American Fascists: A Forgotten History

As many American cities burned in the wake of the police killing of an unarmed black man, videos taken by news crews and private citizens revealed a part of America that has been hidden—or more accurately, ignored—for decades. But since the election of Donald Trump, Americans brandishing swastikas and raising their arms in the Nazi salute have become almost a daily sight. Many patriotic Americas have asked who are they and where did they come from?

The appearance of these cretins doesn’t surprise me. Fascism, in its various forms has been part of the American underbelly for the better part of a century. The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of fascism not only in Europe, but in the United States as well.

Members of the German American Bund parade
 through Camp Norland in New Jersey. (Source: National
Archives)

Throughout Thirties brown-shirted and jackbooted thugs of the German American Bund—essentially the Nazi Party affiliate in the U.S.—marched proudly through American streets, spreading their religion of hate and racism. There were Nazi enclaves in the woods for training, and summer camps for the children of American Nazis. In 1939, 22,000 Bund members held a massive rally in New York's Madison Square Garden. The Bund also affiliated with America’s first terrorist group, the Klu Klux Klan.

They Weren't Alone.

Even before the Bund, there was the Fascist League of North America, an umbrella group composed primarily of Italian-American supporters of Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini, considered by many to be the father of modern fascism. Mussolini coined the word fascism, comparing the rule of government by corporations for corporations to a fascine, in which weak sticks bound together create a strong foundation.

The Silver Legion of America, also known as the Silver Shirts due to their uniforms' silver camp shirts, at one time boasted at least 15,000 members. They owned a militarized compound in the hills surrounding Los Angeles in which they expected Adolf Hitler to stay after the Nazis took over the U.S. In 1936, their leader, William Dudley Pelley, ran for president on a third-party ticket.

The German-American Businessmen's Association, commonly called the DAWA (the German acronym for the Deutsch Amerikanischer Wirtschaft Auscbuss), focused primarily on ruining Jewish-owned businesses. Instead using the physical brutality the Nazis in Germany did on Kristallnacht in 1938, the American DAWA used boycotts to destroy Jewish businesses.

Closely allied with these groups—particularly the Bund—was the Christian Front which, despite calling itself Christian nevertheless sowed violence throughout New York. The Front denounced Jews and other non-Christians, and praised Hitler and Spain's fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

Included Members of Congress

It would be easy to dismiss these groups as simply a fanatical political fringe, but the bloody fingers of fascism reached deep into 1930s American politics. Many members of Congress—mostly Republican but also some conservative Democrats—openly supported in speeches these American fascist groups as well as the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe. In 1942, mystery novelist Rex Stout published The Illustrious Dunderheads, a collection of pro-fascist speeches given by conservative American politicians during the 1930s.

There were some American fascists who chose action over words. In 1933, retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, a two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor, was approached by two men representing wealthy and conservative American bankers and industrialists. The men explained they had been sent to Europe to study fascism and how best to bring it to the United States. Their backers decided a coup was the best idea, and they wanted Butler to lead it.

Butler played along and gathered evidence for the FBI and a subsequent Congressional investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Known by many names—The Business Plot, the Wall Street Plot, and The American Putsch—the plot was largely swept under the Capitol's rug, since so many well-known millionaires (and political contributors) were apparently involved.

In 2007, the BBC reported Prescott Bush, father, and grandfather of two American presidents, was one of those wealthy financiers involved in the American Putsch. Bush was a well-known supporter of Hitler's rise to power and was prosecuted for continuing to do business with the Nazis even after Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941.

Forgotten History

In the aftermath of WWII, many wanted to forget the exuberance with which they embraced fascism in the 1930s. The rise of the Soviet Union as the next great enemy gave many conservatives what they needed to distract Americans from the recent past. The McCarthy Era with its numerous and unsubstantiated claims of "commies everywhere" was simply a means of making voters forget the sins of the conservative right prior to the war.

Since WWII, American fascism had lain hidden in the political shadows. Certainly, over the decades, overt images of it—neo-Nazis, KKK, and so on—were occasionally seen in the media. But there also was a latent vestige of fascism that shunned the term "fascist" but cheered the concept of "nationalism"—one of the markers of fascist thought—and its memes like "American exceptionalism." Sinclair Lewis predicted this in his book, It Can't Happen Here, when he wrote: "[T]he worst Fascists were they who disowned the word ‘Fascism’ and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty.”

Decades ago, American writer George Santayana warned us, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

As seen at the top of this blog, those words are the motto of this site. And they are good words to live by.

