James Burnham Quotes


Fascism without shirts


Context

Fascists were variously described as “brown shirts” or “black shirts” at the time.


Citations

James Burnham, 1905-1987, Founder, Congress for Cultural Freedom, Director, Political & Psychological Warfare Division, CIA, Contemporaneous Description of the New Deal, Quoted in The New Criterion, September 2002

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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American Communist Party Newspaper. The communists were so supportive of the war effort that they were often unconditional defenders of the Roosevelt Administration’s war program. Most communists suspended their advocacy of labor strikes and Black enfranchisement during the war because it would ultimately lead to the weakening of the Allied efforts against the Nazis. Programs such as the “March on Washington Movement” were seen as untimely and therefore subversive and fascist. For more communist criticism of attempts during this period to further civil rights see {603312}


Greece was bitterly divided between left and right. Morrow and others were very critical of policies, practices and corruption of both sides much to the chagrin of our State Department which was siding with the right out of fear of communism.


Some major celibrities like Charles Lindbergh were admirers of Hitler and other fascist leaders. There were even some American Fascist Organizations that overtly supported Hitler and Mussolini.


At the time Ford was considering running for President and some of the American right wing extremists were encouraging him to do so. Hitler had demonstrated how his fascist storm troopers would intimidate a major city as he had done it first in Munich and later in most other German cities. At the time, Ford and his supporters were delighted to have the support of such an important modern world leader as Hitler. The American Nazi Party's first president, Heinz Spanknoebel, was an employee at the Ford Motor Company. Fritz Julius Kuhn, leader of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, worked at Ford off and on. As Hitler’s practices and policies were more and more exposed, and WWII began, this quotation made any political role for Henry Ford very difficult. Ford was the only American named in Hitler’s maniacal book Mein Kampf. He describes Ford as the only American who is not controlled by Hitler’s paranoid view of the Jewish conspiracy. Ford himself was an anti-Semite. See related quotes. Hitler awarded Ford the German Eagle Order Medal—the only American to have ever received it. It was reserved for those who assisted the Nazi Party outside of Germany. Benito Mussolini was another recipient.


70 years after Fascism was defeated in Italy, there were still a number of right wing politicians who still espoused some of the Fascist principles. “Abjure” means to repudiate.


James Burnham
James Burnham
  • Born: November 22, 1905
  • Died: July 29, 1987
  • Nationality:
  • Profession: Philosopher

James Burnham was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the philosophy department at New York University; His first book was An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (1931). Burnham became a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s. He rejected Marxism and became an even more influential theorist of the right as a leader of the American conservative movement. His book The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941, speculated on the future of capitalism. Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine National Review on a variety of topics. He rejected containment of the Soviet Union and called for the rollback of communism worldwide.