Fascism

Looking for an Analytical Tool Underneath the Epithet

Boardwalk, Asbury Park

I started thinking seriously about the concept of fascism when my son, Ben, was still in college. He wrote a course paper on Franco's Spain that questioned whether it was actually a fascist state. After all, the pillars of the regime were the army, the church, and the large landowners. This would seem to put it more in the category of a traditional authoritarian state, only with a dictator at the head instead of a king.

So what does the word fascist mean? I was aware that many people used the word "fascist" to describe people they didn't like who were of an authoritarian bent - basically making it a synonym for the sixties word "pig." This made it difficult to distinguish among right-wing authoritarians.

I had an interest in such distinctions because I'd written my bachelor's thesis on the French army in Indochina and Algeria, and therefore spent a fair amount of time studying people who were often called fascists. But they weren't really. They were just soldiers who kept losing one war after another, and some of them lost their way. I was writing my thesis in 1967 and 1968, and I was concerned that the Vietnam war might have a similar effect in our country. Fortunately we did not copy the French experience, at least in this regard.

So I found my son's paper illuminating. I still didn't really know what fascists were, but I was extending my ideas about who they weren't. We had a number of interesting conversations on the topic. And there the matter rested for quite some time.

More recently, as I was watching the rise of Donald Trump, I found my interest in fascism rekindled. And I took a book down from the shelf and read it. It was Robert Paxton's Vichy France. I had bought it when it came out in 1972, but then I got diverted onto other things, like land surveying before the invention of the surveyor's transit.

Vichy France and Fascism
Around the middle of the book (pages 228-233), Paxton wrestles with the question of whether Vichy France was a fascist state. He starts by comparing fascism with traditional authoritarianism. Perhaps the most striking difference is that fascism always is, or aspires to be, a mass movement. Conservatives, on the other hand, "show distaste for mass participation and prefer government by a few established families."

There are also points of agreement: "authoritarianism, hatred of liberals as weak-kneed harbingers of leftist social revolution, defense of property." So one quick definition of fascism is "mass antitraditional authoritarianism."

Paxton then looks at how fascism played out in five countries: Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France. He notes that "No undiluted fascist regime has wielded power." They all had to compromise with traditionalists in order to gain power. The question is: How much did they compromise?

Paxton suggests placing these regimes on a spectrum, "ranging from those in which fascists dominated the partnership to those in which the conservatives dominated the partnership."

At one end of the spectrum he puts Germany: "The Nazi party and the paramilitary organizations eventually broke the power of even such conservative elite groups as the diplomatic corps and the army." Italy ranks second as a fascist state. There, the king, the church, and the army "retained sufficient autonomy to regain their independence and overthrow Mussolini and the party in order to make a deal with the advancing Allies in July 1943."

Salazar's Portugal occupies the other end of the spectrum and is best analyzed as a conservative, Catholic, authoritarian regime.

Franco's Spain relied on the army, the church, and the great landowners, but it also had a political party that, in the early days at least, was strongly fascist: the Falange, which means phalanx in English. As Hugh Thomas explains on page 70 of his book The Spanish Civil War (1961), the name was "ominously taken from the Macedonian unit of battle responsible for the destruction of democracy in Greece in the fourth century BC."  As Paxton notes, "Franco gradually muted the Falange."

This leaves us with France, which was defeated by Germany in 1940, with the northern part of the country (including Paris) occupied and directly administered by the invaders, and the southern part administered by a regime located in the resort town of Vichy.

Vichy was basically two things: traditionalist and collaborationist. There was, however, a distinct fascist tinge that grew over time. The fascist influence is particularly strong in the deportation of the Jews and the rise of the Milice, a paramilitary group organized in 1943 to combat the Resistance.

All of these disparate regimes shared one thing: They played on the fears of the middle class in a turbulent time. This is what fascism does. Paxton sums it up this way: "Hard measures by a frightened middle class - that, indeed, is one good general definition of fascism. In that broader sense, Vichy was fascist. And in that sense, fascism has not yet run its course."

