From the Archives: The Day when Bankers and Businessmen Betrayed a Nation

by Nomad

Scouring the archive again.
In a 2015 post, This Day in History: When Bankers and Big Business Betrayed a Nation, we examined the willing complicity of the German industrialists and how the fascist leader's seduced the people who once had underestimated him.

On February 20, 1933, - exactly 84 years today- something extraordinary happened in Europe. Of course, nobody knew about it and few could have understood the significance at the time.

This was the day that Chancellor Adolf Hitler made his pitch to the leaders of banking and industry.
On that day, Hitler held a secret meeting aimed at allocating campaign financing for the Nazi party in the crucial upcoming elections.
It was for the captains of industry a moment of decision, a time to choose between the good of the country or supporting an extremely ambitious man with deeply dangerous ideas.

From the Archives: Fascism's First Steps: Heywood Broun's Warning From the Past

by Nomad

In June 2012, Nomadic Politics took a moment to honor an old-school reporter in the post entitled "Fascism's First Steps: Heywood Broun's Warning From the Past."

If you've never heard of the name, you are in good company. Before there was Walter Cronkite, before there was Edward R. Murrow, there was Heywood Broun. While probably not exactly in the same league, he was certainly the kind reporter that later great journalists would admire.

Broun worked at some of the most respected newspapers of the day. It was not always a happy relationship. His ideas often rubbed newspapers owners the wrong way.  Early in his career, he was described as "an extraordinary mixture of sophistication and naïveté."  

Like many of the celebrity writers of his day,  Broun was for ten years, (1919 - 1929) a member of the much-celebrated Algonquin Round Table.
That, no doubt, shaped his later witty kind of cynicism. With a professional aplomb, Broun could skewer the pompous egos in the arts and in politics.  

Sadly, one has to hunt high and low even to find a few of his quotes. But here are a few notables.

Write the news as if your very life depended on it. It does!

On people who ignore warnings:

Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian.