In the Marx Brothers’ 1933 comedy Duck Soup, a strongman is named president of the fictional country of Freedonia. Chaos ensues, culminating in a war with the neighboring country of Sylvania. The film satirizes politics and war in the classic Marx Brothers fashion. The historical context of the story was, of course, the rise of fascism in Europe — Benito Mussolini had been in power for a decade and Adolf Hitler had taken office earlier that year. The film depicts its Mussolini-like leader as clownish, reflecting a distrust of fascism that was far from the prevailing view in the United States. At the time, fascism remained ambiguous for many Americans; figures like Ezra Pound compared Mussolini to Thomas Jefferson while others called Franklin Delano Roosevelt a fascist.
“There used to be a time when anyone could keep in touch with the world’s history,” Robert Benchley quipped in “A Brief Course in World Politics.” Before World War I, he argued, history was simple: “Either the king could have some people beheaded, or some people could have the king beheaded.” However, the twentieth century ushered in a wave of political complexity. “When you get twenty-four parties, all beginning with ‘W,’ on each one of which the future peace of Europe depends, then I am sorry but I shall have to let Europe figure it out for itself and let me know when it is going to have another war,” he wrote.
What appears comical in Benchley’s historical assessment and Duck Soup — that is, a refusal to grapple with what fascism truly is — persists today in some academic circles. In Fascism Comes to America: A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture, Bruce Kuklick contends that “there is no elemental fascism or much empirical…
Auteur: Taylor Dorrell
