Trump vs. Biden on Race

 "They were people protesting, very quietly, the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. People that were very fine people - on both sides. I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK?"

------Donald Trump on Charlottesville

 

First Presidential Debate

Chris Wallace: "Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups. ."

Trump: "Sure."

Wallace: " . . . and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha, and as we've seen in Portland?"

Trump: "Sure. I'm willing to do that . . ."

 ------- Cleveland Ohio, September 29, 2020

 

 2016

Chris Wallace: "What are your views on the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists?"

Trump: "I totally disavow the Klu (sic) Klux Klan. I totally disavow David Duke."

Reporter: "How do you feel about the recent endorsement from David Duke?"

Trump: "David Duke endorsed me? I disavow it."

 

And Now For The Democratic Challenger 

"I mean you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook man."

-----------Joe Biden on Barack Obama (2007)

"If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, you ain't black."

------Biden to Charlamagne tha God on The Breakfast Club (2020)

"Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids."

-----Joe Biden to the Asian and Latino Coalition in Des Moines, 2019

 

"They gon' put y'all back in chains."

-----Joe Biden warning blacks against a Mitt Romney presidency (2012)

Calling this “our democracy” is like slaves referring to “our plantation"

 

 

While Americans are re-programmed every four years for the most important desperately crucial national emergency election since the last one, which will assure that Wall Street, the Pentagon, Israel and billionaires maintain power and control over everything that matters, most eligible voters will choose neither of the ruling power’s candidates and in a sense exercise democratic values by refusing to act as majority puppets.

 

Meanwhile the people of Bolivia and Chile recently went to the polls and in dramatic contrast to America actually voted on substantial issues that could radically change their country’s futures. Bolivia chose returning to the socialist government that had been overthrown by a U.S. aided capitalist -fascist coup and Chile voted to   dump its U.S. influenced fascist-capitalist constitution in favor of a new one to guarantee the rights of all and not just some of their people. However things turn out for them what they did comes far closer to what America needs and democracy can create but what we’ll get is the same system with possibly slightly different actions by the crew of our national model of the Titanic. Escape lifeboats will still be available only to the upper income groups while the rest of us can drown. Sorry, we’re in the “real” world and still being convinced that having a new CEO of a petroleum firm who is a transsexual of color or a bi-polar Semite or a Picasso person with seven eyes and eight breasts is more important than ending dependence on fossil fuels and demanding alternate power sources for the future of our nation and our planet.

 

With manufactured fears of this multi-billion dollar electoral market being sold as democracy but allegedly threatened by Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Mexico, Disneyland, Lower Slobovia or other fictional scapegoats, the financial fiasco that grows more criminal and psychotic every day supposedly guarantees freedom to the homeless, the poor, the debtors, the millions without health care and the rest of us to whom everything nature’s corporate capitalism offers is available provided we’ve the market force to buy it. Those of us able to buy are a group getting smaller by the minute with plastic replacing money at a faster clip than ever with debt in the trillions and the only hope of paying it off being prayer, drugs or mass murder. The bread and circuses of a past empire has its present version in the moral pornography of a rich nation with people living on the street, under highways and bridges and being stepped over by good folks on their way to rescue a dog or cat while massive political fund raising assures the richest minority maintains   control of the entire political process. All of this is sanctified by the law of the land, a constitution written by the original 1% to assure that the other 99% would never threaten their power and control, only allowing supposed revolutionary amendments that allow a greater and more diverse professional servant class and guarantee that the overwhelming majority continue to react to the spectacle of a variety show that passes for an electoral process, as people are convinced that the right to vote is the essence of democracy, with little or no consideration about what there is to vote for. With fears of fascism being charged every minute and attributing that threat to the rich if honest simpleton in the white house, there is also the veneration in the minds of the people that the act of voting is the be all end all of fictional democracy. Pssst: the popular depiction of the archfiend fascists of Nazism and Hitler leaves out the fact that they took power through the sacred democratic process of voting, and Germany was generally considered the foremost intellectual and artistic culture of the continent.  Past American dominance of the world was never dependent on our exceeding Canada and Mexico in thought and creativity except when it came to making and using weapons to slaughter millions while proclaiming love for mankind, democracy and other good stuff. The point being that fascism is an aspect of capitalism at an extremely critical crisis during which the most repressive among the ruling class take power and make life better for some and worse for others but in a fashion beyond the usual fake manner which calls attention to poverty, war and social degeneracy as aspects of awful “other” social formations. This is currently the expression of the alleged fascist putz in the white house while his alleged liberal foes engage in the most repressive reactionary politics in the usual guise of democracy in America: Our evil is lesser than their evil. Vote for polio or you’ll get cancer!

