In the previous post Introduction to the Business Plot, I highlighted events and political groups that were active in the late 1920’s and 30’s. These groups were motivated by the effects of the Great Depression and consisted of pro Nazi Americans and disillusioned veterans of World War I. The other group was made up of industrialists and leaders of big banks. The last paragraph;
To summarize thus far; the results of the Great Depression and the election of FDR were angry unemployed veterans, scared business leaders singing Mussolini’s praises and organizations of Hitler sympathizers. There were even articles in popular magazines contemplating the benefits of dictatorships over democracy.
When retired Major General, and two time medal of honor recipient, Smedley Butler testified in the House in 1933 people listened. Butler detailed a plot by certain business leaders to create a coup d’etat with veterans led by himself. The goal, he said, was to create a fascist dictatorship in the United States modeled after those in Europe.
Representative John W McCormack led a committee to investigate Butler’s claims.
McCormack’s committee held hearings on a series of Fascist activities in the United States. The star witness in the hearing on Wall Street’s efforts to oust Franklin D. Roosevelt was an outspoken military hero: Smedley Butler. Butler knew a coup when he saw one – because he’d engineered them on behalf of the same capitalists who wanted to replace the president with a dictator. New England Historical Society
The committee initially reported there was little evidence of a plot. In 1966 under the freedom of information act, the final 1935 report of the committee was published.
In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.
This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.
MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans organizations of Fascist character. Wikipedia
According to Butler one of the goals of these business leaders was to get the US dollar back on the gold standard.
The big question historians have is “why did the plotters choose Butler to be the leader of this proposed fascist coup?” (See this article by John Spivak)
Butler served in the Banana Wars, the Haitian Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion and World War I. After retiring he wrote a book called “War is a Racket.” He detailed his experiences and felt with the exception of World War I he had basically been a corporate thug (New Republic).
Butler gave speeches across the United States and was quite popular. Butler was a socialist sympathizer and possibly a socialist. This is why the business plot leaders chose him and this is why today’s historians looking back can’t wrap their heads around it.
The answer lies in the Epstein Class. The fact of socialism is that the masses live a socialist existence. The wealthy elite still exist however. The masses have economic equality per se, with each other. The wealthy elite become an impenetrable caste; a new oligarchy. This is important to the man gods. A sub-society that rules the country is easier for them to control, particularly when it is based on inheritance. They choose who is born to whom in the nobility. They exert control on this caste and by proxy rule the nations.
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Marx and Engels have been politicized and propagandized extensively. They have been made out to be revolutionaries against capitalism. Capitalism toppled the European nobility and opened the doors for democracy. This was happening during the time of Marx and Engels. Franz Kafka wrote about this transition; he was born the year Marx died.
Socialism and Communism are designed to preserve the rule of a noble class and make the commoner think they had won a great revolution. The criticisms against capitalism are not incorrect necessarily – they are problems to be addressed by society through law and regulations. When Marx and Engels were writing capitalism hadn’t even broken it’s teeth. The last European State to abolish serfdom was Denmark in 1848; Marx was 30 years old.
The propaganda worked and is still working today.
Scholars (who have their own bias) deny the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) was socialist because German nobility and businessmen were aligned with it. All fascist nations had a socialist economy. The German businesses produced what the NAZI government dictated often with slave labor provided.
Marx and Engels were notoriously racist. It is doubtful you will hear a university professor mention this. It has become more difficult to access letters written between the two; an effort to hide this fact.
“The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I’m glad to say, is leaving at the end of this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged speculation. The chap would sooner throw money down the drain than lend it to a ‘friend,’ even though his interest and capital were guaranteed. … It is now quite plain to me—as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify—that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow’s importunity is also nigger-like.” Karl Marx, “Marx to Friedrich Engels in Manchester,” 1862
Smedley Butler was chosen by the conspirators because he was famous and a socialist sympathizer. It wasn’t imagined he would reveal, and thus destroy, their plot. Would it have succeeded? Thanks to Butler we’ll never know.
The idealists who think they will have a say in what a contemporary socialist society would look like are deluded.