Over the past ten days, I have written two other blog posts which were prompted by a book which I have just completed this morning, August 23, 2023, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, the popular television host. The first post, entitled "Fascism In America, Yesterday And Today", was written and posted on August 13, 2023. The second post, entitled "TRAITOR Trump, Adolph Hitler, And The Big Lie", was written and posted just yesterday, August 22, 2023. In general, I rarely write more than one blog post about any book I have read. The two examples of such books I have written about more than once recently are "The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey" by Candice Millard, and Bob Deans excellent book, "The River Where America Began: A Journey Along The James".
Each of those books is important in their own way as historical writing. But neither of them is as important as Rachel Maddow's book about the history of early twentieth century attempts to bring Fascism to America. This is a book which is fully loaded with multiple warnings and historical accounts of those attempts to turn the United States into a Fascist stronghold and is an incredibly important book for every concerned American to read before they ever step into a voting booth again. It is an incredibly well researched and documented book whose only flaw is that the writing itself is not the kind that wins literary prizes or leaves the reader consistently spellbound But Dr. Maddow has done a beautiful job of digging through vast piles of dusty, and often obscure, records to document an earlier time when Facism was gravely endangering America. Yes, she is Dr. Maddow, and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Oxford University and her research proves she earned it honestly. In this book, she also does a fine job of proving that Fascism still endangers America today, and is actually doing so in a far more terrifying way than it did in the 1930's and 1940's. Although she does not make that claim word for word in the book, any intelligent reader can easily decipher the intent of the book. In my opinion, it is a precursor to a second upcoming book about the ongoing Fascist threat in America and a historically based warning about the imminence of that threat.
I'd like to use a few choice excerpts from the book to prove the point I just made in the earlier sentence about the present danger to America which is posed by TRAITOR Trump and those who support him. The first instance in which the book convinced me that Dr. Maddow was on the right track came in her discussion of the efforts of Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, a North Carolina Democrat who used immigrants as scapegoats for his efforts to support Facism just as TRAITOR Trump has been doing for the past 10 years or so. Reynolds used these words:
"...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." (Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" by Rachel Maddow, page 220)
As I said when I first wrote about this book, 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. That moment is when I first began to realize just how important this book is as we face the most important election in the United States at least since 1860. If we get this election wrong, this country and American Democracy will not survive the next four years. On November 5, 2024, American voters are faced with the most clear cut choice in an election in the history of this country. It is an election in which we are confronted with a choice between a Prosecutor and a Convicted Felon, a Patriot and a TRAITOR, a Skilled Supporter of Sexual Assault Victims and a Serial Rapist, Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, a Powerful Future and a Future Disaster which will not leave a single individual constitutional right intact. It is purely a choice between Good and Evil. As a nation and as individuals, we cannot get this choice wrong. Our entire Democracy is at stake, nothing less!
The next quotation from Maddow's book which I have heard many times, but which struck me immediately in comparison to TRAITOR Trump was this one about Adolph Hitler's Big Lie and is a direct quote from his book, "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. )
Let me also say, in clarification, that TRAITOR Trump's name is not even mentioned in this book. But his grossly leering shadow is all through it. His use of Adolph Hitler's Big Lie is the foundation on which his efforts to gain, abuse, misuse, misconstrue, misappropriate power, and destroy American is based. He is first and foremost a pathological liar, and uses those lies to mislead, confuse, and control those members of his cult who are susceptible to them. Just as Adolph Hitler did until the day of his death, TRAITOR Trump uses grandiose, unsupportable lies to gain power over people. It is his favorite tool in his quest to destroy the world around him along with anyone who has sufficient courage to confront him. While it is his favorite tool, it is not his only tool. He also uses fear, intimidation, bribery, psychological manipulation, and a variety of other skills which he developed in his years as a juvenile delinquent son in the shadow of an enabling and destructive father. If you doubt that statement, read his niece Mary Trump's Book, "Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man." You might also consider that 40 of 44 people who served him in his cabinet refuse to endorse him today. And 40 lawyers who have all worked in the Department of Justice under Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush have all endorsed Kamala Harris. One of those lawyers actually is previous Attorney General and numerous others were Deputy Attorneys General. The people who know him and the danger he represents to America are trying desperately to tell the rest of the country the truth about his TREASON!
