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Professor Salvemini told Reporter Joseph Philip Lyford of the
[Harvard] undergraduate daily that "a new brand of Fascism" threatens America, "the Fascism of corporate business enterprise in this country." He believed that "almost 100% of American Big Business" is in sympathy with the "philosophy" of government behind the totalitarianism of Hitler and Mussolini; the bond of sympathy between Big Business and the Fascist Axis, said the professor of history, lies in the respect of American industrialists for the Axis methods of coercing labor.
***
The Minister of Welfare
in announcing the abolition of the trade unions made this statement:
"Our primary aim is to drive communist ideas and dangerous social
thoughts from the minds of the people by ordering the dissolution of the
established labor unions, which have a tendency to sharpen class
consciousness among workers, which hamper the development of industry,
and disturb the peace and order of the country. -- "Facts and Fascism,"
by George Seldes
***
In 1937 the government
brought all the leading employers and business confederations together
in the Japanese League of Economic Organizations, which Brady describes
as a sort of private National Defense Council for business enterprise.
He concludes: "It would be hard to imagine a much higher degree of
policy-determining power than is indicated by the combination of the
Zaibatsu and its concentric cartel and federational machinery. The
hierarchy of business control seems well-nigh complete." The government
of Japan and the business interests of Japan are bound together "from
center to circumference." "What is being accomplished is the gradual
rounding out of a highly coordinated fascist-type of totalitarian
economy."
***
The real Fifth Column is
built on more than economic penetration, and much more than a few
pro-Nazi preachers, red network manipulators, publishers of cheap and
lying anti-Semitic pamphlets, and crackpots of all sorts. In Spain,
where the term Fifth Column originated, it was not reported generally
that the pro-Franco traitors within Madrid, who hid on roofs and
murdered people in the streets, were -- except for hired gunmen --
members of the upper ruling class, the aristocrats, the landowners, and
the members of the big business ruling families, and all the dead and
wounded were working men. Our press, which had nothing but praise for
Mussolini for almost a generation, and which has always protected
Fascism, Naziism and reaction in general by redbaiting every person and
movement which is anti-Fascist, anti-Nazi and anti-reactionary, later
made a grand noise over the traitors, seditionists and propagandists
such as Coughlin, Fritz Kuhn and Pelley, who were the outstanding
loudmouths at the time of Pearl Harbor. These small-fry fascisti and the
Rev. Gerald Winrod and numerous others spread the same lies which they
received from Hitler's World-Service (Welt-Dienst) of Erfurt; all these
noisy propagandists and traitors, repeating Hitler's propaganda, did
succeed in raising a huge smokescreen over America. Behind this
artificial redbaiting, anti-Semitic, anti-New Deal fog of confusion and
falsehood, however, there was a real Fifth Column of greater importance,
the great owners and rulers of America who planned world domination
through political and military Fascism, just as surely as Hitler did in
Germany, and like groups and like leaders did in other countries. There
is no reason to believe that the United States was the one exception to
the spread of Fascism.
***
"Deal
with the government and the rest of the squawkers the way you deal with
a buyer in a seller's market! If the buyer wants to buy, he has to meet
your price. Nineteen hundred and twenty-nine to 1942 was the buyer's
market -- we had to sell on their terms. When the war is over, it will
be a buyer's market again. But this is a seller's market. They want what
we've got. Good. Make them pay the right price for it. The price isn't
unfair or unreasonable. And if they don't like the price, why don't they
think it over?"
"The way to view the
issue is this: Are there common denominators for winning the war and the
peace? 1f there are, then, we should deal with both in 1943. What are
they? We will win the war (a) by reducing taxes on corporations, high
income brackets, and increasing taxes on lower incomes; (b) by removing
the unions from any power to tell industry how to produce, how to deal
with their employers, or anything else; (c) by destroying any and all
government agencies that stand in the way of free enterprise." [Lammot DuPont, chairman of the board of E.I. DuPont
de Nemours & Co.]
***
"If we are to come out
of this war with a Marxist brand of National Socialism, then I say
negotiate peace now and bring Adolf over here to run the show. He knows
how. He's efficient. He can do a better job than any of us can and a
damned sight better job than Roosevelt, who is nothing but a left-wing
bungling amateur."
"We've got Roosevelt on
the run. We licked production and the Axis is licking him. The finger
points where it belongs. We'll keep him on the run. Let's spend some
real money this year, what the hell! -- it'll only cost us 20 percent,
the rest would go in taxes anyway."
-- "Facts and Fascism," by George Seldes |
