Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.
"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way."
As if he had a time machine and could see the "conservative" media landscape today, Wallace continued:
"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
But Disney refused to use their media platform to advance the fascists' agenda. It has only, however, slowed them down a bit.
Ultimately, as fascists gain more power and grow bolder, nothing is off the table. This is the threshold we're approaching today, where they don't just trash minorities and march through the streets displaying weapons and huge flags, but began asserting justification for violence and even murder.
Alleging crimes against the majority's children is a fascist favorite, as Hitler charged with his repeated attacks on Jewish teachers, leading 15% of the nation's teachers and professors (including a guy named Albert Einstein) to flee the country when he began his attacks on education in 1933.
Fascist politicians start alleging the most vile of crimes by the groups they hope to destroy: words like "grooming" roll off their lips with a smarmy ease.
Soon vigilante groups set out to destroy those accused, sometimes politically, sometimes physically.
German Nazis were particularly fond of accusing people they intended to destroy or kill of sexual "crimes." As Thyssen wrote:
"General von Fritsch's affair is also a good sample of the peculiar methods used by the Hitler regime. Fritsch was to be 'liquidated.' To achieve this, it is said, the head of the Gestapo personally reproached him with practising homosexuality.
"Fritsch, who denied this from the very start, was ordered to call at the chancellery of the Reich, where he was to be unmasked in the presence of the Supreme Leader. " It seems certain that General von Fritsch has subsequently committed suicide. I can at least say that whatever the actual circumstances of his death may have been, he was anxious to die."
While history usually sides with the victims of fascists, as we're seeing today with the people Putin is starving to death in Mariupol, that's small comfort as they confront terror and death.
DeSantis, Abbott and the other Republican neofascists are playing a dangerous game, using Disney as a proxy for the racial and gender minorities they want as whipping boys. It's a high-stakes political game that has torn societies apart and destroyed millions of lives in the past.
Standing against them are their victims and the Democratic Party, albeit hobbled in their efforts by the perfidy of Manchin and Sinema. This autumn's elections may well be the last chance for people of good will who believe in American values and eschew fascism to rise in opposition.
Make sure everybody you know is registered to vote, regularly double-check your own registration to make it through a voter purge if you live in a Republican-controlled state, and volunteer to help out inside the Democratic Party or through any of the great groups fighting for a more just America.
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