Where Does the Fear Come From?
So fear lies at the base of fascism. But where does the fear come from? It comes when people start to think that they may lose what they have. Or, as James Carville put it, "It's the economy, stupid."

This deep fear is usually overlain by more superficial fears. For instance, in the 1930's many people felt a pervasive fear of communism. But what underlies this? The fear that the communists are going to come and take my dairy farm in Normandy, or my trendy boulangerie in the Sixth Arrondissement of Paris. Great croissants, and a baguette to die for.

Today, Donald Trump's followers want to build a wall and abrogate trade agreements. These demands may appear as xenophobic (and they are) but they are also clearly based on deep economic fears.

And these fears are real. The middle class is getting hammered, and it's been getting hammered since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. In 2014, Thomas Piketty noted the hollowing-out effect of more than three decades of policies that shifted income from the middle class to the rich. In his Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he wrote that "what primarily characterizes the United States at the moment is a record level of inequality of income from labor (probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world, including societies in which skill disparities were extremely large)." (P. 265.)

And he observes, "It is hard to imagine an economy and society that can continue functioning indefinitely with such extreme divergence between social groups." (P. 297.)

And here we are.

I agree that the recent election results have numerous causes. Anything human is bound to be complicated. But, deep down, I believe this was a change election driven by income inequality.

What Will Trump Do?
Whether Trump's middle-class voters will see better economic days is, of course, an open question. But things aren't looking good. Tax cuts for the rich, eliminating Obamacare and possibly Medicare, maybe even Social Security. Shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. All these things will only hurt the middle class in their pocket books and, frankly, their dignity.

On the other hand, Trump can play the old distraction game and give his voters a raft of things that they did ask for - basically fierce pursuit of external demons and internal scapegoats.

All this is a recipe for profound instability in this country, for the foreseeable future.

Sources of Stability
As the country lurches in unpredictable directions, it would be nice to look around and find some institutional sources of stability. However, it seems likely that Donald Trump, once he is inaugurated president, will find that he has a relatively free hand. The Supreme Court and both houses of Congress will be dominated by conservative Republicans. And Trump clearly has more than one friend at the FBI.

At the state and local level, resistance is more likely, and I think it has a real chance to be effective. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. Donald Trump will soon have the powers of the president of the United States, and he will use them. How? I don't think even he knows.

Who Will Trump Ally Himself With?
Franco had the army, the church, the large land owners. I think Trump will look for allies in the business class. He will seek out people he is comfortable with, and they will ride the roller coaster together. I'm afraid I don't see anyone in this group seeking to moderate Trump's whims. Rather the opposite.

What Can the Dems Do?
The electoral process will be increasingly stacked against Democratic candidates. This means that the Dems need to find a way to get Trump voters on their side. This is not going to be easy.

The Dems need to face some hard facts. Attacking Trump voters for their racism, sexism, and xenophobia will only drive them further into the arms of Trump.

My father was a doctor, a surgeon actually. One day he said to me - I forget the context - "You know, sick people aren't very attractive." Doctors of course have an obligation to look beyond the surface and see what they can do to help.

I believe the underlying sickness here is income inequality. I think if we could fix that, the ugliness would fade to manageable levels, although it would certainly not disappear.

The only problem is, with Trump in the White House presiding over an utterly complaisant Congress and Supreme Court, I have no idea how to fix income inequality.

Finally
I've been thinking, all the while I've been writing this story, about the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris, and what happened there in 1942. The Vel' D'Hiv, as it was called, was a place to go watch bicycle races and other sporting events. It was located near the Eiffel Tower and no longer exists.

In July 1942 French police rounded up a large number of Jews in what is known as the Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv. Many of the 13,000 arrested were held at the Vel' d'Hiv in very difficult conditions. They were then moved to internment camps, including Drancy, which is in the suburbs of Paris, and later transported further east.  Very few returned at the end of the war.

