America’s '' Nazi Type'' racial violence was not a reflection of European fascism. In many respects, it pre-dated it—and exceeded it in scale relative to population. [ History demands honesty. ]

 

History Needs Re-Examination—Especially World War II

I want to be absolutely clear at the outset: Hitler and the Nazi regime were catastrophic crimes against humanity. Their defeat was necessary. There is no revisionism there.

But acknowledging that truth does not absolve other societies—especially the United States—from examining their own historical proximity to fascism, racial terror, and mass dehumanization. History is not a morality play with permanent villains and permanent saints. It is a diagnostic record. And if we refuse diagnosis, we repeat the disease.

The Uncomfortable Near-Miss: American Fascism in the 1930s

What is rarely taught—at least honestly—is how close the United States came to legitimizing homegrown authoritarian movements in the interwar period.

The German-American Bund, Father Charles Coughlin’s mass radio movement, the Silver Legion (Silver Shirts), and other openly fascist organizations operated legally, publicly, and at scale throughout the 1930s. Madison Square Garden hosted pro-Nazi rallies in 1939. This was not fringe activity.

The reason fascism failed to consolidate power in the U.S. was not moral superiority. It was structural friction:

• A far larger and more decentralized population

• Federalism and competing power centers

• A press ecosystem not yet fully captured

• Internal elite disagreement

In other words: logistics, not virtue.

Germany in the early 1930s was a smaller, more centralized society, economically shattered by war reparations and hyperinflation. Hitler exploited that collapse with ruthless efficiency. The U.S., though deeply racist, was richer, larger, and harder to synchronize.

That difference matters. Because it means the impulse was present—even if the outcome differed.

America’s Racial Terror Was Not Hypothetical—It Was Operational

While Nazi Germany is rightly condemned for racial ideology, the United States had already operationalized racial terror long before Hitler took power:

• Thousands of documented lynchings

• Jim Crow segregation enforced by law

• Racial pogroms such as Tulsa (1921), Chicago (1919), and Rosewood (1923)

• The routine disenfranchisement of Black citizens

• Openly eugenic policies endorsed by U.S. institutions (which Nazi lawyers later studied)

This was not marginal behavior. It was state-tolerated violence, often celebrated locally and ignored federally.

It is historically accurate—and uncomfortable—to note that Black American soldiers who fought fascism abroad returned home to segregation, assault, and murder. Even in Britain, U.S. military authorities attempted to impose racial segregation, only to be rebuffed by local populations who rejected it.

That contrast matters.

Truth About Nazi Germany (Without Sanitizing It)

Here is where precision is essential.

Nazi Germany was brutally racist and genocidal—but its racial hierarchy was primarily constructed around Jews, Roma, Slavs, and political dissidents, not around a large Black population, which Germany did not have.

As a result:

• There were documented cases of mixed-race families who survived the regime

• Black Germans existed, lived, and in some cases were not exterminated

• Nazi racial policy toward Black people was inconsistent, opportunistic, and secondary to its core obsessions

None of this excuses Nazism. But it does puncture the myth that America’s racial violence was merely a reflection of European fascism. In many respects, it pre-dated it—and exceeded it in scale relative to population.

The Myth of Moral Closure

The most dangerous lie taught about World War II is that defeating Nazi Germany “cured” the West of fascism.

It did not.

What it did was rebrand it.

When a country condemns Hitler while refusing to interrogate its own history of lynching, racial caste, mass incarceration, and state violence, that condemnation becomes performative. Moral theater. Not accountability.

And that failure echoes forward.

From Then to Now: Why This Still Matters

History is not past. It is stored behavior.

When modern America deploys mass deportations, racialized policing, family separations, and carceral expansion—while insisting it is the global guardian of democracy—the contradiction is not accidental. It is inherited.

The same psychological mechanisms are visible:

• Dehumanization framed as “law and order”

• Exceptionalism used to excuse cruelty

• Narcissistic leadership structures rewarded, not restrained

This is not Nazism. But it is authoritarian drift, and history teaches us that drift accelerates when societies stop telling the truth about themselves.

The Point, Plainly Stated

The lesson of World War II is not that “they were monsters and we were not.”

The lesson is that human societies—including wealthy, democratic ones—are capable of immense cruelty when power, fear, and hierarchy align.

America avoided formal fascist takeover in the 1930s. That was fortunate. But it did not make America morally immune. And pretending otherwise is how democracies decay from the inside while congratulating themselves for past victories.

History demands honesty.