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fense, which industry is supported wholly by government borrowingand spending.8. Imperialism becomes an essential element of such a systemwhere that is possible—particularly in the strong states, since thewhole fascist system, despite its promises of abundance, necessitatesgreat financial and personal sacrifices, which people cannot be inducedto make in the interest of the ordinary objectives of civil lifeand which they will submit to only when they are presented withsome national crusade or adventure on the heroic model touchingdeeply the springs of chauvinistic pride, interest, and feeling."Where these elements are found, there is fascism, by whatevername the system is called. And it now becomes our task to lookvery briefly into our own society and to see to what extent theseeds of this system are present here and to what degree they arebeing cultivated and by whom.In the light of all this we can see how far afield we can be ledby those who seek for the roots of fascism by snooping aroundamong those futile crackpot or deliberately subversive groups whichflourish feebly under the leadership of various small-bore Führers.Some of these groups are outright anti-American like the Bundists.Such an organization had nothing to do and can have nothing to dowith introducing a new system of society into America. Its objectwas to assist Hitler in so far as it could in his war aims here. It wasan enemy organization. And an incredibly foolish one. Then thereare various groups that are just anti-communist or anti-communistand anti-Semitic, confusing two things as one, like the ChristianFronters, numbering a few hundred nonentities. There are othersthat are little different from those old exclusion movements—theKnow Nothings, the A.P.A., the Klan—directing their fire againstsome racial or religious group. They are thoroughly evil things. Butthey have little and in most cases nothing to do with the introductionof fascism in America. Most of them have no more notion ofthe content of fascism than the gentlemen who write books aboutthem. It is assumed that because the Nazi movement in Germanyand the fascist movement in Italy began with small groups ofnobodies led by unimportant people fascism will come in thesame way here. It is, of course, possible that the great AmericanI¿2