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Intro­duc­tion: Revis­it­ing mate­r­ial first pre­sented in Feb­ru­ary of 1990, the pro­gram com­pares key fea­tures of Mussolini’s Cor­po­rate State with salient aspects of the polit­i­cal and eco­nomic land­scape of George W. Bush’s “Own­er­ship Soci­ety.” Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Trea­sury Sec­re­tary (for­mer Chair­man and CEO of Gold­man Sachs) Henry Paulson’s $700 bil­lion bailout pro­posal for Amer­i­can eco­nomic insti­tu­tions, the broad­cast notes Sean Olender’s claim that the program’s exemp­tion from judi­cial review con­sti­tutes fascism.

Much of the pro­gram reit­er­ates mate­r­ial intro­duced in “Uncle Sam and Il Duce.” High­light­ing the work of jour­nal­ist, author and social critic George Seldes on the major aspects of Mussolini’s regime, the comparisons–originally with Ronald Reagan’s and George H.W. Bush’s administrations–are more unnerv­ingly rel­e­vant today. Pub­licly rep­re­sented as a pop­ulist regime that would ben­e­fit the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion, Mussolini’s cor­po­rate state was actu­ally a “spoils sys­tem,” designed to reward those mem­bers of the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal elite who had ele­vated Mus­solini to promi­nence. Com­pare the fea­tures of fas­cist Italy’s eco­nomic land­scape with those of George W. Bush’s Amer­ica! The broad­cast con­cludes with James Stew­art Martin’s 1950 warn­ing that fas­cism might come to Amer­ica as “a calm judg­ment of busi­ness neces­sity” made by busi­ness­men, who are “hon­or­able men”!

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Excerpts from Mussolini’s book The Cor­po­rate State; Amer­i­can jour­nal­is­tic white­wash­ing of the mul­ti­ple fail­ures and bru­tal exe­cu­tion of Il Duce’s “Cor­po­rate State;” the mur­der of Gia­como Mat­teotti, the Ital­ian social­ist politi­cian who exposed the fraud inher­ent in Mussolini’s regime, and its col­lu­sion with Ital­ian and inter­na­tional big busi­ness; the delib­er­ate bud­getary mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion con­ducted by Mus­solini in order to mask the fis­cal dis­as­ter wrought by his gov­ern­ment; Mussolini’s pro­posal to abol­ish the inher­i­tance tax in order to reward his wealthy back­ers; Mussolini’s gov­ern­men­tal res­cue of failed com­pa­nies owned by some of those wealthy sup­port­ers; invest­ment in Mussolini’s cor­po­rate state by Amer­i­can cor­po­rate interests.

1. Not­ing that Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Henry Paulson’s pro­posal for a $700 bil­lion fed­eral bailout pro­gram for ail­ing finan­cial insti­tu­tions imple­ments com­plete exemp­tion of the pro­gram from judi­cial review, op-ed colum­nist Sean Olen­der asserts that the pro­posal con­sti­tutes fascism.

“Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paulson’s edict to cre­ate a $700 bil­lion fund to buy worth­less mort­gage secu­ri­ties from agi­tated wealthy bond investors is noth­ing short of a final step on the path to the end of the repub­lic. The sec­re­tary claims he can only be effec­tive if his deci­sions are beyond judi­cial review.

Our gov­ern­ment and its own­ers appear to be test­ing how much the Amer­i­can pub­lic will tol­er­ate. A few years ago, no one could have imag­ined that the silent major­ity would qui­etly accept thefts of this mag­ni­tude from a gov­ern­ment that stopped tiny pay­ments to sin­gle moth­ers with poor chil­dren in the name of wel­fare reform because the program’s $10 bil­lion cost was break­ing the fed­eral budget.

This isn’t social­ism, it’s fascism. . . .”

“The End of the Repub­lic” by Sean Olen­der; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 9/23/2008; p. B7.

2. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the fun­da­men­tals of Mussolini’s fas­cist state—characterized by Il Duce as “the cor­po­rate state.”

