Friendly Fascism

The 8th November 2016 marked a startling new era in American political life. After the creeping ascent of Right wing authoritarian parties in the UK and Europe Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election brought an alarming form of "alt-right" neo-conservativism into the American political mainstream. Many aspects of this descent into the darkness of fascism was predicted by Bertram Gross in Friendly Fascism, a provocative and original critique of a subtle yet growing fascism in American political life. Gross shows that the chronic problems faced by the U.S. in the late twentieth century required increasing collusion between big business and big government to manage society in the interests of the privileged and powerful. The resulting "friendly fascism", Gross suggests, lacks the dictatorships, public spectacles and overt brutality of 20th century fascism, but has at its root the same denial of individual freedoms and democratic rights. No one who cares about the future of democracy can afford to ignore the frightening realities of Friendly Fascism.

Author: Bertram Gross
Publisher: Black Rose Books
Published: 12/01/1982
Pages: 438
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.79lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.13d
ISBN: 9780920057223

About the Author
Gross, Bertram: - "Bertram Myron Gross (1912 in Philadelphia - March 12, 1997 in Walnut Creek, California) was an American social scientist, Federal bureaucrat and Professor of Political Science at Hunter College (CUNY). He is known from his book 'Friendly Fascism' from 1980 and as primary author of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act. Gross was born in Philadelphia. He received his B.A. in English and Philosophy, and his M.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania. In the late 1940s, he started as a federal bureaucrat in Washington. From 1941 to 1945 he was a staff member of a number of Senate committees. Here he wrote the Roosevelt-Truman full employment bills of 1944 and 1945, which led to the Employment Act of 1946. From 1946 to 1952 he was executive secretary of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. In the 1950s, he moved with his family to Israel, where he served as an economic advisor in the Prime Minister's Office and as a Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, where he established their program in Public Administration. He returned to the United States in the 1960s and joined the faculty of Syracuse University in the Maxwell School. In 1961-62, he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto; and, in 1962-63, he was the Leatherbee Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. In 1970, Bertram Gross was president of the Society for General Systems Research. From 1970 to 1982 he was Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Urban Affairs at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center."