A Book More Relevant Now Than When It Was Written
This book was four (or perhaps five) too early.
During the Trump Administration it was popular for Leftists to insist the president was a Fascist. In all fairness, this has been the favorite line of Leftists under any Conservative presidential administration in living memory, so it wasn't as though it was new or sensational. However, Donald Trump (perhaps unwittingly) threw these Leftists a bone by using a slogan that happened to be the name of an organization from the 1930's and early '40's which Adolf Hitler considered the most promising candidate for the basis of American Fascism: "America First." This, the oft-made comparison between Donald Trump's "MAGA" movement and Charles Lindbergh's society dedicated to keeping America out of World War 2, was what Bradley Hart was going for in 2018 when he wrote this book. It's a thesis which is barely ever addressed in this book.
Ironically, though the point the author set out to make never gets adequately made, a larger and more salient point (which he didn't even know needed to be made yet) became crystal clear in the aftermath of 2022.
The Basis
The book's account of the precursors to World war 2 begins on an interestingly symbolic date: September 11, 1941. Thus, the theme of "echoes of World War 2 in the twenty-first century" hits the reader like a two-by-four in the very first line. This was the night when Charles Lindbergh, the famed pilot of the "Spirit of St. Louis" who would later use his celebrity status to launch himself into politics as the darling of the American Far Right by taking the helm of an isolationist movement (and if you missed the Trump comparison, don't worry; the author's going to hit you in the face with ham-fisted reiterations of it again and again for the next twenty pages) went off-script and openly confessed that he wasn't so much "anti-war" as "anti-Zionist," which has always been a dog-whistle for "anti-Jewish."
This becomes the launch pad for a book that highlights many of the leading voices in the isolationist movement leading up to World War 2 (a few celebrities, the German diaspora, conspiracy theorists, the religious Right, and the academic complex) and compares them rather handily to the present day. Some of these groups were openly in the pocket of the Hitler regime, and some had no idea that the German government was quietly backing them because their goals of keeping America out of the war dovetailed nicely with Hitler's goal of isolating Britain.
And if I'd read this book during the Administration it was aimed at lampooning, I'd have found it hilariously desperate. The author's intended goal was to make the reader think "Lindbergh hated Jews like Trump hates Jihadis... Lindbergh was disgusted with the British like Trump is disgusted with NATO... Lindbergh accused Roosevelt (quite accurately, if you really want to know) of being a Socialist, just like Trump accused Obama (also quite rightly) of being a Socialist... Trump is an unwitting puppet of fascists, just like Lindbergh was." On this point, he hilariously fails. He could not have had a clue, writing this book in 2018, that its primary relevance would not become apparent until after the president he was aiming it at was already out of office. Have a look at a few lines.
"Providing aid to Britain - the last Western European country still fighting the Germans - would simply detract from building the country's defenses. This was the standard isolationist position before Pearl Harbor: let the Europeans fight their own conflicts and make sure America was sufficiently prepared to stay out of them."
"No doubt he was partially inspired by the Roosevelt Administration's Lend-Lease policy, which had made it through Congress earlier in the year and allowed the president to provide military vehicles, aircraft and munitions to the ailing Allies."
-page 2
By the second page, the author has already drawn clear comparisons between the 1930's struggle to overcome the Far-Right's recalcitrance and get America into the fight against Hitler's Nazis, and the 2020's struggle to overcome the Far-Right's recalcitrance and get America into the fight against Putin's Neo-Nazis. And of course, this theme (which I remind you was not even there to be made when the book was written) runs through the entire book.
"There were, [Lindbergh] concluded, three groups that had conspired to draw the country into the conflict: the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration."
-page 2
"Allegations of Jewish control over the film industry were commonplace at these gatherings, and speakers expressed the Bund's determination to rid the picture industry of them."
-Page 40
Replace "Jewish" with the less-than-subtle anti-Jewish code word, "Zionists," "the British" with the words "Ukrainian Lobbyists," and the name "Roosevelt" with "Biden" and it becomes indistinguishable from virtually every post made by isolationist conspiracy theorist @valued-customer. Later on in Chapter 3 (entitled "The Religious Right") the author points out how some pro-German preachers, such as Father Coughlin of Detroit, even claimed Hitler was "fighting to defend Christianity," using the exact same words Marjorie Taylor Greene used to describe Putin's campaign. Chapter 4 ("The Senators") shines light on the number of Senators who built their election campaigns off of an appeal to the isolationist Right, leading to campaign slogans that sounded like they were written in Berlin, just as many of today's MAGA criers sound like their platforms were written in Moscow.
But the main theme, and the one that didn't even have contemporary relevance when the book was written, was the constant parallelism between the Germany lobby's "don't get involved in a war on Britain's behalf" message and the Russonazi lobby's "don't get involved in a war on Ukraine's behalf" message.
This claim by a German student at Stanford in 1940, found on page 151, is just like the claim that Russia is "just regaining what's actually theirs by enslaving Ukraine," a claim echoed by the openly professed "Anti-Zionists" (read 'Hitler-esque Jew haters who haven't got the guts to admit that they hate Jews so they substitute a code-word for Jews) such as @valued-customer.
And then of course, there is this quick summary (found on page 7) of Germany's propaganda playbook in the years leading up to World War 2. Tell me, replace "England" with "Ukraine" and see if this sounds familiar.
And of course, page 163 addresses the elephant in the room, namely, that most on the Far-Right didn't even have a platform other than "FDR is for Britain, and I'm against FDR, so I'm for Germany," much the same way much of today's Right doesn't have a platform other than "Biden is for Ukraine, and I'm against Biden, so I'm for Russia!"
So let's recap: A genocidal madman is waging war in Europe, against a country that has no clear treaty with America, and a Far-Left president who hasn't done much else right in his administration manages to see sense for once, and sees (albeit belatedly) that America needs to support the war effort against said madman. Meanwhile, this Leftist president's opponents (the GOP) have a number within their ranks who are so desperate to remove the Leftist president from office that they side with the genocidal madman instead, insisting his war is not America's problem and even in some cases echoing his propaganda.
If this doesn't sound familiar, you're not paying attention!
Of course, critics will roll their eyes and say "those are ham-fisted false equivalencies." I remind you, reader, this book was written in 2018, before those equivalencies were even there to be drawn. When this book was written, there was no war in Europe to compare it to!
The Flaws
Okay. So, the author is decidedly Left-Wing, and he never bothers to hide his bias. While he points out, quite rightly, the dangers posed by pro-Hitler organizations operating in the US in the 1930's, he repeatedly laments that the FBI was too busy trackingpoor, innocent Communists to do anything about them (p. 4 & 69). In fact, on page 14, when the author recounts Martin Dies Jr.'s assertion that he considers Communism and Fascism to be two sides of the same totalitarian coin, the author seems scandalized by this notion. This theme of "I wish the FBI would stop acting as if Far Left extremists were a threat and focus on everybody even remotely associated with the Right" doesn't quite run throughout the entire book. In fact, the author does occasionally, grudgingly, acknowledge that there were, in fact, Pro-Communist extremist groups in the US during the same time period as the Pro-Fascist extremist groups he is writing about, and he even lauds both political parties for taking steps to make sure that the Pro-Hitler elements within their own ranks (and yes, both parties had them as he explains) from ever getting close to the presidency. But at nearly every juncture the author goes to every possible length to try and whitewash Communist threats.
It's a shame really, because this overt Left Wing bias not only takes the edge off of what would otherwise be a shocking, eye-opening read, but it makes it too easily dismissed by those who need to read it the most (that is, the modern Center-Right who feel, erroneously, like they have no options except siding with their Leftist opponents or siding with the pro-Russia extremists at the far-reaching fringe of their own faction).
Unexpected Bonus
While the author's intention was to draw comparisons between Hitler's manipulation of the Far-Right then and Putin's manipulation of the Far-Right today (and the parallels between the "no aid for Britain" crowd then and the "no aid for Ukraine" crowd today are eerily plain), the author does have two chapters that shine a light on the dangers from the opposite end of the political spectrum. The chapters outlining Nazi Germany's use of academic institutions and business interests reminded me less of modern day Russian meddling and more of modern day Chinese meddling. The way German "culture clubs" on US campuses pushed Nazi propaganda (the way the Confucius Institute pushes Xi-ist propaganda today), the way Hitler's Germany encouraged German exchange students in America to "tell the Fatherland's story (almost the exact same words China uses today)," the way Germany pandered to American students, plying them with cheap booze and plentiful access to sex in the hopes that they'd think fondly of Germany when they returned home (the way China does today), and the way Germany manipulated currency controls to hold German branches of foreign firms hostage by making it impossible to transfer their profits overseas, all absolutely smacked of China's early twenty-first century playbook. And now that I think about it, the theme of "Anti-Semitic drivel on U.S. campuses" sounds a lot like the Pro-Hamas, Anti-Israel garbage being spewed by the "Free Palestine" crowd on American campuses today.
So Who Should Read It?
Well, frankly everyone in America. Period. This book, even with the annoyingly obvious Left-wing bias mentioned above, needs to be required reading in every high school and university across the United States (and as to the above-mentioned bias, it's actually less ham-fisted than the Left-wing dogma written into most of what they're already reading). Republicans who are getting tired of Marjorie Taylor Green's batshit bullshit will be relieved to find "yes, you CAN actually go against lunatics in your own party (in fact most of us already have) and it doesn't make you a supporter of the Democrats." Russopublicans who are delusional enough to side with Greene, might actually get hit with enough clue-by-fours to have their "are we the baddies" moment. And of course, Democrats who are currently gloating as Republicans awkwardly and sheepishly confront the Russian influence within our own party can get a humbling dose of introspection by noting the comparisons to the Chinese influence (and the Hamas influence) within theirs.
