BRUCE LERRO—In a 1932 interview with Mussolini, the press packaged him as a model for the U.S. as “what a real dictator would do”. Here is an excerpt from Barron’s editorial section: “Whether we are quite ready to admit it or not, sometimes openly and other times secretly, we have been longing to see the superman emerge… Of course, we all realize that dictatorships and even semi-dictatorships in peacetime are quite contrary to the spirit of American institutions and all that.” Rather than rejecting the fear that “it can’t happen here” the sociologist Robert Lynd suggested that the capitalists secretly desired a dictatorship.
