His intellectual defenders make their case that the danger is overblown.

  • anon6789@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    For all the deniers jumping in, just where is supposed to be the cutoff point where we let “talk” get to before rational people can say enough is enough?

    It isn’t the first time we’ve had “talk” of overthrow, and how often do we need to leave it up the chance that they don’t get the opportunuty?

    The Business Plot (also called the Wall Street Putsch[1] and The White House Putsch) was a political conspiracy in 1933, in the United States, to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as dictator.[2][3] Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified under oath that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization with Butler as its leader and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified under oath before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the “McCormack–Dickstein Committee”) on these revelations.[4] Although no one was prosecuted, the congressional committee final report said, “there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

    Early in the committee’s gathering of testimony most major news media dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial characterizing it as a “gigantic hoax”.[5] When the committee’s final report was released, the Times said the committee “purported to report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler’s story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true” and “… also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated”.[6] The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot.

    While historians have questioned whether a coup was actually close to execution, most agree that some sort of “wild scheme” was contemplated and discussed.

    And if you want a political crime family…

    In July 2007, a BBC investigation reported that Prescott Bush, father of U.S. President George H. W. Bush and grandfather of then-president George W. Bush, was to have been a “key liaison” between the 1933 Business Plotters and the newly emerged Nazi regime in Germany,[51] although this has been disputed by Jonathan Katz as a misconception caused by a clerical research error.[52] According to Katz, “Prescott Bush was too involved with the actual Nazis to be involved with something that was so home grown as the business plot.”

    So it seems if one would want to say that an overthrow of the United States has been in progress by politically connected individuals for over 100 years, both actively and “just talk”, they would have a whole bunch of things they could talk about.