Fascism In America, Yesterday And Today!

 

Let's begin this blog post with a brief quotation from a book I am currently reading.  

"...seeping into this country by the thousands every single month...to take the jobs which rightly belong" to Americans.  "I wish to say, and I say it without the slightest hesitation--that if I had my way about it at this hour, I would build a wall about the United States so high and so secure that not a single alien or foreign refugee from any country upon the face of the earth could possibly scale or ascend it." 

Like you, as soon as I read that quote the person who popped into my head was TRAITOR Trump.  Those words sound as if they probably came directly out of his mouth in some rambling rant in front of a crowd of a few thousand of his Fascist and TREASONOUS cult members.  But that is not who said it, and it contains one major clue that it did not and could not have come out of TRAITOR Trump's mouth.  I had spotted that clue when I read it and, thankfully, so did my sister-in-law in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, when I read it to her and her husband yesterday, August 10, 2024, during a Google Meet which my wife and I do with them every two weeks.  So, the question becomes "Who said it?  Where did it come from?  When?"  The answer to those questions is both surprising and not surprising at all.  Those words come from page 220 of the book "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, and they came from the mouth of Democratic United States Senator Robert Rice Reynolds in 1941.  Maddow's book was published in 2023 and, based on her title, I hope it is intended to be a precursor to  another book about Fascism as it is currently being practiced in America.  The clue which both my sister-in-law and  I saw in the words of that quote involves the language used.  There is phrasing and there are words in that quote which would never and could never come from the mouth of TRAITOR Trump.  The sentence structure is good, solid, complete sentences. Those sentences are sometimes complex, far more complex than TRAITOR Trump could ever construct on his best day.  And TRAITOR Trump never uses complete, structured, rational sentences, and would never use words like "ascend" or "scale". He also has no ability to construct complex sentences. Those words, "ascend" and "scale" are far too abstract for his diminished intelligence and grade school vocabulary. Those words are synonyms for others such as "climb", and "top" or "mount".  TRAITOR Trump is not as intelligent or highly verbal as Senator Reynolds was in 1941.  But he is just as ignorant and just as evil. His intentions are just as destructive, potentially damaging to America, and just as unfounded as the words of Senator Reynolds in 1941. So what happened to Senator Robert Rice Reynolds?  

Since reading that highly dangerous quote from Senator Reynolds, I have done a little research on him and found this enlightening article online from Vox which, says as I did above "those words could have come straight from Donald Trump".  Vox was mild mannered and non-confrontational enough to not use my favorite and most often used adjective of "TRAITOR" to refer to TRAITOR Trump.  The Vox article also gives us an actual date of June 5, 1941, for the date of Reynolds' statement and a location for it, the floor of the United States Senate.  The Vox article goes on to say this about Reynolds: 

"Reynolds never really expected a wall to be built, however much he might have dreamed of such a barrier. And his ideas about refugees never took hold with the broader American public. Today he is all but forgotten, even in his home state of North Carolina." (Vox, "Meet Robert Reynolds, the senator who wanted to build a wall 70 years before Trump." Available at the link above on August 12, 2024.) 

The Vox article goes on to say this about Reynolds: 

 "...his story is worth retelling. It serves as a reminder of the heights American hypernationalism, anti-interventionism, and nativism reached in the not-too-distant past.It shows, too, that these are strains of American political thinking that are recycled again and again, and are often ushered in by politicians who capture America’s attention with flash over substance. Trump isn’t the first showman known nearly as much for his marital lives as for his tendency toward oratorical extremes about refugees and “criminal” immigrants. The question is whether he will be the last — or whether his legacy will inspire other political progeny."  (Vox, Same Link Above) 

I agree completely with what the Vox writer had to say about Reynolds in that second quote above.  His story is worth retelling and, most importantly, it is worth retelling because Reynolds never succeeded in building his wall.  He fell out of favor with the voters of North Carolina and only served two destructive terms in the United States Senate. He was also serving, if that is the correct word, in the senate at a time (1932-1944) when America was led by a president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had strong support from a majority of America, control of the congress, and the acumen and courage to openly confront and control radicals like Senator Reynolds  Vox goes on to give us this description of the political demise of Robert Reynolds: 

Reynolds’s aggressive stance on immigration and deportation — and, later, his reluctance to criticize the rise of fascist dictators overseas and fascist sympathizers at home — sank his political career and erased any legacy he might have left behind.(Vox, Same Link Above)

