AMERICA AND TOTALITARIANISM

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 128, 23 February 1939, Page 8

AMERICA AND TOTALITARIANISM

Unprecedented rioting in New York has given sharp emphasis to the possibility, unwelcome to American people, that the clash of rival ideologies may threaten the peace and quiet of the great republic within its own borders. Public opinion in the United States, has in the past welcomed foreign immigration to “the land of the free,” and this attitude still exists, though it has been found necessary since the war to regulate the inflow by the application of a quota system for different nationals. But it has always preferred that they should leave their particular brand of politics behind them, and accept the condition that they should become, by a process of adaptation, good American citizens, choosing their political allegiances from the political parties of the country of their adoption. Yesterday there were reports of German-American Nazis rallying under Swastika and American flags, anti-Jewish slogans, and clashes with Socialist anti-Nazis serious enough to compel a record turn-out of the New York police. The sequel will be interesting. It would be strange if there were none, for the incident has followed closely upon an outspoken warning to foreign trouble-making States delivered by President Roosevelt on the eve of his departure to watch “the greatest peace-time concentration of American naval and air power on manoeuvres to test the United States life-line. .Without explaining what he meant by the “continued reports of a disturbing nature” which he had been receiving lately, the. President warned aggressor nations that the Americas were uniting “in common aspirations to defend and maintain their self-governing ways of life. I hose remarks have been interpreted to mean that Mr. Roosevelt apprehends the possibility of another international crisis, and it is suggested that demands are being forced on the democracies other than through diplomatic channels.” American people in recent years have been considerably exercised concerning the growth of political organizations among certain racial groups, and the intensification of foreign-directed espionage. What many have feared —open clashes between rival groups over imported ideologies—has now come to pass. This incident cannot but be an unpalatable revelation of the strength and intensity of feeling between foreign political groups right in their midst, and threatening the tranquillity and good order of American civic life. It recalls, also, the President’s celebrated speech to Congress recently, when he declared that “there comes a time in the affairs of men when thev must prepare to defend not only their homes but the tenets of faith and humanity whereon their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded.” I his utterance attracted wot Id-wide attention. It was regarded as an indication that the President feared the encroachments of foreign totalitarianism into American life itself. Recent tendencies indicate that Nazi policy has a foieign as well as a domestic field for propaganda and organization. The method appears to be, like that of the Communist International at Moscow, to stir up local dissensions and create thereby a state of chaos providing favourable opportunities for totalitarian interventionists. Anti-Jewish pamphleteering by Nazi propagandists in America is said to have assumed disturbing activities and scope, while other varieties of “permeative” activity are described as aimed at undermining German-American faith in American ideals of government. It is no doubt this kind of unofficial campaigning to wheih the phrase “other than through diplomatic channels” refers. The New York riots give timely emphasis to the nature and extent of this new growth in the American community.