Johnson played a major role in the New Deal. In 1933 Roosevelt appointed Johnson to administer the National Recovery Administration (NRA). One author claims Johnson looked on Italian Fascist corporativism as a kind of model.[16] He distributed copies of a fascist tract called “The Corporate State” by one of Mussolini’s favorite economists, including giving one to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and asking her give copies to her cabinet.[17] The NRA involved organizing thousands of businesses under codes drawn up by trade associations and industries. He was recognized for his efforts when Time named him Man of the Year of 1933—choosing him instead of FDR.
What occurs to me today is to connect John Maynard Keynes, who was also a Fascist, with contemporary Democrats. No one who reads “An End to Laissez-Faire”, or the final chapter of this General Theory, can fail to recognize his Fascist ideas.
Here is Mussolini himself--and I may note that Fascist was a creed which was actually practiced by someone, somewhere, and has not always existed as a synonym for “someone who doubts me for reasons I cannot refute”–on Keynes;
Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.
All of these ideas are explored at much greater length at the end of the General Theory, to the extent that I have been arguing for some years (my piece is pages 28-46 here) that the entirety of his work was aimed at generating Fascism by stealth, by steadily increasing the government, by steadily providing more needed services, such as jobs, medical care, housing, and then making it impossible to get them any other way.
Here, though, is a new idea: LOGICALLY, if Keynes was a Fascist, and if prominent Democrats, such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich are championing his Demand Side economics, then it is a necessary conclusion that in the field of economics, the Democrats have become literally Fascist. And why not? Take away Hitler, and most of what is left they already agree with. They agree with a merger of the private sector and the State. They believe the State should provide everything, that the economy should depend on it, and that this arrangement, by minimizing any possibility of human error (outside the State, self evidently) makes life much happier, even if much, much less free. They are already Fascists without realizing it.
And even though the Democrats have historically been the anti-war party, my god look at all the saber rattling where Russia was concerned. The media said jump, and they said how high, how often, and do you need anything else, Sir? Some seem to have literally been contemplating a nuclear war over some Facebook ads. Craziness takes on its own energy after a while, I suppose.
But the opposite of Demand Side is Supply Side. Supply side is ECONOMICS, PERIOD. It is what people believed before Keynes, and what everyone after him with a shred of sense has also. Hazlitt described in the mid-40’s why it didn’t and couldn’t work, and history has borne him out again and again.
So the entire economic program of the Democrats consists in some malignant melding of socialism and Fascism, and this is no exaggeration. This is stating the case clearly.