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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
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Last week I published a column on these pages entitled : "In Eastern Europe, 'It's Just Like 1939.' Well, No." It was the first in a two-part series commenting on a phrase --- "It's Just Like 1939" --- being used by a number of commentators and authorities who are dealing with the very real threat to U.S. Constitutional Democracy, and all that that threat entails, at the hands of the Trump/Heritage-Foundation/Project-2025 led Republican Party. The United States, as well as the rest of the world, faces a series of major political-economic-social-environmental calamities that would arise --- indeed the Trumpites are already telling us about them --- with the Trump re-election.
Politico summarized that set of calamities-to-be-faced-in-the-U.S. in one sentence: "From nationwide abortion bans to classroom culture wars, assaults on climate science and political weaponization of the military, his return to the White House could make Trump 1.0 seem tame." To say nothing of the destruction of the Federal Civil Service (apparently without the benefit of legislation), the open declaration of dictatorship. Yes, for "only one day," but might not he on that day decide to "extend" it? Certainly, his principal consiglileri, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, would be in favor of that. And so, the popularization of the term "Just like 1939."
But when one examines the history of that time, the fascist threat we face from the Trumpites has little to do with what we faced from the forces of reaction active in the United States in 1939. Yes, there were very serious threats to democracy in our nation, and we, like the Europeans faced, the very serious threat of Fascists-in-Government on that continent (which, through the "Axis" was allied with a very militarily-aggressive Japanese fascism). But they weren't any serious, political-party-based threats of some sort of U.S.-fascism. And so, what were the right-wing threats to U.S. politics and policy that our nation did face at that time?
First, on the differences between then and now, most importantly was the nature of the Republican Party. It was Right-wing. It was still opposing progressive legislation, like a national health insurance plan (which was still coming from the New Deal). It still opposed the legalization of trade unions, which had already been accomplished by the passage of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935. It did harbor open Hitler-sympathizers, like Henry Ford (see further below), in its leadership. It was "Isolationist," and definitely did not want the U.S. to get involved in any way with the "problems of Europe," which "might involve us in another foreign war." As it happened, isolationism did not stop leading Republicans, like one George Herbert Walker, from supporting the Nazi Party from its very earliest days, but that did not reflect the general foreign policy of the Republican Party, per se.
And so, THE big difference between the Republicans of 1939 and the present Republican Party is that back then it was not a proto-fascist party (and a very openly one at that). It was simply classically right-wing, and even not so "classically," heading into the 1940 Presidential Election. There were four major candidates for the Republican nomination: a rising "moderate" (in then-Republican terms) from New York Thomas E. Dewey, the conservative Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenburg, full-fledged the isolationist Ohio senator Robert Taft, and Wendell Wilkie, a businessman from Indiana and New York City. Unlike any modern Republican, he liked some of the ideals of the New Deal, but wanted them to be accomplished by business, not government (ho, ho, ho). In a very dramatic Republican National Convention he was selected to run against Roosevelt. As it turned out, during World War II Wilkie became a liberal internationalist. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 52, in 1944. To be sure, there are no Republicans like that around now.
Another major difference between the Republican Party of that time and now is that racism was not at the center of its political policy and program. There was a major, politically powerful, racist force in U.S. politics, but that was the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. Racism was embedded into politics, policy, and the culture in the South, and certainly there was severe racism in the North as well. But outside of the South, it was certainly not a centerpiece of the policies of either political party, as it is of today's Trumpublican Party.
At the same time, of course, some sort of attention to the politics of racial equality was a becoming a slowly rising force in the Democratic Party outside of the South. That force eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But for the Republican Party those major pieces of legislation led on to Nixon's "Southern Strategy" of 1968. And it is that development which has led the Republican Party directly to its posture as the leading racist party in the United States. Actually, that should not come as a surprise, for racism (and xenophobia) have been in the Republican Party's DNA since its beginnings in part on the ashes of the anti-immigrant "Know-Nothing Party" in the 1850's (suspended only briefly during the Civil War and Reconstruction).