That summation of Reynolds' fall from grace with the voters of North Carolina is a well justified end to the political machinations of such a man.  But it also points out that fact that, so far in America, a large portion of the nation has failed to reach the same accurate conclusions about TRAITOR Trump. His cult still lives and supports him. He is, totally unjustifiably, the face and the hate blackened soul of the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party in America.  He is once again trying to gain access to the White House and the power its occupancy brings to even a convicted felon, career criminal, rapist, and TRAITOR like TRAITOR Trump.   America is faced today with a pending election, just as important as the last two in 2016 and 2020, in which we can choose to vote in support of America, American Democracy, rational governmental decision making, and the preservation of constitutional freedoms or we can vote for TREASON, Fascism as practiced by TRAITOR Trump, completely irrational decision making, the continued destruction of constitutional freedoms as has happened in many states across America over the last 12 years, and the continued spread of Fascism, Racism, Hatred, and the perpetual courting of dictators, despots, tyrants, and criminals.  It is a simple decision to a rational person.  America must, once again, defeat TRAITOR Trump, pursue his criminal convictions and assure that they happen, and see him convicted, sentenced, incarcerated for the rest of his natural life in the supermax prison in Colorado with the other enemies of the country, and forgotten for all eternity except as a perpetual reminder of the damage such a worthless human can inflict on a compliant and complacent nation.  He must not be allowed to return to occupy the White House.  He must not be allowed to further damage this nation. He must be defeated and he must be proven to be the TRAITOR he is to all that is good and just in this country.  

But regressing momentarily to further discuss the Vox statement about the political demise of Senator Reynolds, let's look at the statement that  Reynolds "...is all but forgotten, even in his home state of North Carolina." That statement is not totally accurate.  In my research on Senator Reynolds, I found a page on the webpage of the North Carolina History Project which is a somewhat whitewashed biography of the senator.  While it does point out his notorious womanizing and five marriages...(And) flamboyant actions), it describes him as "A genuine believer in democracy".    A second page on the North Carolina History Project written by Will Schultz is more directly honest about Senator Reynolds and concludes by describing him as

"...controversial. Some regard him as a proto-fascist, a would-be American Hitler. Others consider him a radical populist along the lines of Huey P. Long of Louisiana. Still others dismiss him as a harmless buffoon. In Buncombe Bob, the authoritative biography on Reynolds, Julian Pleasants summed up the senator: “In short, he was a unique southern demagogue."  (North Carolina History Project, "Robert Rice Reynolds, (1884-1963)".  Available on August 13, 2024 at https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/robert-rice-reynolds-1884-1963/). 

While Rachel Maddow in her book does not clearly claim that Senator Reynolds was a Fascist or that he had direct ties to Hitler's Nazi propaganda experts in America, she does make that connection about other subjects of her meticulous research and actually discusses how several "privately owned" or "nonprofit" agencies or entities were created in the United States in the 1930's and 1940's and were financed directly by Adolph Hitler's propaganda machine.  She discusses in several places in the book the work done by the infamous Joseph Goebbels who ran Hitler's propaganda efforts worldwide.  She also includes the following quotation from "Mein Kampf":

" The great masses, he wrote, "will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies.  Thus, such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe in the impossibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others."  (Rachel Maddow, quoting from "Mein Kampf", in "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", page 237. )

We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Adolph Hitler and his propaganda machine worked diligently in the United States of America during the 1930's and 1940's to control and/or influence the reaction of the general American public toward the war of aggression which Germany was waging all over Europe.  We know that they worked closely with many members of congress such as Senator Reynolds to gain publicly credible routes to the American psyche.  We have also been warned repeatedly by many sources about the highly probable connections between TRAITOR Trump and Putin's Russia. Perhaps the best source of that collusion is presented by the great historian and author Timothy Snyder in his book, "The Road To Unfreedom" on page 220, and on his account on the social media website "X", formerly known as "Twitter".   On that website, Dr. Snyder, who is a distinguished professor history at Yale University, has posted a Thread under this title 0/50 Why we do think that Mr. Trump owes a debt to Mr. Putin? Here are fifty reasons. All of the facts are a matter of public record, and all of the sources can be found in my book The Road to Unfreedom.  At that link, you will find Dr. Snyder's list of 50 incidents, all documented in the public record, in which TRAITOR Trump has had interactions with Russia in which either money or influence changed hands in a manner to indicate that there exists serious, and seriously TREASONOUS relationships between TRAITOR Trump and numerous representatives of Russia including Vladimir Putin and several other Russian oligarchs.  If we know that Hitler's Nazis were able to develop mutually beneficial relationships with several members of congress during the Third Reich, why should we doubt that in this time of much more means of surreptitious communication and transfer of money such similar relationships don't exist with numerous individuals, including TRAITOR Trump, and Russia. Also, as you consider this possibility, keep in mind that TRAITOR Trump has made several trips to Russia in his life, took an international beauty pageant to Russia, has met with Putin face to face on a few occasions, and has had numerous Russian citizens living in his residential properties.  Don' ever doubt the possibility that TRAITOR Trump is a Russian agent as alleged by a retired Russian intelligence agent in this article from "The Guardian" on January 29, 2021.  TRAITOR Trump must not be allowed anywhere near the White House again to repeat the many crimes for which he has already been indicted on numerous charges.