How Fascism Came to America

Singing Songs to Freedom [The Daily Reckoning] June 23, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( How Fascism Came to America - “The American system of government is in jeopardy if we don’t do something about it”… - The fearful combination of the administrative state and the surveillance state… - Then Jeffrey Tucker shows you how corporatism has has replaced liberalism in America… [There is MASSIVE change happening within our company.]( And I want you to hear about this – from me – otherwise this new policy could blindside you. This has gone into effect immeditaly, so I want you to understand exactly what it will mean for you. [Watch This Video For My Full Announcement]( Annapolis, Maryland [Brian Maher] BRIAN MAHER Dear Reader, “The American system of government is in jeopardy if we don’t do something about it.” This is the constant moan, the constant bellyaching issuing from various shades of the political spectrum. The moaning and bellyaching of the right side of the political divide intensifies when the left side of the political divide runs things — and vice versa. But perhaps they are both mistaken. Perhaps the American system of government has already passed the point of salvation. It is not what it was… or at least not what it was constructed to be. In 1938 journalist Garet Garrett (1878–1954) authored an obscure masterwork, “The Revolution Was by title. 1938 was years into the New Deal. Yet many at the time put out the identical moaning and bellyaching we hear today: “The American system of government is in jeopardy if we don’t do something about it.” The American system of government had already changed. Yet the change passed beneath their awareness. Garrett: There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. The revolution was… fascism. This was not the berserker and genocidal fascism of Adolf Hitler most people associate with the term. It was rather the “trains running on time” economic fascism of Italy’s Benito Mussolini. This fascism infiltrated American waters under cover of night. Once ashore it was bottled, stamped with the smiling face of Uncle Sam and wholesaled nationwide to the tune of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” It sang “songs to freedom.” It represented democracy in action. Yet fascism it was — despite its songs and its sly coos. Former Army Brig. Gen. Hugh “Iron Pants” Johnson directed the National Recovery Administration (NRA). Whose portrait hung from his wall? Washington’s? No. It was the portrait of the Italian fascist himself — Mr. Mussolini. The American people had embraced his fascism with both hands… yet did not realize it. They were singing “songs to freedom.” What if the thing had been labeled fascism? What if it bore an accurate label? Swords would have come leaping from their scabbards. Peasants would have grabbed the pitchforks. The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution would have seized their muskets. But repackage fascism as freedom itself? Tart it up in red, white and blue? Sing songs to freedom? Now you have won yourself a crowd. You have turned a thing into its opposite. The outward form of American life remained to a very significant extent — sparklers still burned on Independence Day. Yet the substance within was changed. The most successful revolutions leave the buildings standing — as a very wise fellow once said. The New Deal left the buildings standing. The present year is 2023 of course. The sand is long out of the hourglass. The administrative state — christened during the New Deal — has grown into a morbidly obese and aged thing. And the nation is presently sunk $31.5 trillion in arrears. Yet it still writes checks it promised many decades distant. Meantime, another behemoth has since been heaped atop the administrative state. That is of course the surveillance state. Not one sparrow falls in these United States — as it was once known — that escapes the watchful eye of Uncle Samuel. This is the nation we inhabit. It is the fearful mixture of administration and surveillance. It is not Washington’s nation. It is not Jefferson’s nation. It is not even Hoover’s nation. It is Wilson’s nation, it is Roosevelt’s nation, it is Johnson’s nation, it is Reagan’s nation, it is Bush’s nation, it is Obama’s nation, it is Trump’s nation, it is Biden’s nation. Yet we sob: “The American system of government is in jeopardy if we don’t do something about it”... As we sing songs to freedom… Below, Jeffrey Tucker shows you how corporatism — economic fascism — has replaced liberalism in the United States. Moreover, how corporatism has gone global. Read on. Regards, [Brian Maher] Brian Maher Managing Editor, The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Editor’s note: Jim Rickards is one of the most well-connected men in America. But even with a Rolodex that includes world leaders… banking CEOs… and State Department officials… Jim does NOT typically “vouch” for just anyone. But today, Jim is urging you to meet who he believes is one of the ONLY trustworthy men in the financial community. He’s a former [high-profile hedge fund manager known as “The Banker.”]( And this investor has built a career by making money in volatile markets. In fact, in 2022 — [while the S&P 500 crumbled — The Banker’s model portfolio surged by 190%.]( That is why Jim is inviting you to a [special strategy session]( — hosted by The Banker. If you follow the link below… You’ll learn about his unique income strategy that has generated 166% in just two days. [Go here now to get started.]( [Has World War III Just Begun?]( [Click here for more...]( NATO sends tanks to Ukraine… Russia prepares for a winter offensive… Is the beginning of World War III? [Click Here To Find Out]( The Daily Reckoning Presents: Neither fish nor fowl, neither capitalism nor socialism… ****************************** Corporatism Has Replaced Liberalism By Jeffrey Tucker [Jeffrey Tucker] JEFFREY TUCKER It’s not capitalism. It’s not socialism. The new word we are hearing these days is the right word: corporatism. That refers to the merger of industry and state into a unit with the purpose of achieving some grand visionary end, the liberty of individuals be damned. The word itself predates its successor, which is fascism. But the “F” word has become totally incomprehensible and useless through misuse so there is clarity to be gained by discussing the older term. Consider, as an obvious example, Big Pharma. It funds the regulators. It maintains a revolving door between corporate management and regulatory control. Government often funds drug development and rubber-stamps the results. Government further grants and enforces the patents. Vaccines are indemnified from liability for harms. When consumers balk at shots, government imposes mandates, as we have seen. Further, pharma pays up to 75% of the advertising on evening television, which obviously buys both favorable coverage and silence on the downsides. This is the very essence of corporatism. But it is not only this industry. It ever more affects tech, media, defense, labor, food, environment, public health and everything else. The big players have merged into a monolith, squeezing out the life of market dynamism. The topic of corporatism is rarely discussed in any detail. People would rather keep the discussion on abstract ideals that are not really operational in reality. It’s these ideal types that split right and left; meanwhile the really existing threats sail under the radar. And that is strange because corporatism is much more of a living reality. It variously swept through most societies in the world in the 20th century, and vexes us today as never before. But corporatism has a long ideological history that actually stretches back two centuries. It began as a fundamental attack on what was then known as liberalism. Liberalism began centuries earlier with the end of the religious wars in Europe and the realization that permitting religious freedom was overall good for everyone. It lessens violence in society and still retains the opportunity for the vigorous practice of faith. This insight gradually unfolded in ways that pertained to speech, travel and commerce generally. By the early 19th century, following the American Revolution, the idea of liberalism swept Europe. The idea was that the state could do no better for society than to let it develop organically and without a purpose-driven end state, a centralized authority that seeks to achieve a specific goal or purpose, often seen as a greater good or common end that justifies the restriction of individual liberties. In the liberal view, in contrast, liberty for all became the sole end state. Standing against traditional liberalism was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), the German philosopher who explained the loss of territory at the end of the Napoleonic Wars as merely a temporary setback in the German nation’s historical destiny. In his vision of politics, the nation as a whole needs a destiny that is consistent with his postulated laws of history. This holistic view was inclusive of church, industry, family and individuals: Everyone must march in the same direction. The whole reaches its pinnacle in the institution of the state, he wrote in Elements of the Philosophy of Right, which “is the actuality of the ethical idea, “the rationality of the ethical whole,” the “divine idea as it exists on Earth” and a “work of art in which the freedom of the individual is actualized and reconciled with the freedom of the whole.” If all of that sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, welcome to the mind of Hegel, who was trained in theology foremost and somehow came to dominate German political philosophy for a very long time. His followers split into left- and right-wing versions of his statism, culminating in Marx and arguably Hitler, who agree that the state is the center of life while only arguing about what it should do. [Urgent Notice From Paradigm CIO Zach Scheidt!]( [Click here for more...]