After the First World War, the desire to rebuild and restructure society took many different forms in different countries. In the 1920s, American intellectuals paid a considerable amount of attention to Mussolini‘s early Fascist movement in Italy, but few of them became his supporters. However, he was initially very popular in the Italian American community.
In John P. Diggins’ fine work, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton University Press, 1972), there’s even a connecting line with a Mafia-style organisation and ideology in both countries.
During the 1930s, Virgil Effinger led the paramilitary Black Legion, a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan that sought to establish fascism in the United States by launching a revolution. Although it was responsible for a number of attacks, the Black Legion was only a peripheral band of militants. Effinger himself had served with the United States Army during the Spanish–American War, settled in Ohio and worked as a salesman in Lima. He was a strong racist, anti-Semite and anti-Catholic, joining the Klu Klux Klan and attaining the rank of Grand Titan, before taking a large group of them -about ten thousand in all- in a much more violent direction. They recruited police officers, National Guardsmen, and former soldiers in their ranks, along with ambitious men who seemed to have a future in politics. As one journalist observed at the time, “Those who could not think for themselves but allowed themselves to be impressed as blind dupes, the cowardly, sadist types, were candidates for the Nazis and the Legion.” Effinger assigned the group’s Legionnaires to flog Jews, whom they believed caused the economic crisis. The Legion also bombed the headquarters of workers unions who hired immigrants and set fire to the homes of Catholics who strayed from “true” Christian values. In Effinger’s attempt to create a mythology around his organization, he rewrote history, as despotic leaders do, and claimed the Black Legion led the American Revolution and carried out the Boston Tea Party. Effinger even saw himself as president someday, ruling with an iron fist.
Many served life sentences for murder, but he himself was never convicted, denying even membership in the organisation.
An early Humphrey Bogart film (1937) challenged their perspective. There’s an excellent review in the link here.
Positive reception
However, though there were several other groups too, which raised some concerns during the interwar period, it was largely viewed positively by the U.S. and British governments, the corporate community, and a significant portion of the elite. This was because the fascist interpretation of extreme nationalism allowed for significant economic influence in the West while also destroying the left and the hated labour groups and union activists. Hitler, like Saddam Hussein much later, enjoyed strong British and U.S. support until his direct action, which severely damaged British and U.S. interests.
William Philips, the American ambassador to Italy, was “greatly impressed by the efforts of Benito Mussolini to improve the conditions of the masses” and found “much evidence” In support of the fascist stance that “they represent a true democracy in as much as the welfare of the people is their principal objective.”
He found Mussolini’s achievements “astounding [and] a source of constant amazement,” and greatly admired his “great human qualities.” United States Department of State enthusiastically agreed, praising fascism for having “brought order out of chaos, discipline out of license, and solvency out of bankruptcy” as well as Mussolini’s “magnificent” achievements in Ethiopia. According to Scott Newton, by the time the war broke out in 1939, Britain was more sympathetic to Adolf Hitler for reasons centered on trade and financial relations as well as a policy of self-preservation for the British establishment in the face of growing democratic challenges.
German American Bund
Poster for German-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden (1939)
The German American Bund, was the most prominent and well-organized fascist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1936, following the model of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It appeared shortly after the founding of several smaller groups, including the Friends of New Germany (1933) and the Silver Legion of America, founded in 1933 by William Dudley Pelley and the Free Society of Teutonia. Membership in the German-American Bund was only open to American citizens of German descent. Its main goal was to promote a favourable view of Nazi Germany.
The Bund was very active. Its members were issued uniforms and they also attended training camps. The Bund held rallies with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute. Its leaders denounced the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish-American groups, Communism, “Moscow-directed” trade unions and American boycotts of German goods. They claimed that George Washington was “the first Fascist” because he did not believe that democracy would work.
The high point of the Bund’s activities was the rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939, with some 20,000 people in attendance.The anti-Semitic Speakers repeatedly referred to President Roosevelt “Frank D. Rosenfeld”, calling his New Deal the “Jew Deal”, and denouncing the Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. The rally ended with violence between protesters and Bund “storm-troopers”.
In 1939, America’s top fascist, the leader of the Bund, Fritz Julius Kuhn, was investigated by the city of New York and found to be embezzling Bund funds for his own use. He was arrested, his citizenship was revoked, and he was deported. After the War, he was arrested and imprisoned again.
In 1940, the U.S. Army organized a draft in an attempt to bring citizens into military service. The Bund advised its members not to submit to the draft. On this basis, the Bund was outlawed by the U.S. government, and its leader fled to Mexico.
Father Charles Coughlin
Father Charles Coughlin was a Roman Catholic priest who hosted a very popular radio program in the late 1930s, on which he often ventured into politics. In 1932 he endorsed the election of President Franklin Roosevelt, but he gradually turned against Roosevelt and became a harsh critic of him. His radio program and his newspaper, “Social Justice”, denounced Roosevelt, the “big banks”, and “the Jews”. When the United States entered World War II, the U.S. government took his radio broadcasts off the air, and blocked his newspaper from the mail. He abandoned politics, but continued to be a parish priest until his death in 1979.
The American architect-to-be Philip Johnson was a correspondent (in Germany) for Coughlin’s newspaper, between 1934 and 1940 (before beginning his architectural career). He wrote articles favourable to the Nazis; and critical of “the Jews”, and he also took part in a Nazi-sponsored press tour, in which he covered the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland. He quit the newspaper in 1940, was investigated by the FBI and was eventually cleared for army service in World War II. Years later he would refer to these activities as “the stupidest thing [sic.] I ever did … [which] I never can atone for”.
Ezra Pound
The American poet Ezra Pound moved from the United States to Italy in 1924, and he became a staunch supporter of Benito Mussolini, the founder of a fascist state. He wrote articles and made radio broadcasts which were critical of the United States, international bankers, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Jews. His propaganda was not well received in the U.S. After 1945, he was taken to the United States, where he was imprisoned for his actions on behalf of fascism. He was placed in a psychiatric hospital for twelve years, but in 1958, he was finally released after a campaign was launched on his behalf by American writers. He returned to Italy, where he died in 1972.
World War II and “The Great Sedition Trial” (1944)
During World War II, first Canada and then the United States battled the Axis powers. As part of the war effort, they suppressed the fascist movements within their borders, which were already weakened by the widespread public perception that they were fifth columns. This suppression consisted of the internment of fascist leaders, the disbanding of fascist organizations, the censorship of fascist propaganda, and pervasive government propaganda against fascism.
In the US, this campaign of suppression culminated in November 1944 in “The Great Sedition Trial”, in which George Sylvester Viereck, Lawrence Dennis, Elizabeth Dilling, William Dudley Pelley, Joe McWilliams, Robert Edward Edmondson, Gerald Winrod, William Griffin, and, in absentia, Ulrich Fleischhauer were all put on trial for aiding the Nazi cause, supporting fascism and isolationism. After the death of the judge, however, a mistrial was declared and all of the charges were dropped.
It’s almost a metaphor for a subtext tendency to allow these things to persist.
In the words of a later historian, it was a ‘mockery of justice.‘ However, the Bogart film, referred to above, provides a “What if” judge’s conclusion to the trial, in my opinion. Here’s a clip:
schools-history.com 
Is this just copied from Wikipedia?
Thanks for that – I’ll check contributor list