![]() ![]() ![]() And this is to say nothing of Fascism’s boosters in other industries, such as those on Wall Street, like Thomas Lamont, a partner at J. And esteemed New York Times foreign correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote glowing accounts of Mussolini’s charisma and his efficient regime, purposely not reporting on its brutality or corruption. Richard Washburn Child, editor of The Saturday Evening Post, took money from Mussolini and served as the editor of the dictator’s memoirs, which he also published. Starting in the late ‘20s, Hearst actually ran columns written by Benito Mussolini on a regular basis, just as later he would print columns penned by Nazis like Goebbels, Goering, and even Hitler himself! Nor was Hearst alone in his amplification of Fascist propaganda. Perhaps the most influential of these was William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper mogul and no stranger to using his media empire to influence politics. Senator David Aiken Reed stood in the Capitol and unashamedly stated, “I do not often envy other countries and their governments, but I say that if this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now.” The capitalists openly admiring Fascism in those years had been swayed not always by firsthand observation of the goings-on in Italy, but rather by the American press, which had taken part in Mussolini’s propaganda efforts with alacrity, some even accepting payment to do so. ![]() In the summer of 1932, in fact, as FDR and Hoover vied for the presidency, Republican U.S. This portrait of Mussolini, which turned a blind eye to the domestic terror campaigns of his so-called “action squads,” made many a Wall Street financier and conservative politician into self-avowed Fascists back before the world had learned to recoil from the word. They lapped up the image of Italian Fascists as patriots fighting a socialist threat and of Mussolini himself as a hero who saved his country from ineffective parliamentary rule and ensured prosperity even in the midst of economic calamity. This sentiment was especially strong among the wealthy, who greatly feared a Communist revolution in their troubled times. ![]() As the Great Depression worsened, many Americans came to believe that what the country needed was a “strongman” leader like Il Duce, as Mussolini was called. One country in which his propaganda efforts had been quite successful was the United States of America. He felt it important to export propaganda as well. And it was not only Italian journalism he sought to influence with regard to how his regime was portrayed. As a former journalist, he knew that he had to exert absolute control over the press in order to maintain his authority. After strong-arming King Victor Emmanuel III into surrendering the country’s government to his dictatorial control, Mussolini assigned great importance to propaganda. Afterward, his fascists, so-called after the fasce or bundle of sticks that is stronger when bound together, turned their violence against what he saw as the remaining threat to Italy, socialists. Fascism as a political ideology sprang up in 1915 Italy when Benito Mussolini, formerly a journalist and politician, abandoned Socialism for nationalism and founded a paramilitary organization to fight in the first world war. It is lobbed by those on the right against leftists about as much as it is by those on the left against far-right extremists, such as those who originally coined the term. It has become synonymous with “totalitarian” and “authoritarian” in accusations of dictatorial overreach. Much like the phrase “fake news,” “fascist” is an adjective that has been diluted through overuse as a political barb. ![]()
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