lp4guld

movement. Had fascism entered Germany in the hands of someother leader than Hitler it would probably have worn differentclothes, sung different songs, shouted different oaths, carried differentbanners and, perhaps, killed different people. But the essenceof it would be the same. It is this essence we are trying to discoverand identify.There are other elements of confusion. Fascism is essentially adictatorship. But dictatorship is not the only feature of the structure.All dictatorships are not fascist dictatorships—as, for instance,the Russian proletarian monstrosity. The economic ingredientof Russian communism is utterly unlike that of fascistGermany. It is a mistake, therefore, to define fascism as a dictatorship,just as it would be a mistake to define an automobile as avehicle with four wheels. The other ingredients must also be considered.It is these we wish to discover. This emphasis on the dictatorshipelement in fascism is the cause of endless misapprehension.The dictatorship leads to all the ugly episodes, the brutal, overtacts that make up the daily news of fascist countries. The minds ofAmericans have been kept busy with the external drama, the shirtedtroopers, the putsches, the scandals, the obscenities, the assassinationsand riots, the personal histories of the unpleasant heroes ofthe drama. The other and deeper essential elements—the elementswhich preceded the dictatorships and made them possible—areignored. For these elements are humdrum and unworthy of the pensof reporters who are in search of action, incidents, drama. In somecountries, where the drama has been less vivid, where the dictatoris a Salazar rather than a Hitler, and where the amount of bloodlettinghas been very little, the fascist order has come in for a gooddeal of very friendly attention from Americans. We are already indanger of drawing a distinction between good fascists and badfascists, just as we once did between good trusts and bad ones.One peculiar weakness of the human mind seems to be that itcannot hate the object of its dislike without exaggerating or at leastchanging the form of the wickedness. Fascism in Germany and inItaly, looked at frankly, seems to me sufficiently hateful as a form oflife. Taking it for what it is ought to exhaust the resources ofaversion. But apparently fascism as it is seems not nearly ugly77