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Police Sympathy Enabled Early American Fascists
- 1930s US law enforcement often tolerated or sympathized with fascist groups, allowing violence like the Madison Square Garden rally to go unchecked.
- LAPD chief James E. Davis dismissed veteran Leon Lewis's warnings and framed Nazis as against communism, illustrating institutional bias.
Scandal and Law Undermined Fascist Organizations
- Public scandals and legal action collapsed major fascist organizations like Fritz Kuhn's German-American Bund and the Silver Shirts by 1940.
- Kuhn's embezzlement, arrest, and Sing Sing conviction exposed leadership fraud and sapped movement momentum.
Isolationism Dressed Up Fascism For Mass Appeal
- Fascists shifted strategy from explicit dictatorship advocacy to isolationism to win broader American support.
- Tying fascist aims to keeping the US out of war allowed groups to recruit isolationists and anti-New Deal conservatives.