To the Editor:

In “The Specter of Weimar” [December 1971] Theodore Draper has done a lively job in embroidering the theme that history doesn’t repeat itself and in reminding us of the help the Nazis received from those who, under the Weimar Republic, “made resistance to fascism more difficult by pooh-poohing the changes that fascism would bring about.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Draper seems at times to look at the future through the spectacles of the past. In some discomfort he points out that my model of a possible repressive society in the future “would seem to be only distantly related to the German model.” That, I believe, was its strength—even though the model was presented in very sketchy and preliminary form. Actually, Mr. Draper should not have mentioned my article on “Friendly Fascism” in a piece attacking those who, allegedly, were overdoing some analogy between the Weimar Republic and America today. I have already made it abundantly clear that in my judgment the “it”—as developed in Germany, Italy, and Japan decades ago—could never happen again in America or anywhere else.

But then Mr. Draper jumps to the other extreme of suggesting that my model was “a preview of the coming American fascism” rather than of a possible, although not inevitable, development. He pushes this point still further in a strange way, actually going so far—despite the rather terrifying details I gave in my article—as to suggest that “our friendly American fascism is evidently not going to be so different from our friendly American democracy.” But this is clearly Mr. Draper’s idea, not mine.

Inasmuch as I am now involved in the difficult task of converting the earlier article into a full-length book, I have found Mr. Draper’s article very helpful. Indeed, my own lack of clarity may have been responsible for Mr. Draper’s misinterpretations. In the full book, I shall make it unmistakably clear that “friendly fascism” can be called by many names, is not inevitably coming, would be quite different from the despotic regimes of an earlier historical era, and, while rooted in certain present-day tendencies, would be very different from our present-day system.

Bertram M. Gross
Graduate Program in Urban Planning
Hunter College
New York City

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To the Editor:

There is, as Theodore Draper notes in “The Specter of Weimar,” a real problem of semantics in trying to describe whatever it is that is going on in the United States today. If by “fascism” we mean storm troopers in the streets, the end of parliamentary government, and the destruction of the Jews, then, clearly, we are a long way from anything like fascism. Yet I wonder if we aren’t stuck with the word until a better one comes along.

I have no quarrel at all with Mr. Draper’s main argument, which is that “if America is heading for hell or heaven, it is probably going to get there in its own way and not in anyone else’s.” Furthermore, I hardly need to be convinced by his demonstration that there aren’t many powerful parallels between the United States today and Weimar Germany. Does anybody really argue that we are literally going to repeat the German experience of forty years ago? I doubt it. Comparing Nixon’s America to Weimar is at best a figure of speech, but it can sometimes be a useful one.

It seems to me that one source of Mr. Draper’s discomfort is his desire for precision in describing phenomena that don’t lend themselves to exactness. Regardless of what every college catalogue announces, politics is not a science and its study is more akin to the study of, say, the metaphysical poets than it is to the study of the moons of Jupiter. It is not mere sloppiness of thought that has led some writers, myself included, to recognize a fascist or at least pre-fascist cast of mind among a disturbing number of Americans today. Instead, we are, I think, using words in a way that is allowable within the rules of the game.

Mr. Draper displays a school-masterly testiness toward the word “parafascism,” which I coined to try to describe what I see going on around me here in California. (My model was “typhoid” and “paratyphoid”—similar in some symptoms but in fact two entirely distinct diseases.) I sympathize with Mr. Draper because “parafascism” is an awkward, ugly, and imprecise word. I don’t particularly like it myself, but I haven’t found a better one.

Finally, let me suggest that the notion that there is a fascist, or pre-fascist, or parafascist spirit loose in America today keeps being reinforced by the things that happen. Some months ago, someone in the executive branch in Sacramento suggested that the University of California help contribute to its own support by selling off the rare books in its libraries—which would effectively destroy some superb scholarly collections. There is of course a wide gulf between suggesting the sale of books you know to be valuable and actually burning books you believe to be corrupt. And yet, and yet. . . .

Kenneth Lamott
Tiburon, California

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To the Editor:

I lived through the days of the Weimar Republic with all its promises, agonies, and frustrations. . . . But to see analogies and to raise the question of whether we are destined to suffer the fate of Weimar Germany is rather futile. History does not repeat itself. The breakdown of democracy is not necessarily followed by the rise of a dictator or the dawn of fascism. . . .

We should not minimize the social changes that have taken place in this country. The ghettoization of the cities, riots and mob rule, disregard and contempt of law and the legal process, increased crime and a rather frightening inability, or even unwillingness, to assert law and order, a vast corruption—all this leaves the ordinary citizen confused and bewildered, spiritually and physically insecure and longing for that freedom from fear that was promised him long ago. I think that this insecurity is much more a part of our lives today than it ever was during the days of Weimar. The point where people are willing to trade their freedom for security might not be reached as soon as in pre-Hitler Germany, but it will be reached sooner than we think.

