… The high-sounding phrase "the American way" will be used by interested groups intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins against the American and Christian tradition, such sins as lawless violence, teargas and shotguns, denial of civil liberties … There is an obligation resting on us all to dedicate our minds to the hard task of thinking in terms of Christian objectives and values, so that we may be saved from moral confusion.
For never, probably, has there been a time when there was a more vigorous effort to surround social and international questions with such a fog of distortion and prejudices and hysterical appeal to fear. We have touched a new low in a Congressional investigation this Summer, used by some participating in it to whip up fear and prejudice against many causes of human welfare, such as concern for peace and the rights of labor to bargain collectively.
Keeping Life Out of Confusion (1938)
“[I]n many respects fascism not only is here but has been here for nearly a century. For what we call liberalism--the refurbished edifice of American Progressivism--is in fact a descendant and manifestation of fascism… Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today's liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism.”
Source: 2000s, 2008, Liberal Fascism (2008), p. 5
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Jonah Goldberg 89
American political writer and pundit 1969Related quotes
Ur-Fascism (1995)
Context: Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola... But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism.
Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 316.
“When the United States gets fascism, it will call it anti-fascism.”
Originally reported by Robert Cantrell. But years later Cantrell told Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. that that was his own summary of his conversation with Long, not Long's exact words. See They Never Said It by Paul F. Boller and John H. George (1990) https://books.google.com/books?id=6zfnCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA94&dq=when+fascism+comes+to+america,+it+will+be+called+anti-fascism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo0sSQ0_TRAhWmwVQKHQ85C9M4KBDoAQguMAQ#v=onepage&q=when%20fascism%20comes%20to%20america%2C%20it%20will%20be%20called%20anti-fascism&f=false.
Misattributed
Variant: When the United States gets fascism, it will call it 100 percent Americanism.
Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 166
From Jane Soames’s authorized translation of Mussolini’s “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” Hogarth Press, London, (1933), p. 20. http://historyuncensored.wixsite.com/history-uncensored http://media.wix.com/ugd/927b40_c1ee26114a4d480cb048f5f96a4cc68f.pdf Julius Evola reproduced the original Italian as "un secolo della 'Destra" ("a century of the right"); see Evola, Fascismo e Terzo Reich. Several English translations agree with Evola's wording, including one published by the Fascist government in 1935 and transcribed online. http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm
Attributed
Source: Liberalism (1927), Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Liberal Policy § 10 : The Argument of Fascism
Context: Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect — better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the long series of struggles over the problem of property. The next episode will be the victory of Communism. The ultimate outcome of the struggle, however, will not be decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales.
So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.
It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.
Source: The Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, (1999), p. 191 (footnote 26).
The Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm, Mariner Books (1985), pp. 13-14. First published in 1948.
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Speech held in Trieste (September 18, 1938)
Source: Il discorso di Trieste, archivioluce, 2021-01-04 https://www.archivioluce.com/2019/09/18/il-discorso-di-trieste/,