The Lockdown’s Reichstag Firefighters Are Fascist … in the NEGATIVE Sense

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. “Fascist … in the negative sense” is a line I used to drop on my way out of campus coffee shops. At my wits’ end — after hours of overhearing progressives’ oversharing, as they yawped moralistic jargon at full Yankee volume — I’d settle the check and get to the door with my friends. Then speak my line both casually and loudly, apropos of nothing. And I’d head for the hills, listening for the sound of heads exploding behind me.

I don’t know that it did any good. But it helped me keep my dignity. It was only while doing research for my book on the anti-Nazi hero Wilhelm Röpke that I learned the ugly truth. My line had a real application. There really was a time when some U.S. progressives saw fascism as an option. Architects of the New Deal cited Mussolini’s “progress” in Italy, and Franklin Roosevelt asked to meet “that admirable Italian gentleman.”

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