I've given some thought to what sports venue could play the role of Vel' d'Hiv in Philadelphia. Bicycling is not a very big sport in America, but basketball is. Perhaps the Palestra, out at Penn.

Today, I'm guessing nobody thinks this can happen here. But the craziness has only begun. And here is something that I do know. If the French were capable of this, so are we.

See also Mr. Piketty's Book.

Rummaging in America’s Attic

A while ago, before the heat of summer, Lois and I were spending the weekend down in Wilmington, visiting her cousin Bobbie and Bobbie’s husband, Andre. After dinner on Saturday night, Andre mentioned that he hadn’t been up to the flea markets in Lancaster for a while. I mentioned that I liked flea markets and enjoyed going to the Brooklyn Flea when we were up in New York visiting the children. So then Andre asked if I’d like to go up to Lancaster Sunday morning, and I said yes and asked when we would be leaving.

Maybe I should have asked about the departure time before I said yes. Anyway, the sun did rise before we got to Lancaster, and Andre loaned me a warm coat that he kept in the back of the car.

I’m glad I went, for a number of reasons. First of all, it was fun. Andre is very good company, and he’s as fascinated by old tools as I am. The Shaker Museum in Old Chatham, N.Y., used to have a table of old tools whose use the museum had been unable to identify. Anybody could play What’s This For? Just fill out a slip of paper and put it in the box.

I’m terrible at figuring out the purpose of old tools. Andre’s quite good at it.

Anyway, we spent a good amount of time at the outside tables, rummaging through the contents of people’s attics and barns. Then we went inside, where the more established dealers have their stalls, and where the prices are a bit higher. I have never seen so many roll-top desks in my life. This was more like wandering through living rooms – grandma’s and grandpa’s living room, to be exact. I glanced at a handsome table and the bric-a-brac that covered its top. I’ve often wondered how the grandmas of the world managed to dust all these things, but they did. Near a corner of the table there was a small black & white photograph in a standing frame. I looked a little closer. It was a young couple, happy and well-fed – perhaps newly married some 70 or 80 years ago.

The SS at Home

I looked a littler closer. The man, presumably the husband, was round and smiling. He was wearing a military uniform – an SS uniform. Hitler’s Waffen-Schutzstaffel.

I decided not stare at my little discovery, and instead moved on. Around another corner was a stall given over largely to old firearms, mainly deer rifles that had seen better days. In a glass case, though, was the pride of the collection, lovingly cared for, recently oiled. There was a Luger – standard German army issue in World War I, and tons of them saw service in World War II. Next to it lay a Mauser. The Mauser is an even older pistol than the Luger. It’s one of the first automatics, and it looks clunky and hard to handle. Still, it also saw active Wehrmacht service in both world wars.

I was a little shocked. I don’t believe I’d ever seen an actual Luger before – just in the movies – and it had not occurred to me that I would ever see an actual Mauser. I looked a bit and then, not wanting to stare, turned around and looked across the aisle.

And that’s how I came to the flag shop. There it was, across the aisle from the guns. A festival of colors, and in the corner, on a table, under a bunch of flags I didn’t recognize, there was a red field peeking out, and just a bit of a white circle, and there, vanishing under the other flags, just a sliver of a square of black. The foot of a swastika. If you weren’t looking for it, you wouldn’t see it. Time for lunch.

James Carville has described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between. Things are a little more complicated than that. There aren’t a lot of Confederates in the attic – Gettysburg is in Pennsylvania, after all. Instead we have in our attic – what? Well, we’ve got some paintings by Andrew Wyeth of his friend and neighbor Karl Kuerner. Kuerner was a farmer who had served in World War I as a machine gunner, and been wounded. He fought the war in a Wehrmacht uniform, and when he emigrated to the United States, he brought the uniform with him.