However, there was another form of racism/ethno-prejudice which was alive and well in 1939 in the United States. It was led principally by Republicans (although not the Party per se), but it was not confined to that party alone. It was anti-Semitism which was alive and very well all across the country. (As it happened, my father, Prof. Harold J. Jonas, published a review of what he termed "Anti-Semitica Americana" in the Contemporary Jewish Record, October, 1941.) Among the leaders of that "Anti-Semitica Americana" were, for example, Henry Ford (yes, that Henry Ford). He exchanged anti-Semitic columns that he published in his newspaper, "The Dearborn Independent," with the Nazi newspaper the "Völkischer Beobachter" (German: "People's Observer"). Charles Lindbergh, also an open anti-Semite, accepted an award from the Nazis in 1938.
And then there were notorious anti-Semitic propagandists, like Father Charles Coughlin in Detroit, and the "Christian Nationalist" Gerald L.K. Smith. (Indeed they had the latter back then too, but Christian Nationalism was not on the verge of taking over one of the two major parties.) But for all of this, and much more, while, to repeat, there were certainly Republicans who were anti-Semites, anti-Semitism did not appear at the center of Republican ideology. How much Trump's increasingly open anti-Semitism will wend its way into current Republican ideology remains to be seen. They do have a bunch of major Jewish contributors. But that's the Trumpublican Party's problem, not that of the defenders of U.S. Constitutional Democracy.
On foreign policy, in 1939 to a greater or lesser extent "isolationism" was abroad and well in both parties. The United States played no formal role in opposing the rise of fascism in the 1930s in the three major European countries in which it appeared: Germany, Italy, and Spain. As it happened, although they might have done something through the League of Nations, the Western Powers (including the United States) did nothing to oppose Italian imperialism in Ethiopia and North Africa, to oppose Japanese imperialism in Manchuria beginning in 1931 and then extending to the invasion of China in 1937, or to assist the elected Republican governmen t of Spain against the onslaught of the Spanish right-wing led by General Francisco Franco and openly supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. (See last week's column for a discussion of the "1939 situation" in Europe.) Of course, right up until December 7, 1941 there were major pro-German/Nazi organizations alive and well in many parts of this country, but they did not present any significant threat of a domestic fascist takeover in the United States.
Once the Second World War started, and especially after Great Britain stood alone after the Fall of France in the spring of 1940 followed by the (air) Battle of Britain, Pres. Roosevelt became increasingly concerned with figuring out ways to help the British government survive. We won't go into details here, but the Republican Party resisted FDR on that front right up until December 7, 1941. But in supporting Great Britain in its battle against Germany and Italy it wasn't just Republicans with whom FDR had to deal with. For example, during the Blitz of London in the Fall of 1940, the U.S. Ambassador in London, one Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (a nominal Democrat), openly took the side of the British right-wingers (as well as the former, uncrowned king, Edward VIII) who were still trying to arrange some kind of truce with the Nazis. Roosevelt called Kennedy back to Washington forthwith.
But again, the most important difference between the Republican Party of that time and the Republican Party of our time was that although it was then certainly a right-wing party; although certain of its leaders had Nazi sympathies --- e.g., a future Republican U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Prescott Bush, at that time a banker based in Switzerland, was in 1942 still doing business with Germany (FDR had to threaten him with prosecution under the Trading with the Enemy Act to get him to stop) --- it was neither a fascist party nor a proto-fascist one. Again, BIG difference between 1939 and now.
Finally, before World War II, there were indeed potential U.S. fascist revolts against the Government of the United States, like the one revealed by General Smedley Butler in 1935, and the one from the late 30's revealed by Rachel Maddow in her brilliant book, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism." As it says in the Amazon promo: "Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis." BUT, once again, none of these threats/movements were to be found at the center of the policies and programs of one of our Nation's two principal political parties. As I say in the title to this column: "For the U.S., 'It's Just Like 1939?' Well, No."
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Footnote: If you would like to get a picture of what our nation would have become if indeed there had been a fascist takeover of the United States, 1940-42, led by Ford, Lindbergh, and a faction of the Republican Party, read Philip Roth's mighty work: The Plot Against America.
(Article changed on Apr 12, 2024 at 12:16 PM EDT)