 

Before we were struck by the pandemic spread by market forces, more than half a million Americans were homeless. More than 8 million have since descended into poverty while the billionaire class has expanded its wealth to even more outrageous extremes than before. And while our national situation disintegrates under the moral assault on life and nature called the free market, no less than the World Bank warns of the titanic debt threatening the globe with the poorest countries already facing hardship beyond anything previously experienced in trying to approach paying off debts they owe to richer nations which often got rich by stealing their national wealth through colonialist oppression. The bank warns against global collapse unless the world does something about the fact that the richest 2 thousand people own more wealth than four and a half billion humans combined.  

 

 These are not among the issues brought before the American public this election season when Trump’s personal tax figures and sex life take precedence over the fact that his open adoration of Israel and Netanyahu exceeds that of the entire American congress which all but publicly buried its face in his crotch when he spoke to the assembled recipients of Israeli lobby wealth for their political campaigns. Trump openly says he doesn’t need the Israeli lobby’s money so his passion is accepted as sincere where as much of congress and past white house occupants gleefully accept the much needed millions to “democratically” treat the last colonial nation in the world as some divine aspect of humanity.

 

The outcome of the election may not be known for hours, days or weeks after its conclusion due to the conditions brought about by the pandemic alongside other breakdowns in our political economy. Speculations about whether the post office will sell our ballots to Russia or China or Trump’s family will use them to gain more credit at Amazon or that fascism or civil war will take place are beside the point. Feverish fears or realistic panic, the fact is that Wall Street, the Pentagon, Israel and Billionaires will remain in control of the nation and future acceptance of the lie that this represents democracy will not just make things worse, but much worse than ever before. This needs to be the last vote that accepts the lie of national democracy and must lead to the creation of a new national political party to represent the majority of Americans currently having our lives bargained at a corrupt market and equally corrupt political process over which we exercise no control. 

 

Social conditions may become more dreadful in the short term after this hopefully last exercise of fake democracy. Whatever the lesser evil outcome of the ruling class owned and controlled exercise of the present moment, we need immediate action on the part of the people being bled physically, mentally and spiritually for fictional nonsense we are always fed, never more than during this latest outburst of truly fake democracy. We need the real thing and we need it fast. That struggle has already begun and it needs to take on much greater speed after November3, 2020.

 

SHHHH! Even Bigger Buletins Than This!!!

 

BREAKING NEWS
Russia hacked into U.S. computer networks in recent days, and many intelligence officials say it shows Moscow is a bigger election threat than Iran.
Thursday, October 22, 2020 3:48 PM EST
View in browser | nytimes.com   Missing the biggest threat of all to our cherished democracy ! Even bigger than the threat of Israel owning/renting/leasing the White House and Congress!! Tens of thousands of illegal aliens from Mexico, El Salvador, Yemen, Libya, Belarus, New York and California have already voted in special election deposit boxes set up in downtown areas of Cleveland, Springfield, Dayton, Omaha and Teaneck! Who is behind this nefarious attempt to crush the world's greatest democracy with the world's lowest turnout and the world's highest payroll of professional political hustlers working for our richest and therefore obviously superior minority of more diverse than ever upper privileged classes? You'll never guess! The folks who invented the corona virus, racism, poverty, war, famine, gastric acidity, ingrown toenails, cancer , Donald Trump, and more, are behind this dreadful plot! And they can be found in and at the White House, Congress, Wall Street, the Pentagon,the Mall,the Israeli lobby, the Mall,the  banks,the NYTimes,the Mall,Facebook, Google,the Six O'clock News, the Ten O'clock News, the Mall,Twitter Tweets,the  YouTube Conspiracy To Take Your Mind Off Reality Ltd. and other places where misguided citizens congregate to consume mostly  useless and needless commodities to sink into unpayable debt.