“ON THE CORPORATE STATE: Res­o­lu­tion drafted by the Head of the Ital­ian Gov­ern­ment and read by him on Novem­ber 13th 1933, before the Assem­bly of the National Coun­cil of Cor­po­ra­tions, on the eve of his impor­tant speech. ‘The National coun­cil of Cor­po­ra­tions: ‘defines Cor­po­ra­tions as the instru­ment which, under the aegis of the State, car­ries out the com­plete organic and total­i­tar­ian reg­u­la­tion of pro­duc­tion with a view to the expan­sion of the wealth, polit­i­cal power and well-being of the Ital­ian peo­ple. [The National Coun­cil of Cor­po­ra­tions] declares that the num­ber of Cor­po­ra­tions to be formed for the main branches of pro­duc­tion should, on prin­ci­ple, be ade­quate to meet the real needs of national econ­omy. [The National Coun­cil of Cor­po­ra­tions] estab­lishes that the gen­eral staff of each Cor­po­ra­tion shall include rep­re­sen­ta­tives of State admin­is­tra­tion, of the Fas­cist Party, of cap­i­tal, of labor and of experts. [The National Coun­cil of Cor­po­ra­tions] assigns to the Cor­po­ra­tions as their spe­cific tasks: con­cil­i­a­tion, con­sul­ta­tion (com­pul­sory on prob­lems of major impor­tance) and the pro­mul­ga­tion, through the National Coun­cil of Cor­po­ra­tions, of laws reg­u­lat­ing the eco­nomic activ­i­ties of the coun­try. [The National Coun­cil of Cor­po­ra­tions] leaves to the Grand Coun­cil of Fas­cism the deci­sion on the fur­ther devel­op­ments, of a con­sti­tu­tional and polit­i­cal order, which should result from the effec­tive for­ma­tion and prac­ti­cal work­ing of the Corporations.”

The Cor­po­rate State; by Ben­ito Mus­solini; Valec­chi Pub­lish­ing; copy­right 1938 [SC]; pp. 7–8.

3. The pro­gram focuses on the work of the late inves­tiga­tive reporter George Seldes, specif­i­cally his writ­ings about Mussolini’s regime: Can These Things Be? (Brewer and War­ren; [HC] 1931); Facts and Fas­cism (In Fact, Inc.; [HC] 1943); and pri­mar­ily, Saw­dust Cae­sar: The Untold Story of Mus­solini and Fas­cism. Orig­i­nally posted as a reporter in Il Duce’s Italy, Seldes was obliged to leave the coun­try under pres­sure his report­ing on the regime’s fraud and collusion.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance are the fright­en­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties between the key fea­tures of Mussolini’s Cor­po­rate State and George W. Bush’s “Own­er­ship Soci­ety” noted above!

4. Con­clud­ing with a warn­ing pre­sented in 1950, the pro­gram echoes James Stew­art Martin’s obser­va­tion that fas­cism might be brought to Amer­ica by some of the same busi­ness inter­ests who had helped to bring it to Europe. Charged with the ulti­mately unsuc­cess­ful attempt to break up the car­tels (inter­na­tional monop­o­lies) that had sus­tained and col­lab­o­rated with the Third Reich, Mar­tin noted that the imple­men­ta­tion of Amer­i­can fas­cism might come as “a calm judg­ment of busi­ness necessity.”

“ . . . The moral of this is not that Ger­many is an inevitable men­ace, but that there are forces in our own coun­try which can make Ger­many a men­ace. And, more impor­tantly, they could cre­ate a men­ace of their own here at home, not through a delib­er­ate plot to bring about a polit­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe but as a calm judg­ment of ‘busi­ness neces­sity.’ The men who would do this are not Nazis, but busi­ness­men; not crim­i­nals, but hon­or­able men. [This is the last para­graph of the book!—D.E.]”

All Hon­or­able Men; by James Stew­art Mar­tin; Lit­tle Brown & Co. [HC]; 1943; p. 300.