Bertram Gross worked on employment and economic issues for the Senate and the President during the FDR and Truman years and went on to a career as a professor of political science and public affairs. In 1980, before Reagan was elected, he wrote Friendly Fascism (ISBN 0871313170) to warn the USAmerican public about the dangers to democracy he saw developing, a more “friendly” Fascism which was as violent and authoritarian as the original.
He thought some of the characteristics of Friendly Fascism would include
Drive to maintain unity of “Free World” empire, contain or absorb communist or socialist regimes, and perhaps retreat to “Fortress America”A more integrated Big-Business-Government power structure, backed up by remolded militarism, new technocratic ideologies, and more advanced arts of ruling and fooling the publicA more unbalanced economy, rooted in extended stagflation, manipulated shortages, more junk, and environmental degradationSubtle subversion, through manipulative use and control of democratic machinery, parties, and human rightsInformationial offensives, backed up by high-technology monitoring, to manage minds of elites and immobilize massesRationed rewards of power and money for elites, extended professionalism, accelerated consumerism for some, and social services conditional on recipients' good behaviorDirect terror applied through low-level violence and professionalized, low-cost escalation, with indirect terror through ethnic conflicts, multiple scapegoats, and organized disorderMore varied and extensive anxiety relief through not only traditional escape mechanisms but also through sex, drugs, madness, and cultsInternal viabiity grounded on system-strengthening reforms, multilevel co-optation, creative counterresistance and innovative apathetics
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More Notes on Nazis, Fascism, and Tyranny