When I Hear the Word "Efficiency" I Reach For My Revolver

"Economists have highly ideological ways of measuring costs. I'm sure you've had this experience, but suppose you want to order an airline ticket, fix a mistake on your bank statement, suspend your newspaper delivery, or whatever it may be. It used to be you could make one call, talk to somebody, and take care of the problem in two minutes. Now what happens is you call a number, and you get a recorded message that says, 'Thank you for calling. We appreciate your business. All of our agents are busy.' First of all, you get a menu that you can't understand, and it doesn't have what you want on it anyway. So then it says wait for somebody. Then you wait and they play a little song, and every once in a while this recorded voice comes on asking you to keep waiting - and you can sit there for an hour waiting. Finally somebody comes on, who is probably in India, doesn't know exactly what you're talking about, and then maybe you will get what you want, but maybe not.

"The way economists measure this, it's highly efficient. It increases productivity, and productivity is what's really important, because that's what makes life better for everyone. Why is it efficient? Because businesses are saving money. The costs are being transferred to consumers, of course, but that's not measured. Nobody measures the amount of time that it takes you to get some simple task done or to correct errors, and so on. That's just not counted. If we were to count such real costs, the economy would be extremely inefficient. But the ideological principle is that you count only the costs that matter to rich people and corporations."

-----Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions - Conversations On The Post-9/11 World, pps. 193-4

In Praise of Fascist Dictatorship: The "Free Market's" Dubious Cure For Workers' Rights

 "It cannot be denied that fascism and similar movements aimed at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions, and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."

--------Ludwig von Mises, Neo-Liberalism, 1927

 

Von Mises, the founder and patron saint of neo-liberal economics, is here praising Austria's "sound economics" and attendant destruction of social democracy and unions. He continues to be a hero for followers of the "Austrian school" of capitalist economics, like former Congressman Ron Paul.

Source: GCAS Noam Chomsky Lecture with Lewis Gordon and Afar Hussain, You Tube, September 28, 2020 

 

Below is a compilation of events on the early years of fascism in neighboring Italy, which von Mises lived through.

1920: Rome

The Workers Take Over

Financial elites tremble as Paris flashes the news that Italy has “gone Bolshevik” with the red flag flying everywhere and the masses chanting “Viva Lenin” in the streets. Increasingly, the specter of Communist Europe gives way to the new reality: Russia and Hungary are already communist; there are red rumblings in the Balkans; Germany is a revolution waiting to happen.

After the 1918 Armistice, wartime assurances of prosperity turned to hollow mockery as the lira plummeted and the cost of living soared. War profiteers wallowed in blood money while hungry Italian workers went without promised pay hikes unless they could extract them with strikes. Now the metal workers association asks for inflation-adjusted wages and the employers turn them down flat: “We cannot admit the possibility of fixing salaries in relation to the rising cost of living.”

Public pressure forces a conference, but the owners torpedo all negotiations with another unilateral declaration: “All discussion is useless. We make no concessions.” The workers cagily respond by obeying all employer instructions to the letter, inevitably damaging goods and tools merely by refusing to adjust management demands to the actual requirements of production.

Alfa-Romeo locks out its workers and the manufacturers association agrees to follow suit. The trade unions opt for continuing production under a “creative strike” and half a million laborers occupy factories. Soon a million more join the burgeoning rebellion that has displaced managers and owners while armed patrols of workers shout for revolution in the streets.

Now even the Catholic party demands land reform, and workers seize landed estates from Apulia in the South to the northern frontier, posting requisition notices on the gates. In Reggio and Bologna workers and small farmers set the length of the working day, the type of farming, the rate of pay, and the proportion of manual labor to machines.

