Chris Hedges (by way of TMW)

Adams had watched American intellectuals and industrialists flirt with fascism in the 1930s. Mussolini's "corporatism," which created an unchecked industrial and business aristocracy, had appealed to many at the time as an effective counterweight to the New Deal. In 1934, Fortune magazine lavished praise on the Italian dictator for his defanging of labor unions and his empowerment of industrialists at the expense of workers.

Then as now, Adams said, too many liberals failed to understand the power and allure of evil, and when the radical Christians came, these people would undoubtedlyplay by theold, polite rules of democracy long after those in power had begun to dismantle the democratic state. Adamd had watched German academics fall silent or conform. He knew how desperately people want to believe the comfortable lies told by totalitarian movements, how easily those lies lull moderates into passivity.

http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2005_05_15.html#002183