Image: President Roosevelt (L-R), Harry Truman and Henry Wallace share a moment together in early 1940s. PHOTO / JNS.org
Former vice President Henry A. Wallace warned American fascism could become dangerous if there were a purposeful coalition among corporate cartels, many of them headed by Jewish-Americans who are Zionist.
by George Beres
It was 70 years ago this year the United States took a major turn toward political conservatism instead of the liberal direction President Franklin Roosevelt had followed the previous 12 years. The momentous change– greatest shift in our nation’s political history– came at the Democratic Party nominating convention of 1944. It occurred even though FDR, architect of lasting welfare reforms during the Great Depression, was a shoo-in to be elected to an unprecedented fourth term that fall. The difference came in the identity of his heir apparent, a vice-president who seemed sure to inherit the presidency from a man so ill that few who were knowledgeable of politics expected him to complete a fourth term.
Roosevelt was certain that person would be Henry Wallace, a man with FDR’s liberal views, who was vice-president from 1940 to 1944. Instead it became Harry Truman, Senator from Missouri, whom corporate powerbrokers insisted upon because he would do their bidding and that of Israel. Because they controlled funding for Democrats– as they did for Republicans– they were able to force Wallace to be dropped from the ticket at the convention. That was unusual because Roosevelt and Wallace were a winning tandem, facing no threat of being upset at the polls during that last year of victory in World War II.
Though there was no danger of defeat, corporate donors, as the prime source of campaign money for both parties, insisted Wallace must go. The influence of money in elections was a corrupting element then that today continues to infect politics through the freedom of individuals and groups to donate vast sums of money to candidate campaigns. This not only earns access to elected officials, but gives big donors significant control of how those officials vote. In ’44, they feared that Wallace’s liberalism, which was greater than Roosevelt’s, would diminish corporate and Israeli control of politics.
How did they convince other Democrats, who were comfortably secure with the political dominance they had from the presidential status quo? The key was two words: FASCISM and ZIONISM. Wallace’s honest but naive public use of the word, fascism, gave his detractors the majoer weapon they needed to displace him. It came three months before the convention in an April 24 interview he granted the New York Times. He was asked if there were signs of fascism in the United States. His answer was, “Yes.” That came as a shock at a time when the United States was fighting a war against Nazi Germans identified with that vice. Democrat voters and the country in general may have been in denial about the deteriorating health of a president who had served 12 years unable to walk because of polio. But the big donors knew. So the change of president-in-waiting was something vital to their interests.
Roosevelt won, then died only four months into his fourth term. Instead of having a liberal inherit the presidency, the power brokers had elevated a man into the vice-presidency whom they could control, Truman, whom Roosevelt reluctantly allowed to replace Wallace. Truman was pragmatic. He knew where key votes were, which helped him win the presidency on his own in 1948. A prime example was his decision to ignore the advice of Secretary of State George Marshall, and give crucial support that year for creation of the State of Israel in Palestine.
“I’m sorry,” he told Marshall, “but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands of Jewish voters who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of voting Arabs among my constituents.”
Both of them knew of another element with similar importance: the millions of dollars in campaign donations that would come from Jewish-Americans compared to negligible funding available from Arab-Americans. This created a strange commonality between Democrat and Republican foes. The GOP platform already reflected Israel’s objectives, with Republicans becoming known as Ziocons. They followed the mythical “clash of civilizations” concept (East vs. West) which resulted in the United States becoming Israel’s main ally in fighting its wars-to-come in the next 65 years.
Henry A. Wallace
While Truman had sat comfortably under the protective umbrella of the Pendergast Machine of Missouri during his Senate years, Wallace was a progressive Secretary of Agriculture during the Great Depression before becoming vice-president. His understanding of science revolutionized farming. It enabled him to start a program of erosion control, develop the Rural Electrification Administration, and produce hybrid seeds to boost farm productivity. His achievements came despite opposition from the conservative, pro-business, segregationist wing of his own Party. A few isolated voices supported his concerns. In 1934, Modern Monthly Magazine held a symposium, “Will Fascism Come to America?”. In 1938, The Nation Magazine published a series of articles on “Forerunners of Fascism in the United States.” Most significant was the book on fascist encroachment, “It Can’t Happen Here,” by Sinclair Lewis, first American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Wallace did not leave quietly, though his openness about fascism and his opposition to an alliance with Israel cost him. He headed a third party ticket in the 1948 election for the Progressives, for whom my college professor, Curtis MacDougall, ran for the Senate in Illinois. Voter response for him was limited, and Truman succeeded to the presidency on his own that year over the Republicans’ Tom Dewey. While Wallace was deprived of the presidency he deserved in 1945, his vision about fascism’s and Israel’s future in our country has proven him to be a prophet. What he predicted in that Times article has been moving toward uncomfortable reality ever since.
There was nothing monosyllabic about him. He verbally unwound when the reporter asked: “What is a fascist? How many fascists do we have? How dangerous are they?” He answered:
“If we define an American fascist as one who puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are several million fascists in the United States. Several hundred thousand are ruthless and deceitful in their search for money and power. It may be in their interest to be patriotic in time of war. But in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. They demand free enterprise, but speak for corporate monopolies and vested interests in Israel.”
He felt they used power of the State with that of the market to keep the common person in constant subjection.
Some followed the dollar even in war. An example is Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of two presidents, who was found guilty of continuing to do business with Hitler when we were at war with Germany. With the end of the war, Wallace warned American fascism could become dangerous if there were a purposeful coalition among corporate cartels, many of them headed by Jewish-Americans who are Zionist. He said they could create “a tyranny of feudalism to serve only corporate interests,” and that they would fool the public by misusing “family values, the flag and patriotism.” Their key tactic would be to become “poisoners of public information by gaining control of the news media, promoting fascist lies by perversion of truth and fact.” He predicted the American fascist would have no interest in presenting the truth to the public, but rather in how to use the news media– much of it under the thumb of Israel sympathizers– to mislead the public into giving fascist groups more money and more power, and give a Zionist Israel great control of our government policies..
William Randolph Hearst gave Wallace the perfect example of the power mad publisher. Hearst wanted to foment war at the end of the 19th century. He used his papers to instigate the Spanish-American War of 1898. “Hearst,” said Wallace, “said that ‘whenever you hear an American called a fascist, that should convince you he is simply a loyal citizen who stands for Americanism’.” Like other rightwingers, Hearst called all Labor leaders communists. That label had impact into the mid-1900s, when even a Major League baseball team was infected with the name-calling. The Cincinnati team had been known as the Reds from its origins. Growing paranoia over the Reds of Russia during the Cold War resulted in its changing the name to Redlegs in 1953, reverting back in embarrassment in 1959.
Wallace today likely would recognize a variety of symptoms of the trend toward fascism. Among them would be the Patriot Act, attempts to isolate Cuba, assassinations of liberal leaders such as John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, preemptive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and control of the news media by management that has a significant number of corporate Zionists who favor Israel.
He remains our forgotten visionary. That may change if his warnings about fascism and Israel continue to come full circle.
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About George Beres
The writer is a retired journalist in Eugene, Oregon. He is of Greek derivation. Before moving to the West Coast, he was friends with neighbors in Glenview, Ill., who were predominantly Jewish-American, and attended the Syrian Orthodox Church with many Arab-Americans in Oak Park, Ill. His sons are television news anchors in Boise, Idaho, and Nashville, Tenn.