In 1940, FDR’s next vice president, Henry Wallace, fought the election with the slogan “Keep Hitler out of the White House.” Wallace said “You can be sure that every Nazi, every Hitlerite, and every appeaser is a Republican.” At their harshest, fervent New Dealers dropped the qualifiers and pronounced Wendell Willkie, Roosevelt’s middle-of-the-road Republican opponent, “the man Hitler wants elected president.”
An excellent example, that will now replace my mentioning that Truman called Dewey a fascist. Ironic, as Wallace was himself very near being a communist, and said so, in Russia, during the war. To his credit, he later repented of this publicly.
"Fascist individual" is an oxymoron, even if we admit the existence of an "authoritarian personality." I'm not sure that real fascists were "real fascists" on today's understanding. They wanted to adjust the mix of individual liberty and group cohesion in the direction of group cohesion, but they did not propose to eliminate individual liberty entirely. Similarly, very few "liberals" are anarchists, they just want to adjust the mix of individual liberty and group cohesion in the opposite direction. Adjust it too far in that direction, and a "liberal" becomes a "fascist."
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Fascism has meant bad people (i.e. Republicans) almost since the day the word was coined.
In 1940, FDR’s next vice president, Henry Wallace, fought the election with the slogan “Keep Hitler out of the White House.” Wallace said “You can be sure that every Nazi, every Hitlerite, and every appeaser is a Republican.” At their harshest, fervent New Dealers dropped the qualifiers and pronounced Wendell Willkie, Roosevelt’s middle-of-the-road Republican opponent, “the man Hitler wants elected president.”
An excellent example, that will now replace my mentioning that Truman called Dewey a fascist. Ironic, as Wallace was himself very near being a communist, and said so, in Russia, during the war. To his credit, he later repented of this publicly.
"Fascist individual" is an oxymoron, even if we admit the existence of an "authoritarian personality." I'm not sure that real fascists were "real fascists" on today's understanding. They wanted to adjust the mix of individual liberty and group cohesion in the direction of group cohesion, but they did not propose to eliminate individual liberty entirely. Similarly, very few "liberals" are anarchists, they just want to adjust the mix of individual liberty and group cohesion in the opposite direction. Adjust it too far in that direction, and a "liberal" becomes a "fascist."
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