of Jonah Goldberg's nonsense. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover played around with the economy? What in the world are you referring to? The non-enforcement of regulations established in the 1920s was the norm under all of these Presidents, those "rugged individualists"?

To equate the NRA with fascism is also a favorite bugaboo of the conservative movement, of course, and yes, to a large degree, it did have a contingent of the fascist recovery efforts being played around with at Europe at the time (and the man running it was a fascist himself, Hugh Johnson), but to say that it was an American "brown shirt" movement is ridiculous. Did you have armed paramilitary thugs beating up store owners for not working through the NRA code? No, you didn't.

Government intervention in the economy does not equal fascism in any shape or form. While intervention is the norm in fascist economies, this does not mean that all governments that regularly intervene with subsidies, tariffs, regulations, whathaveyou, are fascistic. If you honestly believe that, then you would have to stridently consider every government that's ever existed as 'fascist'.
 
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Well, money isn't wealth and real wealth creation was concentrated in equipping the Reich's military, so of course the standard of living stagnated.

EDIT: Although really I was talking more about things like extensive social welfare systems and the like.

But the Third Reich actually cslashed social spending in comparison to the Weimar Republic.

As for money isn't real wealth... what other indica are you going to use to measure the standard of living in the period? Calorie consumption of CEOs?
 
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