Benito Mussolini prepares his fascist movement to smash the workers’ unions and political organizations, paving the way for a long love affair with the House of Morgan.²²

 

^{Sources: George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar, (Harper and Brothers, 1935) pps. 86-7; Mary Heaton Vorse, A Footnote To Folly - Reminiscences of Mary Heaton Vorse, (Farrar and Rinehart, 1935) pps. 200, 204-6; Walter Millis, Why Europe Fights, (Morrow, 1940) pps. 30-1} 

1921: Rome

Portrait Of A Law-and-Order Movement

Two years ago Benito Mussolini formed the first detachment of his Blackshirts in the offices of the Popolo d’Italia, the Milan newspaper he founded seven years ago. Not much later his goon squads were roaming the country beating up leftist leaders and forcing them to swallow overdoses of castor oil. They broke up strikes, smashed and burned down Socialist and Communist headquarters, and zoomed around in military trucks enforcing the kind of order demanded by the bankers and industrialists who financed them. Even as they pushed Italy to the brink of civil war, they rarely suffered interference from the army or police.

By now a large group of Blackshirt deputies has become a fixture of the Parliament, while Mussolini’s private army and political party are practically departments of state. Street fighting and gunfire have become routine, with Fascists and the Left clashing in almost daily battles. In the May election campaign alone one hundred people were killed in combat between union members and Fascists.

The U.S. State Department praises the rapidly expanding fascist movement as “a league of all those who stand for law and order...”³³

 

^{Sources: David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, (University of North Carolina, 1988) pps. 41-3; Gabriel Kolko, Century of War - Politics, Conflicts, and Society Since 1914, (New Press, 1994), p. 167; Walter Millis, Why Europe Fights, (Morrow, 1940) p. 29 and 32}

 

1922: Naples/Milan

A Likable Terrorist

Battered by inflation and unemployment, reeling from 600,000 Italian deaths in WWI, and resentful at the refusal of the Allies to hand over Dalmatian lands promised by wartime treaty, Italy’s fascist movement grows and strengthens.

With police and government officials standing aside, thousands of Blackshirt thugs attack labor union halls and socialist offices while huge fascist parades take over the streets. Bolstered by thunderous ovations, Benito Mussolini bellows that the time has come to save Italy from the spineless democratic politicians. “Either the government will be given to us or we shall seize it by marching on Rome!” A delirious throng thunders back: “To Rome! To Rome!”

The King wires him with an offer of the Premiership and Mussolini makes his way to the train station amidst a madly cheering crowd showering him with flowers.

Originally a socialist, Mussolini renounced the cause when bankers and industrialists promised him money, fame, and influence. Now as he prepares to take power there is no Bolshevik threat and no Fascist revolution, as will later be claimed. The military conspiracy between the generals, the government, and the northern industrialists hands him state authority without a drop of blood being shed.

Washington looks kindly on his Blackshirt movement, which the New York Times describes as “political terrorism.” In a letter to Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, U.S. Ambassador Richard Child explains that Italians “hunger for strong leadership and enjoy...being dramatically governed.”³⁶

 

^{Sources: George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar, (Harper and Brothers, 1935) pps. 113-27, John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism - The View From America, (Princeton, 1972) pps. 29-30; Walter Millis, Why Europe Fights, (Morrow, 1940), pps. 33-4; Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds - Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, (City Lights, 1997) p. 2; Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, (Little Brown and Company, 1980) p. 180; Gabriel Kolko, Century of War - Politics, Conflicts, and Society Since 1914, (New Press, 1994) p. 167; David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, (University of North Carolina, 1988) p. 52}

 

1922: Washington

An Improved Investment Climate

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes wires Mussolini that he is “glad to cooperate” with his expressed desire for “friendly economic and spiritual collaboration” with the U.S., offering him “best wishes for the happiness and progress” of Italy. Impressed by the organization and discipline of the fascists, Washington finds their repression doing wonders for American investor confidence.

Mussolini declares he will privatize utilities and railways, offering Americans a crack at the spoils. He tells the press that his government intends to “give the greatest security to capital, and to insure it of...better...more stable conditions” than it has enjoyed before. Judge Gary of U.S. Steel adds his enthusiastic thumbs-up from Rome: “I feel like turning to my American friends and asking them whether they do not think that we too need a man like Mussolini.”

