Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

men's hearts. Ely eventually moved to the University of Wisconsin, where he helped found the 'Wisconsin model' — a system still admired by leftist intellectuals whereby college faculties help run the state. Ely also served as a mentor to Teddy Roosevelt, who said that Ely 'first introduced me to radicalism in economics and then made me sane in my radicalism.'²⁶

Wilson revered Bismarck as much as Teddy Roosevelt or any of the other Progressives did. In college he wrote a fawning essay in which he lavished praise on this 'commanding genius' who united the 'moral force of Cromwell and the political shrewdness of Richelieu; the comprehensive intellect of Burke...the diplomatic ability of Talleyrand, without his coldness.' Wilson goes on about the Iron Chancellor's 'keenness of insight, clearness of judgement, and promptness of decision,' and ends wistfully, 'Prussia will not soon find another Bismarck.'²⁷

Bismarck's motive was to forestall demands for more democracy by giving the people the sort of thing they might ask for at the polls. His top-down socialism was a Machiavellian masterstroke because it made the middle class dependent upon the state. The middle class took away from this the lesson that enlightened government was not the product of democracy but an alternative to it. Such logic proved disastrous little more than a generation later. But it was precisely this logic that appealed to the progressives. As Wilson put it, the essence of Progressivism was that the individual 'marry his interests to the state.'²⁸

The most influential thinker along these lines — and another great admirer of Bismarck's — was the man who served as the intellectual bridge between Roosevelt and Wilson: Herbert Croly, the author of The Promise of American Life, the founding editor of the New Republic, and the guru behind Roosevelt's New Nationalism.

After Taft was elected president in 1908, Roosevelt tried to give his protege a wide berth, first going on a famous African safari, followed by a fact-finding tour of Europe. At some point he picked up a copy of The Promise of American Life, which his friend Judge Learned Hand had sent him. The book was a revelation. 'I do not know when I have read a book which profited me as much,' he wrote to Croly. 'All I wish is that I were better able to get my advice to my fellow-countrymen in practical shape according to the principles you set forth.'²⁹ Many people at the time credited Croly's book with convincing Roosevelt to run for president again; more likely, the book provided a marketable intellectual rationale for his return to politics.

Even if Croly's contribution to American liberalism had begun and ended with The Promise of American Life, he would rank as one of the most important voices in American intellectual history. When the book came out in 1909, Felix Frankfurter hailed it as 'the most powerful single contribution to progressive thinking.'³⁰ The book was praised by dozens of reviewers. More than any other writer, Croly was credited with giving a coherent voice to the progressive movement and, by extension, modern liberalism. It has been celebrated ever since by liberals, even though most of them have probably never read this long, bizarre, often tedious, tortuous tome. Indeed, the fact that it is such a badly written book may be the sign that its appeal rested on something more important than its prose: it gave form to an idea whose time had come.

Croly was a quiet man who'd grown up with noisy parents. His mother was one of America's first female syndicated columnists and a dedicated 'feminist.' His father was a successful journalist and editor whose friends dubbed him 'The Great Suggester.' Their home was something of a 'European island in New York,' according to one historian.³¹ The most interesting thing about the senior Croly — if by 'interesting' you mean really loopy — was his obsession with Auguste Comte, a semimystical French philosopher whose biggest claim to fame was his coinage of the word 'sociology.' Comte argued that humanity progressed in three stages and that in the final stage mankind would throw off Christianity and replace it with a new 'religion of humanity,' which married religious fervor to science and reason — even to the extent of making 'saints' out of such figures as Shakespeare, Dante, and Frederick the Great.³² Comte believed that the age of mass industrialization and technocracy would pluck the human mind from the metaphysical realm for good, ushering in an age where pragmatic managers would improve the plight of all based upon man-made morality. He anointed himself the high priest of this atheistic, secular faith, which he called positivism. The elder Croly made his Greenwich Village home into a positivist temple where he held religious ceremonies for select guests, whom he would try to convert. In 1869 young Herbert became the first and probably last American to be christened in Comte's religion.