But as the book progresses in telling the story of early Fascist attempts in America, it becomes a genuine historical biography of one of the worst crime schemes ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting nation, its government, and its people. Hitler's propaganda machine in America was under the charge of one George Sylvester Viereck who was able to engage the support of the great American flyer Charles Lindbergh and several members of the United States Congress. They jointly established a scheme in which congress members who had the incredible power of "franking" which allowed them to mail nearly any written matter they chose to as many people as they chose in the country with the bill for the postage being paid by the United States government. Maddow documents a top secret telegram from the German Charge' D'affaires in Washington to his superior in Berlin in which he said:
"These speeches, whose aim is to prevent America's entry into the war and to ward off all attacks from interventionist politicians, will be printed each time in the American parliamentary publication, the Congressional Record, by these Senators and Congressmen, and then an edition of 50,000 to 1 million copies will be sent by them to specially chosen persons. In this manner, German influence is not visible to the outside, and, thanks to the privilege of free postage enjoyed by American Congressmen, the cost of this large scale propaganda can be kept disproportionately low..." ("Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", by Rachel Maddow, page 242)
Later in the book, Maddow points out that the Justice Department official O. John Rogge was able to document at least 24 members of congress who willingly assisted Viereck in his scheme to use "franking" to distribute Nazi propaganda to the citizens of the country at taxpayer expense. Ask yourself this question and answer it honestly: "If 24 members of congress were induced by Germany in the 1930's and 1940's to support the German propaganda effort, in today's world with much more technically advanced means of communication and concealment of the transfer of monetary funds worldwide, and with Right Wing Radical Repugnican people in congress such as Marjorie Taylor Green, George Santos, Ted Cruz, James Comer, Josh Hawley, Jim Jordan, Thomas Massie, Louie Gomert, and Matt Gaetz, just how difficult would it be for Russia and Putin to construct just as destructive and treasonous operation in congress?" Be honest with yourself when you answer that question!
O. John Rogge, the Assistant Attorney General who had uncovered Viereck's scheme as well as the identities of his congressional coconspirators, went to the Attorney General as he was about to depart from the Department of Justice on a speaking tour about his findings, was denied that permission and, bravely stated that he intended to do so anyway, He began his speaking tour and, after his first night's speech was delivered the message by an FBI agent that he had been fired as he sat in a Washington State airport waiting out a weather delay to proceed to another city for another such speech.
In the conclusion of the book, Maddow talks about the fact that the subject(s) of this book, attempted Fascism and those who perpetrated and supported it are still being followed by others who are just as dangerous to democracy and America. She says this in conclusion:
"If we're willing to take the harder look at our American history with Fascism, the truth is that our own story in this wild, uncertain twenty-first century has not an echo in the past but a prequel. For our turn in history--and for the next time this comes around too--we have the advantage of knowing what preceded us. The story of what it took, inside and outside the government, to stop the violent American ultra-right in the run up to World War II--that's a gift from the smart, brave, determined, resourceful, self-sacrificing Americans who went before us. If we learn it, and we choose it, we can inherit their work." (Rachel Maddow, "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism", Page 326)
That concluding paragraph from the book tells us all we need to know in order to what we should have been doing all along, "If we learn it, and we choose it, we can inherit their work." That should the goal and the daily effort of every patriotic American in today's world, to inherit the work of those same "...smart, brave determined, resourceful, self-sacrificing Americans who went before us." in the perpetual fight against Fascism, Nazism, Communism, TREASON, Insurrection, Desertion, and the generalized abandonment of the values which motivated the Founding Fathers to build the greatest democracy on the face of the earth.
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