Remember: America Hating Republicans Attempted To Overthrow FDR, Do
Business With Hitler And Embracing Fascism Is What They Still Do Today

The Right Wing Plot to overthrow the [US] Government in 1933

So, the Right has tried this once before.

THE BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW ROOSEVELT

In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's "First 100
Days," America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was
clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive
redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt
had to be stopped at all costs.

The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed
and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont
empires. This included some of America's richest and most
famous names of the time:

* Irenee Du Pont - Right-wing chemical industrialist and
founder of the American Liberty League, the organization
assigned to execute the plot.

* Grayson Murphy - Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a
group of J.P. Morgan banks.

* William Doyle - Former state commander of the American Legion
and a central
plotter of the coup.

* John Davis - Former Democratic presidential candidate and a
senior attorney
for J.P. Morgan.

* Al Smith - Roosevelt's bitter political foe from New York.
Smith was a former governor of New York and a codirector of the
American Liberty League.

* John J. Raskob - A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former
chairman of the Democratic Party. In later decades, Raskob
would become a "Knight of Malta," a Roman Catholic Religious
Order with a high percentage of CIA spies,
including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John
McCone.

* Robert Clark - One of Wall Street's richest bankers and
stockbrokers.

* Gerald MacGuire - Bond salesman for Clark, and a former
commander of the Connecticut American Legion. MacGuire was the
key recruiter to General Butler.

The plotters attempted to recruit General Smedley Butler to
lead the coup. They selected him because he was a war hero who
was popular with the troops. The plotters felt his good
reputation was important to make the troops feel confident that
they were doing the right thing by overthrowing a
democratically elected president. However, this was a mistake:
Butler was popular with the troops because he identified with
them. That is, he was a man of the people, not the elite. When
the plotters approached General Butler
with their proposal to lead the coup, he pretended to go along
with the plan at first, secretly deciding to betray it to
Congress at the right moment.

What the businessmen proposed was dramatic: they wanted General
Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would
pretend to become sick and
incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet
officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs," to run things in his
stead. The secretary, of
course, would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If
Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with
an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. But
MacGuire assured Butler the cover story would work:

"You know the American people will swallow that. We have got
the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's
health is failing. Everyone can
tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will
fall for it in
a second."

The businessmen also promised that money was no object: Clark
told Butler that he would spend half his $60 million fortune to
save the other half.

And what type of government would replace Roosevelt's New Deal?
MacGuire was perfectly candid to Paul French, a reporter friend
of General Butler's:

"We need a fascist government in this country. to save the
nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck
all that we have built in America. The only men who have the
patriotism to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the
ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight."

Indeed, it turns out that MacGuire travelled to Italy to study
Mussolini's fascist state, and came away mightily impressed. He
wrote glowing reports back to his boss, Robert Clark,
suggesting that they implement the same thing.

If this sounds too fantastic to believe, we should remember
that by 1933, the crimes of fascism were still mostly in the
future, and its dangers were largely unknown, even to its
supporters. But in the early days, many businessmen openly
admired Mussolini because he had used a strong hand to deal
with labor unions, put out social unrest, and get the economy
working again, if only at the point of a gun. Americans today
would be appalled to learn of the many famous millionaires back
then who initially admired Hitler and Mussolini: Henry Ford,
John D. Rockefeller, John and Allen Dulles (who, besides being
millionaires, would later become Eisenhower's Secretary of
State and CIA Director, respectively), and, of course, everyone
on the above list. They disavowed Hitler and Mussolini only
after their atrocities grew to indefensible levels.

The plot fell apart when Butler went public. The general
revealed the details of the coup before the McCormack-Dickstein
Committee, which would later become the notorious House
Un-American Activities Committee. (In the 50s, his committee
would destroy the lives of hundreds of innocent Americans ith
its communist witch hunts.) The Committee heard the testimony
of Butler and French, but failed to call in any of the coup
plotters for questioning, other
than MacGuire. In fact, the Committee whitewashed the public
version of its final report, deleting the names of powerful
businessmen whose reputations they sought to protect. The most
likely reason for this response is that Wall
Street had undue influence in Congress also. Even more
alarming, the elite-controlled media failed to pick up on the
story, and even today the incident remains little known. The
elite managed to spin the story as nothing
more than the rumors and hearsay of Butler and French, even
though Butler was
a Quaker of unimpeachable honesty and integrity. Butler,
appalled by the cover-up, went on national radio to denounce
it, but with little success.

Butler was not vindicated until 1967, when journalist John
Spivak uncovered the Committee's internal, secret report. It
clearly confirmed Butler's story:

"In the last few weeks of the committee's life it received
evidence showing that certain persons had attempted to
establish a fascist organization in this country.

There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were
planned and might have been placed in execution if the
financial backers deemed it expedient."

MacGuire denied [Butler's] allegations under oath, but your
committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made
to General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement
suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was
corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his
principle, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while
MacGuire was abroad studying the various form of veterans'
organizations of Fascist character.

Needless to say, the survival of America's democracy is not an
automatic or sure thing. Americans need to remain vigilant
against all enemies... both foreign and domestic.

--
Rightists are spineless and obedient, void of critical thinking and reason