Fascism: A Warning

by Madeleine K. Albright

Fascist attitudes take hold when there are no social anchors and when the perception grows that everybody lies, steals, and cares only about him- or herself. That is when the yearning is felt for a strong hand to protect against the evil “other”—whether Jew, Muslim, black, so-called redneck, or so-called elite. Flawed though our institutions may be, they are the best that four thousand years of civilization have produced and cannot be cast aside without opening the door to something far worse.

If Fascism concerns itself less with specific policies than with finding a pathway to power, what about the tactics of leadership? My students remarked that the Fascist chiefs we remember best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the surface. This is how the tentacles of Fascism spread inside a democracy. Unlike a monarchy or a military dictatorship imposed on society from above, Fascism draws energy from men and women who are upset because of a lost war, a lost job, a memory of humiliation, or a sense that their country is in steep decline. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier it is for a Fascist leader to gain followers by dangling the prospect of renewal or by vowing to take back what has been stolen.

But Mussolini, soon to be known as Il Duce, had a talent for theater and little respect for the courage of his adversaries. Two weeks after taking office, he made his first address to the legislature. He began by striding into the hall and raising his arm in a Roman salute.*

He initiated a campaign to drenare la palude (“drain the swamp”) by firing more than 35,000 civil servants.

In 1924, Mussolini pushed through an electoral law that put Fascists in control of parliament. When the leader of the Socialists produced evidence of vote rigging, he was kidnapped by thugs and murdered. By the end of 1926, Il Duce had abolished all competing political parties, eliminated freedom of the press, neutered the labor movement, and secured the right to name municipal officials himself. To enforce his edicts, he took control of the national police, expanded it, and multiplied its capacity to conduct internal surveillance. To constrain the monarchy, he claimed the power to approve any successor to the king. To mollify the Vatican, he shut down brothels and fattened the stipends of priests, but in return he gained the right to approve all bishops. Looking ahead, he turned schools into human factories, where black-shirted schoolboys marched with muskets, celebrated the prospect of a heroic death, and shouted the Fascist credo: “Believe! Obey! Fight!”

In November 1923, Hitler’s impatience got the better of his judgment and he tried to replicate Mussolini’s already legendary March on Rome. It was a harebrained scheme. The Nazis hoped to spark a nationwide coup by seizing control of Bavaria, but to prevail, they needed the army’s support, which they didn’t get. The ringleaders were arrested and the coup went nowhere. Of the conspirators, Hitler alone was brazen enough to admit that he had intended to overthrow the government. In his first appearance on the national stage, he made the case for an uprising that would cleanse all Germany, then told the court that he had no choice but to perform his duty as “a man born to be a dictator.” Given a five-year sentence, he was released on probation after thirteen months, having made productive use of his time. The manuscript tucked under Hitler’s arm as he exited the prison bore the title Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice, later shortened by his publisher to volume one of My Struggle—or Mein Kampf.

On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg folded his hand. Like Mussolini a decade earlier, Hitler was given the keys to power by an elderly man who felt he had no better option—and, like Il Duce, he arrived in the nation’s highest office without ever having won a majority vote, yet by constitutional means. The new German chancellor called the historic transfer “a legal revolution.”

A self-educated writer, William Pelley, founded the Silver Legion of America in January 1933, only a few hours after Hitler’s ascension to the chancellorship of Germany. Headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, the Legion attracted a membership of some fifteen thousand. Followers wore blue pants and silver shirts with a scarlet “L” over the heart, standing for Love, Loyalty, and Liberty. The Silver Shirts were militantly anti-Semitic and sought to duplicate the Nazi model of organizing armed bands. Undercover investigators from the U.S. Marine Corps testified that Pelley’s operatives promised them money in exchange for access to weapons from military arsenals in California, but the inquiry did not lead to arrests.

Fritz Kuhn was such a man. A chemical engineer who came to the United States in 1928, Kuhn organized the German American Bund (GAB) eight years later. Members of the group wore brown shirts and black boots, and displayed the swastika at rallies alongside a portrait of George Washington, whom they hailed as America’s “first Fascist” because of his alleged distaste for democracy. “Just as Christ wanted little children to come to him, Hitler wants German children to revere him”—this was the message conveyed at the Bund schools that sprouted around the country, most commonly in the Midwest.

Almost as soon as he took office, Hitler removed women from the bureaucracy, promising them “emancipation from emancipation.” Women were counseled to tend the hearth, mend, sew, make Apfelkuchen, and give birth to the next generation of Aryan supermen. That ambition proved no easier to fulfill than conquering the Soviet Union. From 1933 to 1939, the number of women in the workforce rose from four million to five million as Frauen and Fräuleins helped the economy to keep pace with the demands of war.

Many voters apparently believe that because the wealthy have no need to steal, they don’t.

Orbán’s strategy has been to pin responsibility for this imaginary plot on George Soros. Late in 2017, the government sent a questionnaire to every household asking whether it supported the “Soros Plan” to force Hungary to accept migrants, pay them welfare, and assure them lenient sentences for any crimes they might commit. This approach to consulting with the people takes what would ordinarily be considered a democratic tool—the plebiscite—and uses it to spread and validate a falsehood. By asking questions based on a lie, it makes the lie a central part of national conversation. Like other vile tactics, the misuse of plebiscites was perfected by the Third Reich, which employed it often to attach a small thread of legality to Hitler’s rule. “The most effective form of persuasion,” said Goebbels, “is when you are not aware of being persuaded.”

“The beginnings of a great new social order based on the principle of slavery were destroyed by that war,” lamented Adolf Hitler, “and with them also the embryo of a truly great America.” Hitler fantasized that the United States so fully shared his racist views that it would ultimately side with the Third Reich. Nazi writers regularly pointed to America’s anti-Asian immigration quotas and bigoted Jim Crow laws to deflect foreign criticism of their own discriminatory statutes.

We know as well that the police solicit bribes to remove names from their kill lists, that many families of the victims are so poor they must rely on charity to buy coffins, and that Duterte plays the whole sad issue for laughs, urging the public to invest in funeral parlors and bragging, “I’ll supply the dead bodies.” Duterte has told police officers who are on trial for abusing their authority to go ahead and plead guilty so he can pardon and promote them. Early in his presidency, Donald Trump phoned Duterte to congratulate him for doing an “unbelievable job.”

In April of that same year, President Erdoğan narrowly won a popular referendum to amend the Turkish constitution, add to his powers, and enable him to remain in office, potentially, until 2029. Most democratic leaders found this outcome regrettable. Trump’s response was to reach for the phone and laud Erdoğan on his win.

TRUMP’S VIEW OF THE UNITED STATES IS DARK. AMONG HIS FAVORITE mantras are that U.S. courts are biased, the FBI is corrupt, the press almost always lies, and elections are rigged. The domestic impact of these condemnations is to demoralize and divide.

During his campaign, candidate Trump was asked about the importance of due process. He answered, “When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger.” For a person so quick to think the best of himself, it is peculiar that the president seems blind to what is most important about America—and so reluctant to speak out on behalf of principles that are more intimately associated with the United States than any other country.

THE ARCHITECTS OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S FOREIGN policy use two labels to describe the structure they have built: “Principled Realism” and “Putting America First.” Principled Realism is merely a slogan; America First is a slogan with a past. Founded in 1940, the America First Committee (AFC) brought together pacifists, isolationists, and Nazi sympathizers to fight against the country’s prospective entry into World War II.

Since early 2017, surveys show a marked decline in respect for the United States. In Germany, belief that the American president can be counted on to do the right thing shrank from 86 percent under his predecessor to 11 percent under Trump. In France, the fall was from 84 percent to 14; in Japan, 74 to 24; in South Korea, 84 to 17.

What makes a movement Fascist is not ideology but the willingness to do whatever is necessary—including the use of force and trampling on the rights of others—to achieve victory and command obedience.

Before addressing those questions, I ask you to envision Uncle Sam in his long white nightshirt, tossing and turning, his sleep disturbed by three very bad dreams. In the first, reactionary billionaires conspire to monopolize media platforms and pour their riches into the campaigns of favored candidates who, when in office, ensure the selection of compliant judges. Laws are enacted to ban Muslim immigrants, criminalize abortions, unfairly restrict voting, divert funding for public education to private schools, and drill for oil here, there, and everywhere. The president is given full authority to issue or revoke broadcasting licenses, expand Guantánamo to include domestic criminal suspects, and bar investigations of himself. From cradle to grave, an increasing number of citizens spend their lives within a conservative echo chamber, where they watch nothing but Fox News, memorize the Breitbart catechism, and learn only what goose-stepping right-wingers want them to know. Finally, as climate change advances and epic floods inundate our cities, heavily armed civilian militias are organized to protect private property, made bold by the promise of presidential pardons should anyone pull a trigger in “self-defense.”

Throughout history, demagogues have often outperformed democrats in generating popular fervor, and it is almost always because they are perceived to be more decisive and sure in their judgments. In times of relative tranquillity, we feel we can afford to be patient. We understand that policy questions are complicated and merit careful thought. We want our leaders to consult experts, gather as much information as possible, test assumptions, and give us a chance to voice our opinions on the available options. We see long-term planning as necessary and deliberation as a virtue, but when we decide that action is urgently needed, our tolerance for delay disappears. In those moments, many of us no longer want to be asked, “What do you think?” We want to be told where to march. That is when Fascism gets its start: other options don’t seem enough.

Going much further back, the ancient Israelites—surrounded by enemies—pleaded with Samuel to give them a king, so that “we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and to fight our battles.” The prophet cautions the Israelites to think twice, warning that the monarch they are demanding will certainly take their sons to be warriors, their daughters to be cooks, and their vineyards, fields, cattle, sheep, and servants to satisfy his own needs. Still the people persist, and their prayer is answered. A century later, their kingdom is split and careens toward destruction.

We might want to remember the explanation that Hitler gave, in 1936, for his popularity: “I will tell you what has carried me to the position I have reached. Our political problems appeared complicated. The German people could make nothing of them. . . . I, on the other hand, . . . reduced them to the simplest terms. The masses realized this and followed me.”