When I use "fascist", I don't necessarily imply only those that conciously support a fascist agenda in the US, although I don't doubt that they exist and have power as well. I simply don't have any way to know the proportion of those that are enamoured of fascist ideology, preached by certain conservative universities and repackaged under the rubric of a more attractive euphemism, and those that are doctrinaire fascists that think WWII was the wrong war, at the wrong time against the wrong enemy, and whose leanings are anti-democratic and pro-corporation. I call it fascist because that is what it truly is, with deep and comprehensive ideological roots in the early 20th century among our own academics and scholars in this country.

Fascism has it's roots in the US, if you study the history of our country and it's relationship to the 3rd Reich. Our national debate has always been involved with the discussion about aristocracies and elites and their ruling privileges, since the time of Madison and the Whig party. Chomsky often discusses this very impressively. Time does not permit me to go into all the historical roots that can be traced back.

Remember that even as recently as the 1920's-30's America was an extremely openly, viciously racist society -- not that it isn't still somewhat today, but it's easy to forget that today, even though sometimes it seems we are lurching backwards very fast. Eugenics was born here -- the Nazi eugenics laws were based explicitly on sterilization laws that were used in California for 10 years prior to their being introduced into Germany. The US is no stranger to monopolies and cartels. Only the presence of the Populists and Progressives prevented a total takeover. In 1933, a group of the most powerful US industrialists -- Morgan, Ford, Dupont and the CEO of GM and others -- conspired and nearly succeeded in a little publicized plot to overthrow the US government and kill FDR and replace it with a fascist government on the model of Mussolini, a plot that was uncovered when true patriot Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler revealed the plan in which they tried to get him to lead tens of thousands of veterans to take Washington. Congressional hearings were held much like the present Iran Contra hearings and the matter quietly was dropped.

US financiers on Wall Street considered Hitler a pretty good investment in the '30's and Hitler's miraculous economic recovery and military buildup was financed largely by Wall Street capital flight from the US depression in the Dawes plan and by interlocking cartel and technology licensing arrangements with US industry. George's Daddy Bush, Prescott, along with his father in law Walker, the Harriman and Dulles Brothers, Sullivan and Cromwell, Brown Brothers Harriman, etc. and others were principally responsible for funnelling money to Hitler and continued their activities during and after the war to the successor powers. They recovered their direction during the Truman administration, recruiting stooges like Nixon. This is gone into in detail in "The Spendid Blond Beast" by Christopher Simpson.

Much as Aaron Burr went to Mexico for assistance in trying to get a revolution started in the US, and much more recently George Bush went to old CIA cohorts in Iran to use as a foreign base to destabilize Jimmy Carter, the pro-fascist US industrialists went to the Axis in the '30's to found a base of operations to overthrow the US when they found it wasn't as easy as they thought to do it here. FDR planned after the war to have tried Rockefeller, Dulles and others on outright treason charges if he had lived, and had the wiretap evidence (as discussed in William Stephenson's book "Intrepid") to back it up, all as revealed in the recent book "The Secret War Against the Jews" by Lofus and Aarens, St. Martins Press, 1995. Instead, FDR died and the Dulles' and Nelson Rockefeller were able to cover up their crimes and went on to become high officials during the Cold War.

Fascism was very fashionable before, during and after the war in certain ruling circles in the US. These diehards keep on trying to bring it back, they despise our democracy and think it's inefficient and silly. There's much more but time does not permit. I can recommend some good books.

Jeff Golin