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"Democracy is a revolution that has never been won." - Tino 

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Can It Happen Here?

Updated: Oct 16, 2021




With the Great Depression and the election of FDR, the capitalists were experiencing a serious threat to their control of the flow of money and the way it would be distributed. FDR was in the process of creating a socialist overlay to an essentially capitalist system to ameliorate its excesses, and it was affecting the vampire capitalist's bottom line. For example, FDR took America off the gold standard, a move that the monied interests felt would induce an inflation and threaten the value of their money and the money owed to them. They felt it was a plot to redistribute wealth. They were also vehemently against (1) the regulation of the banking system, i.e., reforms like the Glass Seagall Act that separated investment banks from commercial saving and loan banks. (2) The creation of a Securities and Exchange Commission that would regulate trade in stocks and bonds and punish inside trading etc. (3) the Commodities Trade Commission that regulated speculation in commodities, and (4) the New Deal's attempt to strengthen independent unions and implement a progressive income tax.


Special Council Ferdinand Pecora, a former district attorney from New York, was appointed by FDR to the Banking Commission to investigate Wall Street. In Wall Street Under Oath, a book that he wrote about the capitalists that controlled the flow of money through the body politic, he said, "Undoubtedly, this small group of highly placed financiers controlled the spring of economic activity, hold more real power than any similar group in the United States." (Duff 9-10) An example that Pecora used in his book is the House of J.P. Morgan. He describes it as a great stream that is fed by many sources, by its deposits, by its loans, by its promotions, by its directorships that controlled one-hundred-sixty nine industries, banks, railroads, and utilities, by its preeminent position as an investment banker, by its control of holdings companies which, in turn control scores of subsidiaries, and by the silken bonds of gratitude in which it skillfully enmeshed the chosen ranks of the preferred list and friends of the bank who are let into a market at below market prices. In Pecora's investigation of J.P. Morgan, what was probably most shocking to the American public was that J.P. Morgan, who was probably the most powerful banker in American, paid no income tax in 1931 and 1932. (Duff 11)


Many banks, industrialists, and businessmen saw the New Deal as a threat to their privileged position within American society, and many voiced their disapproval and praised Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as viable alternatives. For example, as early as 1923 the American Legion voiced its affinity to fascism when the Legion's Commander in Chief, Alvin Owley, was quoted as saying, "If ever needed, the American Legion stands ready to protect our country's institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists who menaced Italy." Asked if this meant taking over the government, he stated, "exactly that....Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States." (Duff 13-14)

In July 1934 Henry Luce's Fortune magazine devoted an entire issue to Mussolini. In the article we're told that "Fascism is achieving in a few years or decades such a conquest of the spirit of man as Christianity achieved only in centuries, and the good journalist must recognize in Fascism certain ancient virtues of the race, whether or not they happen to be momentarily fashionable in his own country. Among thee are Discipline, Duty, Courage, Glory, and Sacrifice." (Duff 22) David Reed, a United States Senator from Pennsylvania in May 1932, said on the floor of the Senate, "I do not envy other countries and their government, but I say that if this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now." (Duff 29)


It was during this era of discontent that Gerald C. MacGuire approached Marine Corp Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, America's then most decorated officer who had won two Congressional Medals of Honor. MacGuire was an employee of Colonel Grayson Mollet-Provost Murphy, and he ran a leading New York brokerage that, working with J.P. Morgan, traded in stocks and international bond syndicates. Grayson Murphy, who was on Morgan's "preferred client list." was a director of Morgan's Guarantee Trust bank and seven Morgan-connected corporations. He and his banking house had played an important role in syndicating Morgan loans to Fascist Italy for which he was decorated by Mussolini.


