The commonly accepted theory that fascism originated in the conspiracy of the great industrialists to capture the state will not hold. It originated … - John T. Flynn

Norman Thomas, in particular, has won a unique place for himself in the good opinion of the American people because of his courage, his complete honesty and his great power on the platform as a champion not merely of the Socialist philosophy but of many fine human causes. At one time it had built a considerable propaganda ma-chine. It had the People's House in New York with its large Socialist library and the Rand School which was the center of its educational activity. But it was an honest movement run by honest men who offered socialism to the people and called it by its true name. But Americans made it plain they did not want that. In England the old Fabians, as we have seen, never offered socialism as such. They peddled one product at a time, always omitting the Socialist label.

But the ringleaders in that organization are the men who must be identified as infinitely more dangerous to the civilization of this country than the small group of Red birds of passage against whom they were fulminating. For it is they who are plotting to wipeout the traditional political and economic civilization of this country and to supplant it with a system of organized social life on the Fabian model. They wrap themselves in a mantle they call anti-communism. But they are pro-Socialist. They are not willing, of course, publicly to concede that. They are Planners. That is, they are Socialist Planners—and unless they are identified, recognized for what they are and are stopped they will destroy this country.

These two baleful mistakes gave Franklin Roosevelt a power which he used ruthlessly. He used it to break down the power of the states and to move that power to Washington and to break down the power of Congress and concentrate it in the hands of the executive. The end of these two betrayals—the smashing of our economic system and the twisting of our political system—can only be the Planned Economic State, which, either in the form of Communism or Fascism, dominates the entire continent of Europe today. The capitalist system cannot live under these conditions. Free representative government cannot survive a Planned Economy. Such an economy can be managed only by a dictatorial government capable of enforcing the directives it issues. The only result of our present system—unless we reverse the drift—must be the gradual extension of the fascist sector and the gradual disappearance of the system of free enterprise under a free representative government.