A WARNING FROM HENRY WALLACE ABOUT FACISTS WHO MASQUARADE AS AMERICAN PATRIOTS

In 1944, FDR’s Vice President (from 1941 to 1945), Henry Wallace, wrote an article in the New York Times about the dangers of American Fascism. The following passages are excerpts from this article, in which he describes the wealthy corporate elite as "fascists."

"The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism."

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

"But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power."

"Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion."