Fighting fascism at home and abroad begins with the consolidation
of a progressive politics
Seventy-five years
ago, Henry Wallace, then the vice president of the United States,
mounted a campaign about the “Danger of American Fascism.” As
fighting in the European and Japanese theatres drew to a close,
Wallace warned that the country might win the war and lose the peace;
that the fascist threat the United States was battling abroad had a
terrifying domestic variant, growing rapidly in power: wealthy
corporatists and their allies in the media. Wallace predicted that if
the New Deal project was not renewed and expanded in the postwar era,
American fascists would use fear mongering, xenophobia, and racism to
regain economic and political power. He championed a progressive
postwar world—an alternative to the rising triumphalist “American
Century” notion in which the United States rejected colonialism and
imperialism.
Wallace’s
political vision—as well as his nomination to remain vice
president—was sidelined by Democratic big city bosses and southern
segregationists. In the decades to come, other progressives would
mount similar campaigns: George McGovern and Jesse Jackson most
prominently. As John Nichols chronicles in this book, they ultimately
failed—a warning to would-be reformers today—but their efforts
provide us with insights into the nature of the Democratic Party and
strategic lessons for the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez.