Publisher’s Commentary: Revisiting Insights From the 1930s on Fascism, and Hope

Mikki Morrissette delivered a talk January 4, 2026, at her First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis congregation about words shared to the congregation in the 1930s about fascism, and building hope

Additional information about fascism added January 10 from a Heather Cox Richardson summary.

On January 4, 2026, I helped to open up the new year — at the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis I attend — by sharing in a talk excerpts from addresses delivered by previous congregational leaders in the 1930s about fascism, chaos, and hope. I then asked members to share on notecards their priorities for systems change, to get a pulse of what a group of well-informed, civically engaged people cares about right now.

These thoughts are summarized below.

Excerpts About Fascism

“If Fascism Comes…” by Rev. Raymond Bragg, December 1935

This talk started with a summary of the dystopian novel published by Sinclair Lewis in 1935 called “It Can’t Happen Here,” about the rise of fascism in the U.S. It depicted a populist named Buzz Windrip who is elected president by promising to restore greatness, and fight crime and “welfare cheats.” Instead, after election, he consolidates power, suppresses dissent, and establishes a dictatorship with stormtroopers. Lewis’s book, Bragg said, explores the dangers of political polarization, the rhetoric of “us vs. them,” and how easily democracy can be destroyed from within.

Bragg suggested that if people could actually see the record of fascism compared with achievements, people would conclusively see that Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy made much of their plans to increase prosperity but how wages instead steadily declined. He said both promised peace but carried on unprovoked war and a fast and loose diplomatic game.

He said that nationalism is the disease of fascism, because it corrupts and enslaves the public with their own prejudices. “Fear is the state from which men commit political suicide.”

“My Impressions of Germany,” by Rev. John Dietrich, 1932

After a return visit to Germany (where he had family roots), he talked about how the country was changing under Hitler. “There is the rigid censorship of the means of communication, and the prostitution of press and radio to purely nationalistic and political ends. … There is the utter suppression of the rights of labor … There is the attitude which is slowly but surely restricting the freedom of women and driving them back into the kitchen. There is the conversion of the whole educational system from public school to university into one vast organ of propaganda.”

Dietrich went on to explain how Hitler rose to power. Much of his support came from lower middle classes who had no life savings or old-age security, and who had never been actively involved with politics. They saw in Hitler a leader to whom they could transfer all their troubles. His sense of marching shoulder to shoulder, with pomp and flair, offered an escape from the harsh realities of the present.

His power had also been accomplished by imprisoning and brutally treating dissent. People faced the prospect of imprisonment without trial, allowed largely “because the people have been convinced that these dissenters are actual enemies and should be treated with an iron hand.”

It was thought, he added, that German industrialists had given considerable financial support, partly as a means of crushing strong trade unions — and because they thought, wrongly, they could eventually control Hitler.

Excerpts About the Chaos of Civilization

“Our Haphazard Civilization — in Need of a Plan,” Rev. Dietrich

Dietrich said that because of advances in communication, transportation, and economic interdependence, “our planet is today smaller than almost any single nation a century ago.” We must get rid of narrow and petty nationalistic loyalty and “substitute a planetary consciousness and loyalty to the human race. The whole world must be seen as an economic and political unit. … General free trade is one of the first necessities of the world today. All protective tariffs should be cast aside in all countries.”

He pointed out his criticism of where industrial capitalism was leading us. “The most damning indictment that can be brought against our present civilization is that it has placed production above humanity, material wealth above [person]hood.”

“Can Man Be Civilized?,” Rev. Dietrich

One difficulty in the early years of humanization was that many people believed it was every man and every tribe for himself. As cities evolved, systems established a social order of industrial, educational, and political systems that took care of sanitation, traffic, housing, business. The ultimate goal of civilization, Dietrich implied, is that people learn, “after centuries of tragic experience, that we must live and work together.”

He talked about how pervasively, despite human intelligence, we cling to old ways of doing things. Our propensity toward warfare, for example, was a failure of intelligence to master the problems of human relationships. Another failing “is the persistence of poverty, utterly inexcusable today when machinery has made possible sufficient production to satisfy the needs of all.”

We also fail to use our intelligence, Dietrich said, in the way we treat crime. Despite the development of psychology, we fall back, again and again, on the idea that punishment will prevent crime. A more intelligent system would be to have trained professionals in “houses of correction interested in the restoration of the law-breaker to normal citizenship, by well-established scientific methods.”

He talked about how the great increase in private wealth in the U.S. was in the hands of a few individuals led to the Great Depression — when our “power to produce goods far outstripped the ability of the consuming public to purchase what was produced.”

He reiterated that for humankind to thrive, we need to interrupt the influence of the customs of the past and boldly plan our future. “The sciences of life, man, and society, now enable us, if we will, to build a utopia on this earth. Where we go from here … is a challenge to human imagination and social engineering.”

