“But are there not many fascists in your country?”
“There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
Seventy million Trump followers. Seventy million potential fascists.
Yes, I know. It sounds somewhat harsh. Of course, not every American who voted for Donald Trump is a fascist. But they very well could, in time, become followers of the big lie for that is what fascism is — one big lie told by the Big Liar.
All of the ugly movements in history, like fascism, started small and then grew, like a cancer. The problem here is, this movement is by no means small. Trump is an idea that has taken hold in this country, a phenomenon that borders on the illogical unless you take the time to understand how fascism works.
I need not go into detail here about Trump’s dictatorial fantasies. You know it. His followers surely suspect him for what he is. Only the deeply ignorant can claim an excuse. And even that, in our time of enlightenment, is no excuse.
I have had the privilege to have met and interviewed some pretty amazing people over the years. Muhammad Ali in college. Mike Tyson in the gym at Catskill, New York, more than a year before he became the heavyweight champion. Ted Williams during a quiet night at a friend’s home in Rutland. (Williams, by the way, was bored silly when I tried talking baseball; his eyes lit up, however, when I turned the conversation to fly fishing.)
I managed to pull off these interviews with these and a number of other pretty famous people — Dear Abby, Billy Martin, Sebastian Junger, the legendary fighter Archie Moore, Ben Lee, arguably the greatest turkey hunter ever; Andre Agassi and more — by sheer perseverance and a good dose of luck.
But none of these figures can come close to the man whom I have admired above all — a humble, fiery journalist by the name of George Henry Seldes.
Seldes, who resided in Hartland Four Corners for many years and died in 1995 at the age of 105, was a free-thinker, a great newsman and a legendary muckraker who covered some of the greatest events of the 20th century. He also wrote more than 20 books of nonfiction.
Seldes interviewed Lenin in Russia during an anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and covered the Spanish Civil War with Hemingway.
I wrote this back in 2008 when Donald Trump was nothing more than a failed businessman. “Seldes was in Germany and Italy in 1930 when fascism was nothing but an idea.” In a feature I wrote for this paper in 1990, I wrote: “And he (Seldes) saw how that idea, bolstered by lies, deception and thugs who made themselves rulers, altered the face of Europe.”
I should also have written, at that time, that this perverted idea led to World War II and cost the lives of an estimated 50 million people.
Seldes, who interviewed Mussolini, the murderous fascist who came to power in Italy before World War II, was arguably the leading authority on fascism. He hated fascists for he saw what they could do, as a witness for what they did, as the idea turned into a movement and then into a murderous campaign that sought to wipe out what the “true believers” perceived as the weak and despicable — Jews, the mentally ill, homosexuals, anyone who did not worship Hitler, Mussolini and their ilk.
Here is Mussolini, quoted in “The Great Thoughts,” a seminal work by Seldes and published in 1985: “The truth, apparent to everyone whose eyes are not blinded by dogmatism, is that men are perhaps weary of liberty.”
While Trump’s lies, misdeeds and criminal behavior were there for all to see and hear, one quote repeated again and again by Trump stuck a huge note for me, a newspaperman for 37 years. Trump loved to look into his adoring crowds and describe the free press of our country as “the enemy of the people.” The crowds loved it and shouted out their boos, right on cue. This quote was notable for one very revealing fact: Both Hitler and Mussolini voiced the same words, the same lies.
The quote at the top of this piece, I believe, helps us to get a glimpse into the mind of one of the greatest, yet certainly troubled, writers in our history.
Way back in 1940, when his novel was published, Hemingway managed to look into the soul of the land of the free and suspected the seeds for fascism were only waiting to be cultivated and fed and then brought to full blossom. Were they alive today, Seldes and Hemingway would be sickened by the events of late.
Robert Jordan, the central character in Hemingway’s greatest novel, which covered the Spanish Civil War, was talking about American citizens when a rebel fighter inquired about the prospects of fascism in America.
Your neighbor, your friend, your brother, your mother could, right now or in the coming, possibly-dark years, be warming up to the idea of fascism. It is no exaggeration that millions of Americans would be willing to give up their liberty for the security of “order” and white privilege under “Der Trumper.”
Do not be fooled. Do not look the other way. It can happen here. The insurrection on the nation’s Capitol was clearly our first “big baby step” toward a future of fascism and an end of democracy in this flawed yet great country.
Dennis Jensen writes about the outdoors for the Rutland Herald and The Barre Times Argus.
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