And Wyeth painted him in his uniform – the all-encompassing greatcoat and the iconic steel helmet made famous by two world wars and innumerable movies. My favorite is a late painting, from 1989, which I discovered a few years ago when I visited the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford. It’s called Snow Hill. It’s winter; Karl in his uniform and a number of Wyeth’s other regular models are dancing around a Maypole. It’s a bit out of season for a Maypole. There are a lot of weird things about this painting, but for me the weirdest thing is the old German guy dancing around in a uniform that those of us who are a certain age will never forget.

The Molly Maguires

I confess I’m not an expert on Pennsylvania history. I grew up in New York, where William Penn did not loom large in the grammar school curriculum. It was more Peter Stuyvesant – Peg-Leg Pete, we children called him. And, later, Boss Tweed and Jimmy Walker, all the lovable rogues who probably weren’t so lovable in person.

So I find that I regularly have the opportunity to learn something new about my adopted state. Here’s another example: The Molly Maguires. I’d heard of them, but that’s about it. It didn’t help that I kept confusing them with the Wobblies, who are something entirely different. There’s a 1970 movie called The Molly Maguires. It stars Sean Connery, Richard Harris, and Samantha Eggar. Appearing in a small role is Anthony Zerbe, better known to my daughter for his work on The Young Riders, where he played the old guy.

The Molly Maguires reminds me a bit of Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood, a work of fiction inspired by an unrecoverable past. That’s the basic problem with the Mollies. We don’t know much about them, and we’re not going to know. Pretty much everything we do know comes from the people who were trying to kill them. It puts me in mind of the Albigensian heresy in France, which led to an actual Crusade in the thirteenth century. Virtually everything we know about the Albigensian heretics comes from their Inquisitors. Talk about a thick filter. Nor were the Crusaders and the Inquisitors always concerned with the fine points of legal procedure. This is where we get the quote “Kill them all; God will know his own.”

Anyway, the Molly Maguires were Irish coal miners in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, which is not very far from Philadelphia. Today the area is probably best known for the town of Centralia, which has been plagued for several decades by an underground coal fire that has resisted all attempts to put it out.

The events for which the Mollies are known took place shortly after the Civil War. Trade unions were in their infancy, and after the Panic of 1873 the country found itself in the midst of one of the worst business downturns in its history.

It was the era of robber baron capitalism, and even in gentler times the bosses have been known to hand the hardship of recession on to the workers, rather than keep it for themselves. The Mollies took exception to the practices of the boss class. In this they were hardly alone. But their response cut to the chase, as we say in the movies. While union organizers were talking about negotiations and strikes, the Mollies took to sabotage – apparently they sometimes used explosives, which look very pretty in the movie – and to intimidation and murder. They didn’t just kill underlings, either. They offed the mine bosses.

That is, if the Mollies actually existed. There are those who think they were thought up by the bosses, as a way to crush the nascent union movement. I’m inclined to think the Molly Maguires did exist. The mine bosses definitely died. If you want to organize an assassination program, you don’t necessarily need the CIA (although the Phoenix program in Vietnam is a classic of its type – it gave us the phrase “terminate with extreme prejudice”), but still such a program requires some planning and direction, and even I am not prepared to believe that the bosses organized the killing of quite so many of their own class.

I’m not convinced the Mollies ever dressed up as women, although that may have been the source of their name. Frankly, after watching Marlon Brando in The Missouri Breaks, rising from the tall grass to commit mayhem, all while dressed as a pioneer woman, it occurs to me that travesty, to use the technical term, requires both talent and an appropriate context. So I think the Mollies should leave the cross-dressing to Philadelphia’s Mummers, who dress up in odd costumes and parade on Broad Street on New Year’s Day. (The Mummers, by the way, used to be called the New Year’s Shooters, because they would wander around shooting off firearms – this after imbibing impressive amounts of alcohol.)

We must remember that it was an inchoate era. On the workers’ side, the various elements of entertainment, social welfare, trade unionism, and political assassination had not yet sorted themselves out. On the management side, Fortune 500 corporate management and the Harvard Business School have yet to put in an appearance. Instead, we have a clear nostalgia for England, where the local squire would be named justice of the peace as a matter of course, thereby binding economic with political power. Perhaps not so different, as a practical matter, from what we have today, but still the atmospherics are from a completely different place.

Interestingly, the two main characters in our drama are not Mollies. Instead, they belong to the management side. The protagonist was Franklin B. Gowen, president of the Reading Railroad, which in addition to hauling coal was a major owner of coal mines in the anthracite region. His Sancho Panza was an undercover agent in the employ of the Pinkerton detective agency, James McParlan. Both of these men were Irish.

McParlan penetrated the Molly Maguire organization and forwarded regular reports to the Pinkerton agency, which as a matter of course forwarded them to Gowen. The information then seems somehow to have gotten into the hands of the local vigilantes, who proceeded with their very own assassination program.

I’m a little uncertain as to why Gowen didn’t just stick with the vigilante murders. They seemed to be going well, although the vigilantes did manage to shoot a pregnant woman to death. I think today we would call that collateral damage. At any rate, the vigilante approach avoided the nuisance of trials and the possibility of not-guilty verdicts. Perhaps winning wasn’t enough. Perhaps Gowen felt the need to be right as well, and to have his righteousness validated by the community. It seems that even robber barons can have their weak points.

For some time, Gowen had been engaging in a propaganda campaign against the Mollies that makes the run-up to the Iraq war look like an exercise in dispassionate policy analysis. So the ground was prepared and the show trials began, with Gowen himself serving as a special prosecutor (he had previously been district attorney in Schuylkill County). McParlan was the chief witness. In the end, 20 men were hanged to death, and the Mollies did a slow fade-to-black.

The world moved on. Or did we? I find the Molly Maguire story deeply unsettling. It seems that we in America are never many steps away from pure savagery, and we forget this at our peril. The Mollies themselves strike me as a personification of the unrestrained id, what someone with a more ideological bent might call the righteous anger of the proletariat. The bosses, on the other hand, seem to possess the righteous anger of the rich, and very little in the way of a superego that might restrain their baser impulses.

There’s something about the bosses, and their lust for unfettered power. I’m a city boy, and I’m used to things being run by a sclerotic oligarchy. But at least oligarchs have to answer to one another. Out in the country, in the coal fields, I see a yearning for true autocracy – unilateral control by one man, who answers to nobody.

Franklin Gowen, Autocrat of the Anthracite. And he just about was that, for a few years, until J.P. Morgan knocked him off his perch.

Muhammad Islam

The Germans and the Irish are the two largest ethnic groups in the United States, and it occurs to me that I don’t know them very well. Come to think of it, I’m no longer sure that I understand America very well. There are a lot of internal narratives out there; they can be highly particularistic and, it seems, extremely persistent. So much for the great American melting pot. And if we all agree on less than we were told in grammar school, then one casualty is the concept of the United States as a fundamentally middle-class country. Clearly there are those, like Franklin Gowen, who yearn for a country of rich and poor, with very little in the middle. By the way, Gowen wound up committing suicide by shooting himself in the head.

I’m thinking of a little boy named Muhammad Islam. I tutored him last spring, at an after-school program in South Philly called Mighty Writers. Muhammad is bright, cheerful, a hard worker, an all-around nice kid. He’s also black, and a Muslim, and, as my daughter remarked, Muhammad Islam – that’s a heavy name to put on a little kid.

Maybe he’ll be okay. Years ago, Johnny Cash did a song called “A Boy Named Sue.” Sue’s father gave him the name because he figured that a boy named Sue would have to learn early to stand up for himself. That sounds like a better strategy than relying on the kindness of strangers.