Dear @patriamreminisci !
I remember that Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford loved and supported Hitler!
So, I think it's possible that America wouldn't have been at war with Hitler if Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor.
I am surprised that Americans categorize Jews as leftists and communists!
I wonder why Americans and Europeans are hostile to Jews.😦
The Jews I met were friendly and charming.
They also generally ate pork well.😃
Hitler certainly agreed, but FDR was looking for a way to get Americans to join the fight against the Axis. This has led many conspiracy theorists to believe he deliberately allowed Pearl Harbor to happen just to get Americans mad enough.
Most don't. There was an idea (put forth by Hitler) that the Bolshevik Party was created by Jews, and this idea has led to a persistent belief that Jews and Communists are somehow one and the same.
The irony is that in America we had nearly gotten over the anti-Judaic bias, and then we started bringing in immigrants from the Middle East and a huge number of them brought this bias back in with them. Then of course, there are the conspiracy theorists who try to pretend they are not bigoted against Jews by using the term "Zionist" instead of "Jew." In the old days, Americans were because their European ancestors had been, and their European ancestors had been for various and sundry different reasons.
I don't believe in the conspiracy theory that FDR led the attack on Pearl Harbor.
If FDR had committed such an act of treason, the Americans would have dug his body out of the grave and burned it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
I remember that the victims of McCarthyism were mostly Jews.
Dear Rob!
Are you saying that America's Muslim civilians are currently driving anti-Semitism?
Not Anti-Semitism, exactly. Specifically, Anti-Judaism. The term "Anti-Semitism" in its most literal meaning is a bias against "Semites," which would include Jews and most Muslims alike. That's why I coined the term "Anti-Judaism," which specifically means a bias against just Jews.
Rob!
I wrote Anti-Semitism by mistake because I am not familiar with English writing.
I think “Anti-Judaism,” is the right expression!
I hope you first understand that I have the English conversation skills of an American elementary school student.😄
Thank you for kind answer!
PS: I wonder how you live in Texas!😉
Some people around me claim that there is a civil war going on in the United States.
Oh, you had the right expression. I was clarifying why I had to create a new one.
Yeah, these claims are badly exaggerated. We have a hell of a mess at the border, admittedly, but "Civil War" is horribly overinflating it.
The U.S. is having one of the same demographic problems that a lot of developed nations are having right now (a declining birth rate, which leads to a declining population). For years the government's solution to this has been to grow the population through immigration instead. This causes a lot of cultural shifts, and there's been some concern in the pat (quite rightly) about the number of militant Islamists among the immigrants, but the threats are not nearly the level a lot of people claim.
Anyway, the Biden Administration has slammed this "growth through immigration" drive into OVERdrive, and the number of people crossing the Mexican border is staggering. It's always been high but now it's ridiculous. And Obama, Trump, and Biden all three did a terrible job of checking who these refugees were, so we've had an increase in gang violence (especially Mexican gangs like MS-13).
Well, a lot of the Far-Right (Biden's opponents) have capitalized on this by calling it an "invasion," and saying Biden allowed it. I've seen what invasions look like, and this isn't one. And while Biden has made a mess of it, he didn't cause it. It's been this way through three presidents in a row (Obama-Trump-Biden).
Well, background. In America, part of our Army and Air Force is called the "National Guard." This is the part of the military reserve that's controlled by individual states instead of the national government. And since Texas's governor, Greg Abbott, is a Republican (not just a Republican but an Ultra-MAGA Republican, one of Trump's supporters), he called up Texas's National Guard and sent them to the border, saying "since Biden won't solve the problem, I will."
The National Guard hasn't really done much. They were sent there so Texas's governor could get applause from Trump's voters by saying "look at me. I'm tougher than Biden."
Obama didn't fix the problem.
Neither did Trump.
Neither has Biden.
And now, neither has Greg Abbott.
But all of the guys on that list are having a great time blaming each other for it.
Yet, while the problem is a hell of a clusterfuck, calling it a "Civil War" is idiotic. We here in Texas still go about our daily lives. Artillery isn't blowing up homes here. That's in Ukraine. Foreign troops aren't going door to door raping and murdering here. That's in Ukraine. MS-13 isn't spending millions of dollars convincing the world "we're just taking back what's ours." That's what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
So, no. We don't have a Civil War here, despite what @valued-customer and his fellow conspiracy theorist lunatics might have tried to say.
Dear @patriamreminisci !
My amigo, Rob!
I understand! I agree with you!
I heard on the news that many Mexicans are coming to Texas. I wonder what you think about illegal immigrants coming from Mexico!
I assumed that Texas, Wyoming, and Oregon were different countries.
America is a bigger world than I imagined, so it's hard for me to understand!
I remembered @valued-customer's claim that the United States was a federation of countries, like the European Union.
However, I misunderstood that you loved @valued-customer like a Chinese!😆
Thank you for kind answer!