Croly attended Harvard University, though due to family and personal problems he was absent for long stints. While there he studied closely under William James as well as Josiah Royce and George Santayana. From James, he learned to think pragmatically. Thanks to Royce he converted from positivism to progressive Christianity. Santayana persuaded him of the need for a 'national regeneration' and a new 'socialistic aristocracy.' The result of all these influences was a brilliant young man who was capable of remarkable hardheadedness while never losing his mystical zeal. He was also a fascist. Or at least he was an exponent of a pre-fascist worldview that would seem prescient just a few years later.

When reading about Herbert Croly, one often finds phrases such as 'Croly was no fascist, but...' Yet few make the effort to explain why he was not a fascist. Most seem to think it is simply self-evident that the founder of the New Republic could not have been a disciple of Mussolini's. In reality, however, almost every single item on a standard checklist of fascist characteristics can be found in The Promise of American Life. The need to mobilize society like an army? Check! Call for spiritual rebirth? Check! Need for 'great' revolutionary leaders? Check! Reliance on manufactured, unifying, national 'myths'? Check! Contempt for parliamentary democracy? Check! Non-Marxist Socialism? Check! Nationalism? Check! A spiritual calling for military expansion? Check! The need to make politics into a religion? Hostility to individualism? Check! Check! Check! To paraphrase Whittaker Chambers: from almost any page of The Promise of American Life, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding, 'To fascism go!'

Croly was an unabashed nationalist who craved a 'national reformer...in the guise of St. Michael, armed with a flaming sword and winged for flight,' to redeem a decadent America. This secular 'imitator of Christ' would bring an end to 'devil-take-the-hindmost' individualism in precisely the same manner that the real Jesus closed the Old Testament chapter of human history. 'An individual,' Croly wrote, sounding very much like Wilson, 'has no meaning apart from the society in which his individuality has been formed.' Echoing both Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, Croly argued that 'national life' should be like a 'school,' and good schooling frequently demands 'severe coercive measures.'³³

Croly's ideas garnered the attention of Willard Straight, an investment banker with J. P. Morgan and a diplomat, and his wife, Dorothy, a member of the Whitney family. The Straights were prominent philanthropists and reformers, and they saw in Croly's ideas a map for the transformation of America into a 'progressive democracy' (the title of another of Croly's books). They agreed to support Croly in his effort to start the New Republic, a journal whose mission was 'to explore and develop and apply the ideas which had been advertised by Theodore Roosevelt when he was the leader of the Progressive party.'³⁴ Joining Croly as editors were the self-described socialist-nationalists Walter Weyl and the future pundit extraordinaire Walter Lippmann.

Like Roosevelt, Croly and his colleagues looked forward to many more wars because war was the midwife of progress. Indeed, Croly believed that the Spanish-American War's greatest significance lay in the fact that it gave birth to Progressivism. In Europe wars would force more national unification, while in Asia wars were necessary for imperial expansion and for the powerful nations to let off a little steam. Croly constructed this worldview out of what he deemed vital necessity. Industrialization, economic upheaval, social 'disintegration,' materialistic decadence, and worship of money were tearing America apart, or so he — and the vast majority of progressives — believed. The remedy for the 'chaotic individualism of our political and economic organization' was a 'regeneration' led by a hero-saint who could overthrow the tired doctrines of liberal democracy in favor of a restored and heroic nation. The similarities with conventional fascist theory should be obvious.³⁵

One might defend Croly by noting that such ideas were simply 'in the air' at the end of the nineteenth century, a common set of responses to a common atmosphere of social, economic, and political change. And indeed, this is part of my argument. There were of course significant differences between fascism and Progressivism, but these are mainly attributable to the cultural differences between Europe and America, and between national cultures in general. (When Mussolini invited the leader of the Falange Espanola — the Spanish fascists — to the first Fascist congress, he adamantly refused. The Falange, he insisted, was not fascist, it was Spanish!)