( Hi, Zach Scheidt here… I’m the Chief Income Officer at Paradigm Press. With inflation raging (and showing no signs of coming to an end any time soon), almost everyone in America is feeling the pain in a big way. Which is why, several months ago, I set out on a big mission… my goal was to create a complete, step-by-step plan to surviving and beating inflation… one that anyone could take advantage of. Today, after hundreds of hours of research, I’m revealing all of my findings. [See What I Found Here]( Corporatism was a manifestation of the “right-wing” version of Hegelianism, which is to say that it did not go so far as to say that religion, property and family should be abolished, as Marxism later suggested. Rather each of these institutions should serve the state, which represents the whole. The economic element of corporatism gained steam with the work of Friedrich List (1789–1846) who worked as an administrative professor at the University of Tübingen but was expelled and went to America where he became involved in the establishment of railroads and championed an economic “National System” or industrial mercantilism. Believing that he was following up with the work of Alexander Hamilton, List advocated national self-sufficiency or autarky as the proper managerial trade for trade. In this, he stood against the entire liberal tradition that had long rallied around the work of Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade. Such is a brief look at the intellectual roots and development of corporatist thinking, complete with its most noxious ideological elements. The focus on a purpose-driven nationalism in each case comes through dividing and conquering the nation, usually by a “great man,” and allowing the “experts” to run roughshod over the desires of the common people for peace and prosperity. The corporatist model was deployed in most countries during the Great War, which was the largest experiment in central planning in cooperation with munitions manufacturers and other large corporations. It was deployed in combination with conscription, censorship, monetary inflation and a large-scale killing machine. It inspired an entire generation of intellectuals and public managers. The U.S. New Deal, with its price controls and industrial cartels, was largely managed by people such as Rexford Tugwell (1891–1979) who was inspired to rally around corporatism by his experience in this war. The same pattern repeated in the Second World War. This brief history only takes us only to the middle of the 20th century. Today corporatism takes a different form. Rather than national, it is global in scope. In addition to government and large corporations, today’s corporatism includes powerful nongovernment organizations, nonprofits and huge foundations built by huge fortunes. It is as much private as it is public. But it is no less divisive, ruthless and hegemonic than it was in the past. It has also shaved off most of its egregious (and embarrassing) teachings, leaving in place only the ideals of world governments working directly with the largest corporations in media and tech to forge a single vision for humanity on the march, such as spelled out daily by the World Economic Forum. With that come censorship and restrictions on commercial and individual liberty. That is only the beginning of the problems. Corporatism abolishes the competitive dynamic of competitive capitalism and replaces it with cartels run by oligarchs. It reduces growth and prosperity. It is invariably corrupt. It promises efficiency but yields only graft. It expands the gaps between rich and poor and creates and entrenches deep fissures between the rulers and ruled. It dispenses with localism, religious particularism, rights of families and aesthetic traditionalism. It also ends in violence. Corporatism is anything but radical. The word is a perfect descriptive of the most successful form of statism of the 20th century. In the 21st century, it has been given new life and an ambition that is global in scope. But as regards the highest American ideals and enlightenment values of freedom for all, it really does represent the opposite. It is also the single most vexing problem we face today, far more of a going concern than old archetypes of socialism and capitalism. Also in the American context, corporatism can come in forms that masquerade as both left and right. But make no mistake: The real target is always liberty traditionally understood. Regards, Jeffrey Tucker for The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Ed. note: Jim Rickards is one of the most well-connected men in America. But even with a Rolodex that includes world leaders… banking CEOs… and State Department officials… Jim does NOT typically “vouch” for just anyone. But today, Jim is urging you to meet who he believes is one of the ONLY trustworthy men in the financial community. He’s a former [high-profile hedge fund manager known as “The Banker.”]( And this investor has built a career by making money in volatile markets. In fact, in 2022 — [while the S&P 500 crumbled — The Banker’s model portfolio surged by 190%.]( That is why Jim is inviting you to a [special strategy session]( — hosted by The Banker. If you follow the link below… You’ll learn about his unique income strategy that has generated 166% in just two days. [Go here now to get started.]( Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) [Brian Maher] [Brian Maher]( is the Daily Reckoning's Managing Editor. Before signing on to Agora Financial, he was an independent researcher and writer who covered economics, politics and international affairs. His work has appeared in the Asia Times and other news outlets around the world. He holds a Master's degree in Defense & Strategic Studies. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Jeffrey Tucker] [Jeffrey Tucker]( is an independent editorial consultant who served as Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. 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