References and further reading:

German American Bund: http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/american-nazi-organization-rally-madison-square-garden-1939/

Fascist League of North: America: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2050-411X.1977.tb00427.x/epdf

Silver Legion: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2116684/Hitlers-Los-Angeles-bunker-planned-run-Nazi-empire-war.html

German-American Businessmen's Association (DAWA): http://archive.jta.org/1934/05/13/archive/jewish-merchants-in-yorkville-ruined-as-dawa-presses-war

Christian Front: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F04EEDF1E3EE23ABC4A51DFB766838B659EDE&legacy=true

Illustrious Dunderheads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6261112-the-illustrious-dunderheads

House Committee report on the American Putsch:

http://www.claytoncramer.com/primary/other/HUAC1.pdf;

http://www.claytoncramer.com/primary/other/HUAC2.pdf;

http://www.claytoncramer.com/primary/other/HUAC3.pdf.

Prescott Bush and the American Putsch:

 https://timeline.com/business-plot-overthrow-fdr-9a59a012c32a

Nearly 100 Years after the Bonus March, Trump is Making the Same Mistakes

A beleaguered president, facing an uncertain reelection amid the worst economic crisis of the century, unleashes the U.S. Army to attack nonviolent demonstrators protesting the president’s policies in front of the White House.

If you think I’m talking about Donald Trump’s June 1 use of federal troops to clear the streets in front of the White House of protesters, you’d be right. But there was another failed president who also used federals troops to attack demonstrators. If Trump thinks a “show of force” against recent protesters—not to mention his threat to send federal troops into states to quell demonstrations and riots—will get him reelected, he should look back on how such actions worked for one of his Republican predecessors, Herbert Hoover.

Nineteen thirty-two was an election year. Hoover was beleaguered by the Great Depression which started in 1929 when the stock market crashed. The last thing Hoover needed was a horde of ragged protesters setting up shanty towns in Washington, DC, and calling them “Hoovervilles.”

Promised Bonus for Veterans

The protesters in this case were veterans of the First World War, then known only as The Great War. In 1924, Congress authorized compensating war veterans for the wages they lost while serving in the military. However, this “bonus,” as it was called, would not be paid out until 1945.

As the Depression flung much of the country into poverty, war veterans began lobbying Congress for an earlier pay out of the bonus. Congress agreed to provide the veterans half of their bonuses as “loans.” That, however, was not enough and the veterans began marching toward Washington demanding the remainder of their bonuses. Thus, began the Bonus March.

The first Bonus Marchers reached D.C. that May and set up camps along Pennsylvania Avenue and other parts of the city. By summer, the number of protesters swelled to more than 40,000. Only around 17,000 were actual veterans; most of the rest were family members of the marchers. Though the vets fought the war in segregated units, there was no segregation among the Bonus Marchers. Black and white veterans marched shoulder to shoulder.

On July 28, then Attorney General William Mitchell—in a move that Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr­ would repeat nearly 100 years later—ordered Washington police to disperse the protesters. The veterans resisted, and two were killed by police. Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear away the marchers and their Hooverville campsites. The man in charge of the operation was then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

MacArthur organized a force of 500 infantrymen, 500 cavalrymen, and six tanks backed by some 800 police officers. Leading the cavalry was Maj. George Patton, Jr. Both men would go on to become WWII legends. But they had something else in common.

Unusual Army Officers

MacArthur and Patton were both wealthy officers in a time when the U.S. Army was woefully underfunded and most officers and enlisted men were little better off than their civilian counterparts. MacArthur was the scion of Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, Jr., a Civil War hero whose rose to one of the highest ranks in the Army. Patton was born into a modest family, but married a wealthy woman and adopted her family’s political views.

MacArthur viewed the veterans as traitors, accusing them of being communists and saying, “Pacifism and its bedfellow communism are all around us.” Patton also saw the protesters as “reds” and told his men, “If you must fire do a good job—a few casualties become martyrs, a large number an object lesson…”

Among the marchers was Joe T. Angelo, who had been Patton’s orderly during the war. Angelo received the Distinguish Service Cross for saving Patton’s life on the battlefield.

Bonus Marchers flee Army tear gas.
 Source: National Archives

In the late afternoon, the federal troops began to move against the bonus marchers. Patton’s cavalry led the assault, followed by the infantry and tanks. The horse soldiers charged into the protesters with sabers drawn. The infantry followed with fixed bayonets and lobbing tear gas at the marchers. Tanks rolled over the shanty towns. Soldiers set the remains ablaze.

Two veterans died in rout, and dozens more were injured. A baby also died, apparently asphyxiated by the tear gas.

In the aftermath of the battle, Angelo approached his former commanding officer whose life he’d once saved. Patton refused to acknowledge the veteran, saying, “I do not know this man. Take him away and under no circumstances permit him to return.”

The next day, Hoover’s election opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, read a newspaper account of the attack. He turned to campaign aide, Felix Frankfurter, and said, “Well, Felix, this will elect me.” FDR went on to win in a landslide.

