Defining American Facism.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Patroklos
He did say the Oerdin, but he also said...



He is just bashing Germans because thats who we are fighting. He might as well have just called the Huns.

A brownie for Patty Cakes, for pointing out the historical context of the article.

[Dinner]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Agard_Wallace

That's the wikipedia entry for Henry Wallace. He had radical ideas like Free Trade with OLatin America but only if those countries enforced minimium wages and safe working conditions for workers.

One of the contributing reasons he got bumped was because conservatives claimed that Wallace's support for labor unions and better wage and working conditions some how made him a communist. It sure didn't help that he was an anti-segrogationist who pissed off southern conservatives with his calls to end Jim Crow.

[Ramo]

However, Wallace's failure to repudiate the endorsement of the Communist Party had undermined his popularity, and he wound up with just over 2.4 percent of the popular vote.

He didn't seek that endorsement. He only believed that they had the right to endorse him. So Truman red-baited him to stop the hemoraging from the left.

[lord of the mark]

yah, Oerdin, Im not surprised he was more overtly anti-segregation than Truman. So? Being a far leftist, he had no real chance of getting southern votes anyway (despite the pious talk about southern workers) so he nothing to lose, unlike FDR and Truman. The Communist Party was also opposed to segregation. Truman, however, actually integrated the army, while also pursuing a foreign policy that opposed Soviet expansion. Hubert Humphrey at the 1948 convention gave a speech against segregation that triggered the dixiecrat walkout - yet Humphrey supported Truman, NOT Wallace. Perhaps because Humphrey was a firm anti-communist, and a founder of the anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ramo

However, Wallace's failure to repudiate the endorsement of the Communist Party had undermined his popularity, and he wound up with just over 2.4 percent of the popular vote.

He didn't seek that endorsement. He only believed that they had the right to endorse him. So Truman red-baited him to stop the hemoraging from the left.

they had the right to endorse him, and he had the right to reject it. He didnt, cause they were a key part of this support.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Agard_Wallace

One of the contributing reasons he got bumped was because conservatives claimed that Wallace's support for labor unions and better wage and working conditions some how made him a communist.

He was not a communist. But given that the OP was a quote from an HW speech were he basically says that anyone whos too far to the right is a fascist, its pretty ironic to complain that people who thought he was too far left called him a communist, huh?

[BeBMan]

Can't say anything about the US in this aspect, but yeah that Prussian Junker thing looks kinda stupid. AFAIK most serious historians today would be rather careful before constructing a continuity over centuries from Prussia to Hitler's fascism.

No doubt the Prussian militarism of the late 19th century is one important element for WWI and for the time later, including the nazi-era, but it is not only a problem of the "Prussian Junker". One can't explain Hitler's rise only from Prussian traditions.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Agard_Wallace

That's the wikipedia entry for Henry Wallace. He had radical ideas like Free Trade with OLatin America but only if those countries enforced minimium wages and safe working conditions for workers.

One of the contributing reasons he got bumped was because conservatives claimed that Wallace's support for labor unions and better wage and working conditions some how made him a communist. It sure didn't help that he was an anti-segrogationist who pissed off southern conservatives with his calls to end Jim Crow.

From your link

"The Democratic Party bumped Wallace from its ticket in 1944, largely due to party concerns over FDR's failing health and thus the likelihood of his running-mate succeeding him, over Wallace's alleged "communist" beliefs and perceived closeness to the Soviet Union, as well as over his unorthodox New Age tendencies."

"In 1952 Wallace published Why I Was Wrong, in which he explained that his seemingly-trusting stance toward the Soviet Union and Stalin stemmed from inadequate information about Stalin's excesses and that he, too, now considered himself an anti-Communist."

[Dinner]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
He was not a communist. But given that the OP was a quote from an HW speech were he basically says that anyone whos too far to the right is a fascist, its pretty ironic to complain that people who thought he was too far left called him a communist, huh?

I don't think he was attempting to claim everyone who was right of him was a facist but instead he was attempting to define what it meant to be a facist. What values and policies does a facist hold? And so forth.

[Kuciwalker]

Oerdin - it's fascist.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin


I don't think he was attempting to claim everyone who was right of him was a facist but instead he was attempting to define what it meant to be a facist. What values and policies does a facist hold? And so forth.

I didnt say everyone to the right of him. But he proposes a definition that is far wider than membership in fascists parties, or holding the antidemocratic principles that are normally considered definitional of fascism. Its a definition wide enough to bring on lots of his political enemies, and its the moral equivalent of broad definitions of communist that would include him.

[Dinner]

OK, sorry.

[lord of the mark]

Heres Hubert Humphrey on Civil Rights at the 1948 convention.

"To those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights - I say to them, we are one hundred and seventy-two years late. To those who say this is an infringement on states' rights, I say this - the time has arrived in America. The time has arrived for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forth rightly into the bright sunshine of human rights. In these times of world economic, political and spiritual - above all, spiritual - crisis, we cannot and we must not turn back from the path so plainly before us. That path has already led us through many valleys of the shadows of death. Now is the time to recall those who were left on the path of American freedom. Our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth. I know that we can - know that we shall - begin here the fuller and richer realization of that hope - that promise - of a land where all men are truly free and equal."


Yet Henry Wallace found this man and his party to be too far to the right. I suppose he didnt much care for
"Our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth"

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
OK, sorry.

Nothing personal. I just think that some folks arent hip on the Truman-Wallace thing. They say in the South and the border states your politics and world view are defined by what side your ancestors took in the civil war, and in Boston its the potatoe famine, etc. Well where I grew up, when I grew up, among whom I grew up, the definitional thing was the 1948 election - were you for Truman or Wallace (the only real choices among New York Jews) Im from a dyed in the wool Truman family. Folks can feel free to read and prefer and love Henry Wallace - but to see him as representative of anything other than ONE side of a bitter fight WITHIN American liberalism, would be mistaken.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Patroklos
The article is [b]obsurd[b]. Basically if you believe stalwartly in anything you are a facist. Prussian Junkers eh? So Germany was Facist for 400 years?

1. absurd
2. Fascist
3. Fascist