. . . The economic chaos of Weimar has its counterpart in the breakdown of public services, in endless strikes, in a stifling shortage of funds, in a permanent unemployment rate created by Big Business through mergers and Big Labor by pricing itself out of the market. If the German inflation ruined the middle class, our creeping inflation has reduced the purchasing power of a considerable number of our population. . . . Inflation is the great enemy of democracy.

The youth of Weimar and America’s youth today have much in common. Weimar Germany created an academic proletariat consisting of young people who had devoted the best years of their lives to the attainment of a meaningful career and who then saw their hopes and aspirations end in unemployment. America’s college-educated young people are on the way to the same dead-end street.

Anti-Semitism is running rather high in these United States. The Jew finds himself buffeted by both black and white anti-Semitism. I am not so sure of the outcome. . . .

The hysterical assertion by some intellectuals that we actually live under fascism, the propaganda of the so-called liberals which undermines all authority do not do a service to the cause of democracy. Rather, the warnings of the Cassandras hasten the demise of democracy. . . .

Arno Herzberg
Union, New Jersey

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To the Editor:

. . . Theodore Draper’s timely and serious article does not deal with two important issues: (1) the true dangers inherent in the political and social-economic reaction facing the nation at the present time, and (2) the decisive role of the most reactionary circles of big monopoly capitalism in promoting a sharp turn to the Right. . . . This can be seen even now in the general conduct of the Nixon administration and its chief financial backers. . . .

The possibility of a sharp turn to the Right carries with it the danger that fascist-like policies and methods of rule will be carried out within the framework of existing democratic political institutions. . . .

It is therefore important to know what fascist rule really is, whether the Hitler-kind, or that of Mussolini, or any other. The best characterization of fascism that comes to mind is that of Georgi Dimitrov given at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in 1935; in this definition, fascism is “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”

If this characterization is true, as it certainly is, then the source of right-wing political pressure is to be found in those circles known as the military-industrial complex, whose reactionary pressures disturbed even President Eisenhower, and whose power has been steadily growing since Eisenhower’s time.

Considering the seriousness of the political and social-economic problems now facing the nation, we must expect—and help produce—strong mass pressures to achieve satisfactory solutions, including the abolition of unemployment and the liquidation of the poverty of millions of Americans. . . . But these mass pressures for radical solutions to the problems facing the nation are bound to lead to an offensive on the part of the military-industrial complex. Such an offensive will not lead the country to Hitler-fascism but it may produce fascist-like methods of rule within the existing constitutional framework. And unless the growing pressures from the Right are met in time by effective mass pressures from the Left, this danger could become very serious.

Alexander Bittelman
Croton-on-Hudson, New York

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To the Editor:

Theodore Draper is a respected historian, and what could be more pleasant than to have, from him, assurances that we will not follow the German pattern of history into some form of fascism. . . .

But is there anything in our current scene which could bring back a new, more lasting attempt at repression and an expanded militarism to inundate our values? Unhappily, there is. We should be warned that there is nothing absolute or automatic in the life of any people. The factors cited by Mr. Draper will be effective if the proponents of democracy use them as effective weapons, and if the antidemocratic proponents do not succeed in using the counter-factors even more successfully.

Here are only some of the counter-factors to consider:

1. An economic depression is in the making and the chief victims of it, namely the wage-and-salary-earners (with exceptions in some branches of the building industry and other minor trades) are either not organized or are led by union leaders more concerned with an extreme rightist foreign policy than with domestic welfare.
2. The Left is more splintered, if possible, than was the German Left of the 1930’s and is largely isolated from the middle-of-the-roaders, resulting in a political imbalance which makes it possible for extreme rightist minorities (Reagan, Buckley, etc.) to seize power. . . .
3. The government is imprisoning advocates of peace by hundreds and thousands, but no one has been arrested for advocating war. The peace movement is being subverted and splintered by the CIA, FBI, and other agents of a dozen or so secret agencies. . . .
4. Not even the notorious German General Staff had as much power, money, and domination of domestic and foreign policy as the Pentagon, which is, moreover, inextricably intertwined with big capital. . . .

Generals who prepare for new wars as if they should be fought in the same circumstances and with the same tactics as previous wars are always defeated, and this will no doubt be the fate of those who look for a resurrection of the ghosts of Weimar and Hitler. To learn from the past is not to duplicate it. . . .