Butler was very popular with the veterans and spent a great deal of time going to veteran organizations like the VFW and speaking to the members about issues that were important to them like the bonus payments that they were demanding from the government. At the first meeting, MacGuire wanted Butler to go around to veteran organizations and talk about the return to the gold standard. Butler refused , and the second time that MacGuire met with Butler he came with Robert S Baker, a member of Morgan's preferred client list and the heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Clark attempted to bribe Butler, but Butler refused once again to participate in the plan to promote the return to the gold standard. At the third meeting, MacGuire revealed a plan to take over the government. Butler was to organize a 500,000 man army drawing from the veteran organizations and the new Liberty League that was being formed for exactly this purpose by an executive committee consisting of the (1) Morgan lawyer John W. Davis, the former democratic presidential candidate; (2) Irene du Pont who ran the du Pont fortune; (3) Nathan Miller, the former GOP Governor of New York; (4) Representative James Wadsworth (R-NY), a supporter of the gold standard; (5) and Al Smith who ran for president against FDR. (Duff 25)


The plan was for General Butler to lead a 500,000 man army and march on Washington. They were to demand that FDR appoint General Butler to a new cabinet post that would in reality make Butler the head of the Government, and FDR would remain the figurehead, much like the King of Italy was in Fascist Italy where Mussolini ruled as a dictator. MacGuire Assured Butler that a consortium of leading industrialists, bankers, and businessmen were behind the plot to take over the government and that all the money that he would need was available to him. (Duff 24)


General Butler informed Tom O'Neill, the city editor of the Philadelphia Record of this plot; and O'Neil had one of his reporters, Paul Comley French, pose as an intermediator between Butler and MacGuire to negotiate the deal. French confirmed everything that Butler had claimed, and, in addition, he was offered $1 million dollars out front to get the operation moving. MacGuire also told French there would be no problem getting weapons for Butler's army from the du Pont controlled Remington Arms Company.


Before Butler, French, and O'Neil could go public with the plot, investigators from the Special House Committee to Investigate Nazi Activities in the United States got wind of it, and they arranged to have General Butler testify behind closed doors to the Committee. Both MacGuire and French were called to testify, and the investigators uncovered letters from MacGuire to John Davis, the Morgan lawyer on the executive board of the Liberty League that substantiated much of what Butler claimed. At the end of the hearing, the Committee released the following statement.


"In the last few weeks of the committee's official life, it received evidence that certain persons had tried to establish a fascist organization in our 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 place in execution when and if the financial backers deemed expedient...

The committee received evidence from Major General Smedley D. Butler (ret.) twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee on conversations with one Gerald C. McGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.

McGuire denied these allegations under oath, but our committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements of General Butler except for the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of McGuire while McGuire was abroad studying various forms of organizations of fascist character. (Duff 33)


That was it. The Committee never disclosed the full transcript of the testimony or the hearing to the public or followed up with an investigation of the prominent bankers and businessmen implicated in the planning and support of the conspiracy. The corporate press ridiculed the story or did not cover it, and it was soon buried. But was that the end of it.

Is It Happening Now?


Is Trump the harbinger of the rise of fascism in the United States? Is fascism the final solution for capitalism when it is threatened by a truly democratic political and economic revolution that will reveal its true nature and the fact that there is hope for a better future with an alternative political and economic model that will nurture us all? Is a Democratic Party that thwarted the election of the first social democrat as President of the United States capable of uniting working class men and women, black and white; or will they remain the party that the Clintons moved to the right to become Republican Lites? If so, we are still in peril, and democracy remains a revolution that has never been won, and our revolution has just begun.


Cite


1. Duff, Gordon, “Suppressed History: When Wall Street Tried to Bring the Holocaust to America, Veterans Today, October 13, 2010 https://www.veteranstodayarchives. com/2010/10/13/suppressed-history-hidden-facts-behind-the-wall-street-nazi-plot/


Illustrations

  1. Mussolini, Learn or Die: The New American Revolution, Marcello Tino and Andrea Dalla Bona, Thompson and Prince 2020

  2. New York Times, Learn or Die: The New American Revolution, Marcello Tino and Andrea Dalla Bona, Thompson and Prince 2020

  3. General Butler, Learn or Die: The New American Revolution, Marcello Tino and Andrea Dalla Bona, Thompson and Prince 2020

  4. Trump, Learn or Die: The New American Revolution, Marcello Tino and Andrea Dalla Bona, Thompson and Prince 2020

Author's Note - I have made Learn or Die: The New American Revolution available to you through Smashwords in a Freedom for Free Edition where you can pay what you want for the book or nothing at all. It is free. I'm doing this because after 50 years of research and study I believe I have found the way for all of us.




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