Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

Philip Johnson, a young Harvard graduate, excitedly attended a Hitler Youth rally in Potsdam, Germany, in 1932. One of Johnson’s favorite philosophers was Friedrich Nietzsche, who believed in Übermenschen, or “supermen,” elite individuals who were fit to shape the world because they refused to bow to morals, laws, or convention. Johnson believed that Hitler was the prime example of such a man.

Johnson later became a celebrated architect, but as a young man, he mostly used his inherited wealth to curate the architectural work of others. In his free time, he and his friend Alan Blackburn complained about President Roosevelt, dreamed of the day when the US would have a fascist leader like Hitler, and made plans for an organization they called the Gray Shirts.

Others largely regarded Johnson as harmless, rich, and a bit silly—not a threat to society. However, one of Johnson’s acquaintances, another Harvard graduate named Lincoln Kirstein, held a different view of Johnson. Kirstein, who was Jewish, observed that Johnson liked to exert power over other people. Kirstein and his father had noted that fascism and antisemitism were on the rise in both Europe and the US throughout the early 1930s.

Another Harvard graduate, Lawrence Dennis, was a proponent of US fascism; he wanted a Hitler-like figure to take over the US. He told men like Johnson and Blackburn that this sort of plan would take a long time to implement. He believed that the most likely person to fill the role of American fascist dictator was Huey Long, a US senator and governor of Louisiana.

In the 1930s, Huey Long, US senator and governor of Louisiana, provided “a glimpse of what post-democracy strongman rule might look like in the United States” (11). He held onto his job as governor even after he was elected to the US Senate. He used his bodyguards to physically intimidate and control others, planned the kidnappings of his enemies, and once used National Guard troops to overtake his state’s capitol. The text presents Long, who rose to power on a populist platform, as an example of how far the US could venture into political extremism and even a case study of what dictatorship might look like in the US.

While communism had some supporters in the US throughout the 1930s, their presence was not as strong as its detractors feared. Mostly, communists in the US agitated for better working conditions and civil rights for the poor as well as racial minorities. Still, the communist movement did not have much sway, even at its height, when tens of thousands of people belonged to the party.

Nevertheless, as a politician, Long recognized the power that could come from supporting the poor and the marginalized, and he campaigned on a platform of wealth equality. His political movement, Share Our Wealth, strove to rectify the vast poverty that had resulted from the Great Depression. This grassroots message was immensely popular after years of scarcity and hardship. Long told his followers that everyone should have the basic resources necessary for a comfortable life: a home, a car, and other conveniences. He advocated for free education and guaranteed income for all families and even proposed an exponential federal tax that would heavily tax the wealth of the richest individuals: “None shall be too rich, and none shall be too poor,” he told his audiences (13).

Millions joined Long’s Share Our Wealth Society. During his time as governor of Louisiana, he followed through on his promises, building new roads, bridges, and hospitals; these hospitals served patients regardless of whether they could afford the care. He provided free textbooks to schools and instituted a free literacy program that taught 100,000 adults to read. In addition, he raised taxes on corporations and repealed the state’s poll tax, which massively increased voter registration.

However, Long achieved these goals through a dictatorial style of rule. He took control of all elections and all appointed offices in the state, and he expected bribes and kickbacks from every person he installed in office. Additionally, he exerted control over Louisiana’s police and prosecutors. He maintained his power and popularity despite the rumors that swirled around him regarding planned kidnappings and murder attempts on his enemies.

American fascist Lawrence Dennis admired and analyzed Long’s power. He acknowledged that one of the keys to Long’s power was his control of the state militia. Philip Johnson and his friend Alan Blackburn, enamored with Long, decided to start a new political party, the National Party, and said they would make Huey Long their new leader. They stocked their car with weapons catalogs, dreaming about which weapons they would arm themselves with while on the road, and drove south to speak with Long.

The Nazis regarded the US as the world’s foremost creator of racist law and thus sent an attorney to study at the University of Arkansas School of Law to learn how to emulate US racist policies. This attorney, Heinrich Krieger, studied US treatment of Black people, immigrants, and the inhabitants of newly acquired territories. Krieger concluded that US law was based on the concept of protecting white people from all other races. The text points out that prominent US politicians have espoused this view, including Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Calvin Coolidge.

Krieger realized that the US preserved the idealistic language of its founding documents (which speak of liberty and happiness for all) while simultaneously relegating non-white people, especially Black people, to second-class citizenship, through the use of juridical Umwege, “secret and twisting passageways of reasoning that led to whatever outcome was politically desirable” (24-25).

To codify racism, Krieger found, all a country had to do was legally define races and enact a law to protect one of them from the others, thus providing enough legal cover for authorities to maneuver toward outcomes supporting that race.

Following this template, the Nazis enacted the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor in 1935. This law forbade marriages and sexual relations between Jewish and non-Jewish people. Then, they passed another law that revoked the political rights and citizenship of Jewish Germans.

Around the same time, the Nazi party established the swastika as Germany’s official symbol. They did this in reaction to an incident in New York, in which New Yorkers protested a German ocean liner that was flying the swastika flag. Judge Brodsky, the judge who presided over the protestors’ cases, let most of them off without punishment and used his ruling to lecture Hitler, speaking strongly against Hitler’s suppression of religious freedom. The Nazis denigrated Brodsky, who was Jewish. The US Secretary of State felt the need to apologize to Hitler on behalf of Brodsky, and Hitler thanked President Roosevelt and his administration. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, declared the swastika flag the national flag of Germany.