FDR and his "Brain Trust" had enormous respect for the power of the first fascist, Benito Mussolini, a former school teacher, and his protege, Adolf Hitler. They controlled the ignorant masses, as every good Democrat wants to do.
They banned guns, as every good Democrat wants to do.
They thought themselves smarter and better than everyone else, as does every Democrat today.
It's all in Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg.
As we shall see, the Nazis emulated the Jacobins in minute detail.
It is no longer controversial to say that the French Revollution was disastrous and cruel.
The Nazis hated Christianity.....
P 21 The introduction of a novel term like "liberal fascism" obviously requires an explanation. Many critics will undoubtedly regard it as a crass oxymoron. Actually, however, I am not the first to use the term. that honor falls to H.G. Wells, one of the greatest influences on the progressive mind in the twentieth century (and it turns out the inspiration for Huxley's Brave New World).
Nor did Wells coin the phrase as an indictment, but as a badge of honor. Progressives must become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis" he told the Young Liberals at Oxford in a speech in July 1932.
Wells, simply put, was enthralled by the totalitarian temptation. "I have never been able to escape altogether from its relentless logic," he declared.
Fascism, like Progressivism and communism, is expansionist because it sees no natural boundary to its ambitions. Progressivism envisions a New World Order.
P 23 Finally, since we must have a working definition of fascism, here is mine: Fascism is a religion of the state. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good.
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Mussolini:
The Father of Fascism
P 27 the Italian Fascist movement (was founded) in 1919...
When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, Americans finally started to turn on him.
More than a few prominent Americans continued to support him [Mussolini], although quietly. The poet Wallace Stevens, for example, stayed pro-Fascist. "I am pro-Mussolini, personally," he wrote to a friend. "The Italians have as much right to take Ethiopia from the coons as the coons had to take it from the boa-constrictors."
In 1927, the Literary Digest conducted an editorial survey asking the question: Is there a dearth of great men?" the person named most often to refute the charge was Benito Mussolini - followed by Lenin, Edison, Marconi, and Orville Wright, with Henry Ford and George Bernard Shaw tying for sixth place.
P 28 .. famed reporter Ida Tarbell... praised Mussolini's progressive attitude toward labor.... Similarly smitten was Lincoln Steffens...