We should not underestimate the danger here. Even in the 18th century they knew that “the condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” In our case it means, at the very least, creating some unity on the Left, recreating the coalition of the Left and middle-of-the-roaders similar to the one FDR achieved, and concentrating on the menace of the domestic brand of extreme rightism. . . .

Sam Darcy
Harvey Cedars, New. Jersey

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Theodore Draper writes:

I rather agree with Bertram Gross that his article could have benefited from a little more clarity. But then, I suspect, he might have had to face a little more clearly the questionable basis of his thesis.

Is it true that the idea that “our friendly American fascism is evidently not going to be so different from our friendly American democracy” is mine and not his? According to Professor Gross’s article, the American model of friendly fascism would have “no charismatic dictator, no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the state, no dissolution of legislatures, no discontinuation of elections, no distrust of reason.” It would be “pluralistic in nature” with “guaranteed minimum subsistence programs, expanded social security, improved medical care, and enlarged housing and educational programs.” Professor Gross added: “It would probably be a cancerous growth within and around the White House, the Pentagon, and the broader political establishment” (italics in original).

I concluded from all this that Professor Gross’s model would seem to be remarkably similar to our present-day American democracy, of which it would be a continuation, not a break. This is close to the nub of the question. Should we use the term “fascism,” which after all has a history that makes it meaningful, if it is going to preserve the forms and institutions and even functions of democracy? Does fascism threaten the very existence of the democratic fabric or is it going to be merely an extension and development of that fabric? Professor Gross is committed essentially to the latter interpretation which, to my mind, is both historically false and politically pernicious. If we are going to call the ills and fevers of democracy “fascism,” what term are we going to have left to call the real thing? The purpose of this verbal excess may be to frighten us with the way our democracy is going; unfortunately, it also serves to make fascism less frightening than it should be. The English language is not so poor in words for tyranny and oppression that we need to rely on a term with such dubious connotations. If Professor Gross is really dealing with something that is only distantly related to the German model, why use a term that so specifically evokes that (or the Italian) model?

If I may be of some further help, much of the trouble is located in the key phrase, “friendly fascism.” One way to tell real fascism is that it is not friendly; it is going to be murderously unfriendly to millions of people. This is one catchy phrase that it would be better to resist.

Kenneth Lamott has, I think, unwitttingly revealed what is wrong in his thinking. He tells us that his model was “typhoid” and “paratyphoid,” similar in some symptoms but two entirely distinct diseases. From this one would gather that “fascism” and “parafascism” were two entirely distinct political phenomena. But then, only two sentences later, he lists “fascist or pre-fascist or parafascist,” as if they belonged to the same family or series of things. If parafascist were really distinct in his mind, he could not have run these words together so glibly. I rather think that an identification with fascism is being smuggled in, and that “a real problem of semantics” is masking a real problem of thought.

I am further persuaded that this is actually the case by Mr. Lamott’s story about the suggestion to sell off some of the University of California’s rare books and his final comment, “And yet, and yet. . . .” Where did the University of California get many of its rare books? From the sale of other collections, no doubt. If the sale of rare books is somehow the same as actually burning them, then those same rare books were “burned” long before the University of California got them. Presumably Mr. Lamott would be satisfied if the collections were sold as a whole, since in that way they would not be “destroyed.” It should not take much wit to see the difference between selling a book which may go from collection to collection in order for an institution to remain solvent and literally burning books as a political demonstration of intellectual terror.

The more these writers protest, the more they reveal that they wish to have their fascist cake and eat it too. They flaunt and befog the term “fascism” as if they were doing a “now you see it, now you don’t” act. Too much is at stake to permit such performances to go unchallenged. Fascism has come to stand for such an intolerable barbarity that it gives those who oppose it a license to use any weapons and any methods to overthrow it. That is why the most wildly extremist movements habitually employ the term as an objective description of the United States today. In these circumstances, it is best not to play with the word, not to flirt with it, unnecessarily. Almost as much damage was done in the late Weimar period by those who pinned the fascist label on the wrong thing as by those who failed to be stirred into action against it on the right thing.

The other letters go off in too many different directions for me to want to follow them in this space. I do wish to make one thing clear—I did not give, and did not intend to give, “assurances that we will not follow the German pattern of history into some form of fascism.” I did not try to foreclose the indefinite future in any such sense. If worst comes to worst, we may yet get “some form of fascism.” With some such general formula I would agree, though I do not think it takes us very far. But I was dealing with views that are far more immediate and concrete, namely, that the United States today is “Weimarian” in the sense that it is already well on the road to fascism or that fascist symptoms have gained such ascendancy that the Republic is in danger. It may be useful to recall that Franklin D. Roosevelt was once considered by some to be the incarnation of American fascism.

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