Lawrence Dennis

Lawrence Dennis (December 25, 1893 – August 20, 1977) was an American diplomat, consultant, and author. He advocated fascism in America after the Great Depression, arguing that liberal capitalism was doomed and one-party planning of the economy was essential.

Early life

Dennis was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He was of mixed race (his mother was African American and his father's race was unknown), but he concealed that as a teenager and instead passed as a white man until his death—even his wife and daughters did not know. He was fluent in English, French, and German. Following a notable career as a child evangelist, he was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy, which he graduated from in 1915, In letters to him, she expressed admiration for the strong gender roles in Germany.

He viewed Hitler as unimpressive and reliant on political showmanship, preferring more intellectual Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, and Hermann Göring. In her 2023 book, Prequel, Rachel Maddow wrote of Dennis's visit to Nuremberg for the 4th annual Nazi party congress on September 8, 1936, "Dennis's biographer, Gerald Horne, would later write 'America's most outspoken fascist symbolically melted into the Nazi mass.'"

He was an isolationist, and therefore expressed staunch opposition to American involvement in a war against Nazi Germany. He tried to join the U.S. Army during World War II, but the Army rejected him after the media ran stories about him.

He often described himself as rational and unemotional. an account of the trial, which appeared in 1946 as A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944.

Later life In his later years, Dennis repudiated his views of the 1930s and early 1940s, became a critic of militarism and the Cold War, and he propagated his views through a modest newsletter, The Appeal to Reason (not to be confused with the similar named Appeal to Reason, a left-wing newspaper published in the American Midwest from 1895 until 1922), which maintained a prominent circle of readers, including Herbert Hoover, Joseph P. Kennedy, William Appleman Williams, Harry Elmer Barnes, and James J. Martin. His last book, Operational Thinking for Survival, was published in 1969.

Books Is Capitalism Doomed? (Harper & Brothers, 1932) The Coming American Fascism (Harper & Brothers, 1936) online The Dynamics of War and Revolution (Harper & Brothers, 1940) A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 (1946) Operational Thinking for Survival (Ralph Myles, 1969)