Lawrence Dennis

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Lonnie Lawrence Dennis (born December 25, 1893 in Atlanta , Georgia , † August 20, 1977 ) was an American diplomat , financial advisor and author who was an isolationist .

Life

Dennis' mother was of African American descent and his father was white. He was adopted by a mulatto couple. As a "Mulatto Boy Evangelist " he toured, like Amanda Berry Smith with a show as far as England. After the death of his father, he traveled to England with his mother in 1901 and learned French and German. In 1905 they both returned and he attended Phillips Exeter Academy .

In 1915, Dennis began studying at Harvard University . During the First World War he commanded a division of the military police in Brest , France, graduated in 1920 and joined the Diplomatic Corps . He was posted to Haiti and the Kingdom of Romania .

Under the impression of the US intervention against Sandino in Nicaragua, he resigned in 1927. He then served as a business advisor to various investment firms in Nicaragua, including the Seligman Bank Corporation's Latin America Fund , but made enemies when he published a series of articles against foreign investment in The New Republic and The Nation in 1930 .

Great Depression

At the height of the Great Depression , he published his first book in 1932. In it he noted that capitalism was rightly ringing the death knell, but warned of the grave dangers of a world without its positive legacy. His next two books already included his idea of ​​national fascism as an emerging society to replace the system and which he saw as a revolution against finance capital . He explained that Franklin D. Roosevelt was forcing foreign participation in the war to overcome the economic crisis, since his New Deal had failed, but there was the domestic path of a new corporatism . According to Dennis, the US could achieve full employment without overseas territories and additional markets . In doing so he generated considerable resistance among liberals such as Max Lerner as well as with the Communist Party of the USA .

Dennis was editor of The Awakener for some time , soon afterwards founded his own publication ( Weekly Foreign Letter , 1938–1942) and wrote for Today's Challenge , the organ of the pro-Nazi German American Fellowship Forum founded by Friedrich Auhagen and George Sylvester Viereck . During a visit to Germany, Dennis met Rudolf Hess , to whom, in contrast to Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, he was very fond.

Great Sedition Trial

In early 1941 Roosevelt began to position Justice Minister Francis Biddle against the isolationists or so-called Seditionists (agitators). A series of cases against 30 publications and 26 organizations, including the America First Committee , were launched, but the latter and mainstream conservatives were dropped.

In 1944 Dennis was charged in the so-called " Great Sedition Trial " in the USA for his book The Dynamics of War and Revolution as well as for conspiracy . He was also charged with five quotes in publications of the American-German Confederation . Dennis argued that there was a Comintern , but not a "Nazintern" because it was a national ideology. Likewise, there is no "fifth column" and thus no conspiracy. Roosevelt, on the other hand, is "reprehensible", an "unscrupulous warmonger and liar" and "servant of the communists and plutocrats".

Organized by Dennis, the defense managed to dismantle and dismiss every single charge. Two judges were removed from the bench, others warned. When defense counsel presented to Judge Eichner on November 30, 1944, copies of a speech by Senator William Langer ( R - North Dakota ) calling for the defendants' release, Eichner ordered a pause in the proceedings and died overnight. The trial ended on November 22, 1946 when the US District Court judge for the District of Columbia dropped the charges.

At the time, Dennis was regarded by Life magazine as “the number one fascist author”. In a comprehensive smear campaign he was compared to Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg as the "leader of the fifth column in the USA" and never again got a platform for his ideas in the USA.

post war period

Roosevelt's fight against the isolationists had affected a wide variety of intellectuals, writers, and activists including Henry L. Mencken and Lillian Gish . Dennis himself was financially and mentally ruined. He renamed his Weekly Foreign Letter , which had barely 900 subscribers and was published until his death, to Appeal to Reason and lived on donations from old Republicans. Occasionally he gave interviews and wrote articles. In 1946 he stated that “the elites needed wars to unite against foreign devils. Yesterday it was Hitler, soon it will be Stalin ”.

In his last book, Dennis said goodbye to state socialism as a solution to the problems of capitalism and preferred Keynes . He spoke out for peace and against the "police garrison state".

He later wore an afro hairstyle until his death in 1977.

Works

  • Is Capitalism Doomed? . Harper & Brothers Publishers. New York. 1932
  • The Coming of American Fascism . Harper & Brothers Publishers. New York. 1936 online
  • The Dynamics Of War And Revolution . Self-published 1940. (1993, Noontide Press)
  • St. George, Maximilian; Lawrence Dennis: A Trial on Trial, The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 . National Civil Rights Committee. np 1946
  • Operational Thinking for Survival . Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs, Colo .: Ralph Myles, 1969.

literature

  • Gerald Horne: The Color of Fascism . New York University Press, 2006

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Boy Evangelist Here," Washington Post, March 14, 1901, p. 11.
  2. ↑ "Can the Banks Be Made Safe?" In "The Nation". Vol. 136, No. 3532 (March 15, 1933)
  3. ↑ Man in black - FAZ, April 11, 2007, No. 84 / page 33
  4. ↑ THE LAWRENCE DENNIS STORY antiwar.com, 2000
personal data
SURNAME Dennis, Lawrence
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dennis, Lonnie Lawrence (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American diplomat and author
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Atlanta , Georgia
DATE OF DEATH 20th August 1977