The United States and the Fascism of Greed

It has become popular on the left to equate Donald Trump’s ascension with the rise of Hitler in 1930s Germany.  While some of the comparisons are frighteningly apt, there are meaningful differences in the two examples.  It would be nice if these differences made Trump less of a threat, but sadly that is not the case.

They make him more of one.

The most important distinction is the contrast in the prevailing economies of the two periods.  Almost all Americans have lost sight of just how bad things were in the United States when Hitler came to power in Germany.

From 1929 to 1933, United States farm income dropped 70%, automobile production by 65%, and the stock market a staggering 80%.  Unemployment soared from 3% in 1929 to 25%, one quarter of the work force, just four years later.  Farmers lost their land, homeowners lost their homes, and renters were evicted by the millions.  Wages plummeted so even those lucky enough to keep their jobs often found themselves unable to buy food or pay rent. 

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote that factories “were ghostly and silent, like extinct volcanoes,” families “slept in tar-paper shacks and tin-lined caves,” and “thousands of vagabond children roamed the land.”  The nation was blanketed by “a mood of helplessness, a contagion of fear,” and “a fog of despair.”

It is not surprising then, that many looked across the Atlantic, where conditions had been every bit as dire, but where Hitler and Mussolini seemed to be taming the depression beast and sending their populations back on the road to prosperity.  These leaders were unapologetically merciless with their enemies, real or perceived, and certain groups, like Jews, about whom few Americans cared anyway, were treated especially harshly.  But despite their excesses and their brutality, the two dictators had spawned a rebirth of national will, which America seemed to lack.

As a result, tens of thousands of Americans joined fascist groups such as the Christian Front, the Silver Shirts (begun by a failed Hollywood screenwriter), and, of course, the German American Bund.  As many as 10 million Americans lapped up the ravings of hatred-filled demagogues, such as Father Coughlin.  As the nation’s leaders in Washington were all too aware, there existed the very real possibility that American democracy would collapse under the weight of a perceived inability to effectively overcome crisis. 

It would not be a mistake, then, to conclude that if not for Franklin Roosevelt, the massive government spending in the New Deal, and the military buildup that led to the vanquishing of those same two fascist heroes in World War II, American history might have played out very differently.  (Nothing like a foreign war to cure a fragile economy.  By 1943, unemployment had dropped to 1.9%.)

The current United States economy provides nowhere near the same level of menace.  The United States has added more than 16 million jobs since Joe Biden took office in January 2021, unemployment has dropped from 6.3 to 3.9%, GDP is healthy, growing at a muscular 4.9% in the previous quarter, and consumer spending is vigorous while the consumer price index is less than half of what it was eighteen months ago. 

Yet, seemingly paradoxically, in a September 2023 poll, a massive 70% of the respondents said that the economy is getting worse.  Eighty-four percent of them cited the rising cost of living, with food, housing, and energy prices the key culprits.  Most who responded to the poll said they are cutting back on household purchases, going out to eat less often, buying fewer gifts, and spending less on vacations. 

While belt tightening makes ripe fodder for any incumbent’s political opponent, the hardships many Americans are currently experiencing pale before the economic free-fall in the 1930s.  In addition, one of the reasons those at the lower end of the economic ladder have less money to work with is that those at the top of the ladder have taken so much money out. 

Income inequality is currently either near or at an all-time high, rivaling the Gilded Age, in which vast fortunes were made by the likes of Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and a bit later on, Henry Ford, with no income tax until 1913 to help as an equalizer.  It is an irony that the current discontents want to embrace the man who was instrumental in lessening the tax burden on that very upper stratum.

In addition, one of the reasons the cost of living seems so high is that corporate profits are even higher, with executive compensation reaching absurd levels, while companies such as Amazon and Starbucks are working tirelessly and desperately to avoid unionization.  These corporate titans and the conglomerates they control are the very entities that most thrive under fascist governments.

While it would be a mistake to minimize the anger engendered by high prices, there is, in fact, not all that much genuine economic hardship among the fascist leaning groups in this country.  It is simply that too many Americans, due to social media, the incendiary pronouncements of the populists, and their own past success, have decided that they are entitled to more than what they are getting, both from government and the marketplace. At the same time, many of these same Americans have decided that others—mostly people of color living in cities or gender nonconforming—are getting too much and government is giving a free ride to the undeserving.

That is called greed.

Mix that in with religious hypocrisy and lure of a salesman who assures them that he will return the United States to the proper order where parasites and freeloaders will be kept in their place, and that blind obedience rather than science or education will return them to the pinnacle on which they belong, and the similarities with 1930s Germany begin to emerge.

Back then, FDR was able to blunt the fascism of need by ameliorating the very real cataclysm that created it.  The fascism of greed may be a good deal more difficult to eradicate.