Excerpts on Hope

“These Terrible Times – How Shall We Face Them?,” Rev. Dietrich

The purpose of his talk was to answer this question: “In a world so dark and forbidding as this, where the powers of evil seem to be in the ascendency … what are the sources of our hope? In a world where all seems black, how can we continue … in our struggle toward the light?”

He reminded us of the old falsehood that human nature cannot be changed — that we can refuse an economic system that causes injustice and that we can refuse selfish nationalisms and greedy imperialisms.

“Grounds for Hope in the Present Chaos,” Rev. Dietrich, March 1932

He pointed out that we have been in dark times many times before and endured. We planted in wilderness, cultivated knowledge, emancipated women, and abolished human sacrifice, slavery, and other ills.

Yet industry, he said, gave us a materialistic philosophy — “a commercialized life that has sapped the vitality of all our idealism. … During this wonderful development of industrial civilization, we have plunged into a wild orgy of selfish exploitation and reckless greed that made us appear to be great and strong and prosperous.” In the process, he said, we have neglected and forgotten that the body needs an equally great mind and heart.

In the current crisis, he said bluntly, people have found “our industrial leaders mere selfish exploiters, and our supposed statesmen only petty politicians.”

However, Dietrich said, the “basis of hope lies in the worldwide restlessness of these times. There has been only one age in human history that in its restlessness was comparable to the present time, and that was the period of the Renaissance. It was the age of great thinkers and great explorers. Everywhere there was the stir of new life, new opportunities, new ambitions.”

“In our hearts must germinate those seeds of a new and better conception of human life, which may survive the deluge that impends.”

“I refuse to surrender myself to despair. On the contrary, I feel that in the face of such impending calamity, it becomes my stern duty and my whole-hearted joy, as at no other time, to produce within my life something of worth; to add my might to the creation of that nobler spirit which shall be the foundation on which the [people] of the future shall build a new and finer type of civilization; to help sow those seeds.”

Future Forward

I shared with First Unitarian Society that Minnesota Women’s Press has launched a new series called “Future Forward,” focused on imaginative and everyday leadership for systemic change. I asked congregants to write down one priority for systems change of the future. Here are some of the things they shared:

• Socialization of basic needs: food, shelter, education, health care, mental health (economic systems change was cited by several); others cited a basic income for all to ensure food and shelter, rather than enabling a few to take all resources, reiterating the importance of our shared humanity
• A serviceberry economy where all are valued and treated with respect
• Fair distribution of income and wealth; others wrote about focusing on collective interests above private interests, and taxing the rich (personal, estate, capital gains)
• “Establish a cabinet position: Department of Caring & Sharing”
• “Make democracy more democratic” was indicated by several: term limits, rescinding two senators per state no matter the size and adjust the electoral system based on it, ranked choice voting for all to change the two-party system, reform redistricting so the elected people do not selectively choose their voters; campaign finance reform
• Health care was mentioned by many: nonprofit, for all, that emphasizes preventative medicine, mental health care, and spiritual component; others want to see free universal health care, and take it out of the hands of big business and lobbyists with profit motives, to support research and cost reductions
• Housing was mentioned by many: stability of housing, addressing homelessness, attainable housing costs, imaginative solutions, values-led senior co-housing
• “Low-cost housing options within every neighborhood. Concentrating poverty in a few locations creates a huge burden on schools and people trapped in a cycle of poverty. Let’s create mixed neighborhoods that are able to be more self-supporting.” (see example in Saint Paul)
• Address the intersectional needs of mental health services, income inequities, and racial inequalities that leads to housing instability
• Immigration policy: guest worker programs, humane system to welcome refugees and process asylum requests, no ICE deportations, support for democratic governments elsewhere to reduce the need for wide-scale immigration, climate justice (which leads to immigration). Another wrote about IMAG: Immigrants Make America Great
• Wider mental health services, partly to reduce gun violence
• Land management guided by Indigenous people
• Well-funded public school system that excels for all students
• Animal rights
• An end to factory farming
• Environmental protections
• Retraining of bullies
• Teaching the Platinum Rule (treat others based on what they need, which is about empathy, personalization, and diversity) rather than the Golden Rule (treat others based on your own desires)
• Development of non–hate-based faith, integrated into leadership that addresses spiritual and other needs, advocacy, and acceptance of all faiths

Personal note: on my priority list is how to teach media literacy to more people in bite sizes to address the propaganda machine.

Action = Change

To be part of the housing solution teams that a First Unitarian Society donor is supporting over the next several months of story development and action, sign up here.

To support the “Future Forward” series, which will share commentaries, insights, solutions, and collective action steps in 2026, please become a member.

To see the full service (the talk is about halfway in), including lovely singing by First Unitarian Society staff member Jacob Mullis and a Dr. Seuss story:

The clip of the talk only: