Sunday, October 24, 2004

More on "Gabriel Over the White House"

I haven't seen the 1933 film that Bob McElvaine discusses in the previous post.  But it's made me curious to see it.

Deborah Carmichal also commented on the film in The Scary Relevance of William Randolph Hearst's "Gabriel Over the White House" History News Network 08/12/02.  Her essay includes this useful bit of historical information:

Both fascism and socialism were seen as solutions to the Depression. William Dudley Pelley organized his Silver Shirts as a fascist alternative. The Mothers' Movements, shifting from anti-war campaigns to anti-Communist crusades called for fascist reform and, in an attempt to identify the "enemy," often targeted Jews as the cause of the national woes. The fascist rhetoric of these groups reached radio audiences with the help of Father Charles E. Coughlin and gained additional national attention through the efforts of the outspoken Huey Long, who declared his readiness to confiscate funds from the wealthiest Americans to provide the middle-class with economic security. He called it the "Share Our Wealth" plan. The Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), aligned with movements such as the Farmer-Labor Federation, fought equally hard for significant change. Economist Lawrence Dennis, in his The Coming American Fascism, wrote that "terms like communism and fascism, just as terms like Christianity, Americanism, or due process of the law, must mean different and often mutually exclusive things to different people." Many Americans felt that any means by any name were justified in order to bring the Great Depression to an end.

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