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fascism lay within the United States; and they could not be eradicated merelyby winning the fight against Nazi armies abroad. Sensing the need toelaborate upon this theme, Flynn wrote what was to be his most importantbook. Until publication of this paperback volume, As We Go Marching hasremained neglected and relatively unknown. Yet it was Flynn's mostinformed and perceptive contribution to discussion about the nature ofAmerican society. Its purpose, he explained, was to define the meaning offascism and "then to search for its elements in America."Flynn would find that few would understand his intention in writing it.Because he had opposed U.S. entrance into World War II, he was forevertainted with the label of "appeasement." When he appeared to speak at theUniversity of Illinois in Urbana in May 1944, thirty members of the facultyand student body protested against his appearance, "on the ground that hewas anti-semitic, that he had trafficked with seditionists, was pro-fascist andthat it was not good for the war effort to have him there."Despite the opposition Flynn faced from those apparently on the politicalLeft, his arguments bore close resemblance to Marxist arguments about thenature of fascism. The contents of his book would give scant comfort tothose on the Right—who themselves were so blinded by anti-Communism thatthey often acquiesced in fascist efforts of repression. Flynn, after all, wasattempting to battle against the domestic seeds of fascism, which he fearedwere rapidly developing within his own native land.It was Statist institutions solidified by the New Deal, he argued, thatproduced an American version of fascism—a "good" fascism rather than the"bad" kind all Americans detested in Nazi Germany. The elements of fascismhad been planted in corporatist institutions such as the N.R.A. People likedthe term "planning," but New Deal planners thought "of a change in ourform of society in which the government would insert itself into the structureof business, not merely as a policeman, but as partner, collaborator andbanker." The economy would be planned and coerced rather than free, "inwhich business would be brought together into great guilds or an immensecorporative structure, combining the elements of self-rule and governmentx supervision with a national economic policing system to enforce thesedecrees."These corporatist tendencies reached fruition with the New Deal. WorldWar II further consolidated the new business collectivism, which was basedupon "an economy supported by great streams of debt and an economyunder complete control, with nearly all the planning agencies functioningwith almost totalitarian power under a vast bureaucracy." The New Deal alsotried to extend this system into the realm of foreign affairs. Governmentx

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