In a letter to his father, U.S. Ambassador Richard Child cheerfully relays news of Mussolini’s destruction of liberal, constitutional government: “We are having a fine young revolution here. No danger. Plenty of enthusiasm and color. We all enjoy it.”³⁷

 

^{Sources: David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, (University of North Carolina, 1988) p. 36, 52. 54. 56, 57; George Seldes, World Panorama - 1918-1933, (Little, Brown and Company, 1933) p. 142}

 

1923: Rome

Washington, Wall Street, Praise Italian Dictatorship

On the first anniversary of his accession to state power, the U.S. Embassy reports to the State Department that Mussolini has never “been more popular or held a stronger position.” In particular, he “has been eminently successful in bringing about social peace and the cessation of class warfare. In the beginning the means employed were physical, but very soon a tendency to apply more peaceful methods was manifest. The results have been excellent, and during the last twelve months there has not been a single strike in the whole of Italy.”

Business leaders are equally pleased. Lewis E. Pierson, president of the Merchants’ Association of New York, tells leading businessmen that Mussolini is “truly a great man” who has defeated communism and is committed to “the inviolable rights of property and contract.” Willis Booth, president of the International Chamber of Commerce, praises him for bringing Italy “out of the slough of despair into the bright realm of progress.” The New York Evening Post reports that the Mussolini spell “has settled down hardest over the minds of sober American businessmen,” whose admiration for Italy’s dictator “at times comes perilously near to assuming that Mussolini not only created order and discipline in Italy, but before that created the Apennines and the blue Italian skies.”

U.S. Steel’s Judge Elbert Gary, on hand to witness the Mussolini miracle in person, cannot contain his admiration: “We have here a wonderful renaissance of youthful energy and activity. A master hand has, indeed, strongly grasped the helm of the Italian state.”⁴³

 

^{Sources: David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, (University of North Carolina, 1988) pps. 70-1}

 

1924: Rome

Where The Trains Run On Time

With all of Italy hanging on his every word, Giacomo Matteotti, speaker of the five Opposition parties in the Chamber of Deputies, rises to read off a list of recent Blackshirt bludgeonings at polling stations.  The Fascist benches erupt in protest: “Liar!” “Falsifier!” “Prove it!”

Mussolini squirms and glares while Matteotti produces sworn statements, Fascist newspaper reports, Fascist orders of violence, and court findings confirming the violence,.

A week later Mussolini shakes his fist at Matteotti and tells him that were they in Russia the communists would know what to do, “and you would have a bullet through your spine.” Soon a Mussolini editorial appears on the front page of the Popolo d’Italia, demanding revenge for Matteoti’s sullying of Fascism’s good name. Days later Cesare Rossi, co-director of the Cheka, tells journalist Carlo Silvestri: “With people like Matteotti, the only thing to do is let the revolver speak.”

An American—Amerigo Dumini—is selected for the task, along with four accomplices. Trained as a gangster in American slums, Dumini is Rossi’s colleague in the Cheka and the “household friend” of Mussolini.

One fine day Matteotti is kidnapped and beaten, then stabbed, mutilated, and burned. Parts of his body are buried, dug up, abandoned to the foxes and pariah dogs, then buried again.

Mussolini tenderly consoles Matteotti’s sobbing widow when she arrives in parliament seeking news of her husband’s whereabouts. “Signora, I should like to restore your husband alive to you. You may be assured that the government will do its utmost duty. We know nothing for certain, but there is some hope.”

U.S. Ambassador Henry Fletcher informs the State Department that many prominent Fascists are implicated in Matteotti’s murder, but their man Mussolini is in the clear.

Documents proving Mussolini’s involvement in the murder, including the confessions of his men, go on sale at Rome newsstands.

With large landowners and industrialists in open conflict with peasants and workers, a shaken Italy moves toward civil war.⁴⁵

 

^{Sources: David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, (University of North Carolina, 1988) pps. 72-3; George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar, (Harper and Brothers, 1935) pps. 147-53; George Seldes, World Panorama - 1918-1933, (Little Brown and Company, 1933) pps. 234-5; George Seldes, Witness To A Century (Ballantine, 1987), p. 218; Stuart H. Hughes, The United States and Italy, (Harvard, 1979), p. 99} 

1925: Rome

Italian Renaissance

Under the banner of “Hierarchy, Order, Discipline” a Corporate State rises on the graveyard of common rights inherited from democracy and monarchy.