Repeating Mistakes

Nearly 100 years after the Bonus March, we are now seeing many of the same social elements that created that disaster—joblessness, poverty, and economic and social repression—compounded by a deadly pandemic and the unprecedented incompetence of Donald Trump and his fellow travelers. Trump blames the violence of the demonstrations on the today’s “reds,” the anti-fascist Antifa. (In fact, there is evidence agitators from the misnamed and extremist right-wing Patriot Movement may be to blame.) Desperate to look in control of the situation—or in his defense secretary’s words “dominate the battle space”—Trump has and continues contemplating turning the American Army on the American people.

One can almost hear Joe Biden turning to one of his campaign aides and saying, “Well, this will elect me.”

Cops are Being Targeted, but Not by Whom They Think

Once again, a nonviolent black man has died at the hands of police officers. As Minneapolis burns in the wake of the death of George Floyd, who was being arrested for allegedly passing a forged $20 check, the question arises again—are white cops targeting people of color?

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be yes. In whole numbers, the number of white men versus black men killed by police officers per year is largely comparable. But when looked at in terms population ratios, black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement; for black women that number is 1.4 times more likely. According to a Rutgers University study, 1-in-1,000 African American boys and men will be killed by police in their lifetime; for white boys and men, the rate is 39 out of 100,000.

Contentious History

But why? Historically, law enforcement has had a contentious relationship with Black Americans going back to the antebellum South when constables, sheriff’s, and state militia were responsible for hunting down escaped slaves. In the postbellum South, those same figures of authority were often the night riders of the Klu Klux Klan. Southern cops were also charged with enforcing the South’s notorious Jim Crow laws.

But that was then; this is now. So, are police officers today more likely to shoot African Americans because people of that race kill more cops than Caucasians? According to FBI statistics, of 556 persons charged in cop killings between 2004 and 2013, 289 were white, 243 were black, and the rest were Asian/Pacific Islanders or Native Americans. Again, in whole numbers, there is statistically no difference in the number of white and black cop killers. Yet, according to the Census Bureau, African Americans comprise only 13.4 percent of the American population. So, police could say they are more fearful of encounters with black suspects than white suspects, hence the outcome of those encounters are more likely to be violent.

Gunning for Cops

Yet, because America’s gun culture is largely a white phenomenon, Caucasian suspects are more likely to be armed, and heavily armed at that. And some of those armed whites are out gunning for cops.

According to a study by ThinkProgress, 33 officers shot between 2007 and 2017 were targeted by far-right extremists, including white supremacists and anti-government sovereign citizens. Statistics compiled by the Anti-Defamation League showed right-wing extremists killed 51 police officers between 1990 and 2018. Left-wing extremists, including black nationalists, killed 11.

These statistics and incidents do not include the dozens of alt-right extremists who, over the past two decades, planned attacks on local police and federal agents but were arrested before the attacks could be executed.

In June, police in Northern California arrested an active duty Air Force airman on charges of

Suspected alt-right extremist Steven Carrillo 
was charged with ambushing Santa Cruz 
sheriff's deputies.

ambushing and killing a Santa Cruz sheriff's deputy and wounding other. Steven Carrillo is also suspected in other recent attacks on local and federal law enforcement officers. Carrillo is suspected of having right-wing extremist belief based on statements on his social media. When arrested he was in possession of a semiautomatic rifle and home-made bombs.

Voting for Their Own Killers?

 Generally, law enforcement officers tend to be conservative and vote as such. But these officers may be supporting the very people targeting them for death.

In December 2019, Washington State Rep. Matt Shea, a Republican, was accused by his own state legislature of secretly taking part in the 2016 six-week Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff between law enforcement agencies and members of the so-called “Patriot Movement.” Shea was accused of planning the deadly standoff as well as two other violent incidents over a three-year period.

The Patriot Movement is a notorious coalition of hard-right extremist groups including neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, anti-government sovereign statists, and armed militias. It’s members are responsible for most of the two decades of attacks on police mentioned earlier. Two members of the movement, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, blew up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people including many children.

These are the same people Donald Trump referred to as “some fine people” following the 2017 white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville, VA.

Shea Not Alone

Shea is not alone in the GOP in his support of the movement. According to Political Research Associates, numerous members of Oregon’s state legislature are either members or supporters of the Patriot Movement. So are many local law enforcement officials, meaning some day cops may be killing cops. In May 2019, the Arizona Republic reported that the Patriot Movement was pushing for more influence in the state’s GOP.

The Patriot Movement has gained renewed momentum from the current pandemic, using stay-at-home orders and business closures as a cause célèbre for their anti-government rhetoric. The corona crisis has also given these terrorists a new weapon. According to a March 2020 FBI intelligence report, white extremists who contract the virus are being encourage to spread it among the population by using spray bottles filled with their bodily fluids. Their primary targets? Jews and police officers.

Look, I have a law enforcement background from the military. Being a cop is hard, dangerous, and sometimes unrewarding work. But if I were a police officer today, I’d be less nervous about dealing with a black guy than I would a white guy. Especially if the white guy had a spray bottle.