Mussolini promises peace “by force if necessary,” ordering his gangs to attack all enemies and destroy the last opposition newspapers. In three months sixteen men in public life are killed, 36 seriously injured and 172 assaulted as Fascists invade and destroy 46 homes and political clubs. Mussolini proudly announces peace through total control: “For the first time in the history of the world, a constructive revolution like ours realizes peacefully, in the field of production and work, incorporation of all the economic and intellectual forces of the nation.”

The constructive revolution bans strikes and lockouts, abolishes industrial competition, places capital, business, and industry under state control, assigns each citizen a category of production, forces labor to cooperate with capital, appoints a new Parliament, bans political opposition, and arrests thousands for heresy.

U.S. bankers come running with loans.⁶⁰

 

^{Sources: David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, (University of North Carolina, 1988), pps. 75, 96-8; George Seldes, World Panorama - 1918-1933, (Little Brown and Company, 1933), pps. 236, 239}

 1925: Washington

“The chief business of the American people is business,”

says President Coolidge to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He adds that “there are many other things that we want very much more,” like peace, honor, and charity.

In a burst of charity the Congressional Debt Commission proceeds to cancel over 75% of Italy’s World War I debts. Opponents of the sweetheart deal uncharitably attack the president for supporting Mussolini. House Speaker Henry Rainey denounces the Fascists as “murderers” and the Italian dictatorship as “the most dangerous, the most pronounced despotism that we have in... all the world.”

The White House and business leaders counter that Italians are not ready for Western-style democracy and need fascist order, discipline, and efficiency to mature as a nation. Morgan partner Thomas Lamont explains that Anglo-Saxons must understand that “the old forms of parliamentary government in Italy [have] proved futile and [have] led to inefficient government and chaos.” The House of Morgan floats Italy a $100 million loan.

U.S. leaders hail Italy’s Corporate State as the only remedy for Russian Utopianism abolishing profit, spreading word that Mussolini has saved his nation and possibly all of Europe from Communist slavery. They prudently omit mention of Mussolini’s having announced the death of Bolshevism in Italy well before he came to power.⁶¹

 

^{Sources: David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, pps. 76, 96-9; Clifton Daniel, ed. Chronicle of America, (DK Publishing, 1997) p. 627; George Seldes, World Panorama - 1918-1933, (Little Brown and Company, 1933) p. 239; George Seldes, Sawdust Caesar, (Harper and Brothers, 1935) p. 276; Cyndy Bittinger, "The Business of America Is Business?" www.calvincoolidge.org/pages/history/research/ccmf/bitt02.html}

 

1926: Anticoli

A Letter To the House of Morgan

“I wonder if you all in New York know just what you are doing in backing Fascistism in Italy. We had a taste of it last night here. A party of Fascists motored up from Rome armed with revolvers, rapiers and loaded whips, arrived at nine and proceeded to beat up with fierce brutality the peasants who could not produce a Fascisti card.... If any peasant objects he is shot. This is happening all over the place. It seems funny for American money to be perpetuating it.”⁶⁸

 

^{Sources: Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan - An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance, (Atlantic Monthly, 1990), p. 283}

 

1926: New York/Washington

U.S. Leaders On Italian Fascism

“In formulating judgment on Fascismo two things should be kept in mind. First, it so happens that Italy is inhabited by Italians and not by Americans or Englishmen, and that what applies or appeals to us need not necessarily apply or appeal to them. Secondly, in the case of every people, more essential even than liberty, and therefore taking precedence over it, is order and national self preservation.”

—New York Banker Otto Kahn

“The methods of the Duce are not by any means American methods,” [but a democratic approach] “would certainly NOT appeal to a people so differently constituted as are the Italians.”

—William Castle, chief of the State Department’s Western European Division

“Mussolini has crushed all opposition to Fascism in Italy. He is organizing the new Corporate State, regimenting labor and capital and all lines of intellectual and economic activity. Italy is to become a great well-coordinated machine fired by Fascism and controlled by him.”

—U.S. Ambassador to Rome Henry Fletcher

“[Mussolini] would not hesitate to cut off a man’s head instantly if he failed to deliver what was expected of him.”

—Benjamin Strong, Bankers Trust⁷²

 

Sources: Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan - An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance, (Atlantic Monthly, 1990) p. 277; David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, (University of North Carolina, 1988) pps. 69, 78, 104-5