A Dreamer & A Visionary; H.P. Lovecraft in His Time

The first thing that should be done about this situation, in Lovecraft’s view, is to restrict the vote ‘to those able to pass rigorous educational examinations (emphasising civic and economic subjects) and scientific intelligence tests’ (‘Some Repetitions on the Times’). It need not be assumed that Lovecraft automatically included himself in this number; in ‘Some Repetitions on the Times’ he declares himself a ‘rank layman’ and goes on to say: ‘No non-technician, be he artist, philosopher, or scientist, can even begin to judge the labyrinthine governmental problems with which these administrators must deal.’ Lovecraft does not seem entirely aware of the difficulty of ensuring that these tests be fair to all, but he maintained that such a restriction of the vote would indeed be fair because—as we shall see presently—educational opportunities would be vastly broadened under his political scheme.

It is unfortunate that Lovecraft occasionally used the term ‘fascism’ to denote this conception; it does not help much that he says on one occasion, ‘Do not judge the sort of fascism I advocate by any form now existing.’⁷

Lovecraft never actually renounced Mussolini, but his support of him in the 1930s does not seem quite as ardent as it was when Mussolini first rose to power in 1922. The problem is, however, that by the 1930s the term ‘fascism’ connoted not only Mussolini but various English and United States extremists with whom Lovecraft had no intention of aligning himself. The American fascists of the middle to late 1930s were, in Lovecraft’s view, not so much dangerous radicals as mere buffoons who could do little harm to the political fabric. They were not by any means a co-ordinated group, but even individually they represented threats to the government with which both the administration and political thinkers (even armchair ones like Lovecraft) had to come to terms.

The first was the redoubtable Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana. Elected governor in 1928, Long quickly achieved popularity by appealing for a radical redistribution of wealth. Then, in 1934, as a senator he formed the Share Our Wealth Society in an attempt to put his theories into practice. If it be thought that Long’s political vision was actually similar to Lovecraft’s in its union of economic socialism and political fascism, it should be made clear that Long was not by any means a socialist—he did not believe in collectivism but instead yearned nostalgically for a small-town America in which everyone would be an individualistic small business person—and his fascism was of a ruthless sort that rode roughshod over his opponents and in the end led to his being shot by an assassin on 8 September 1935; he died two days later.

Then there was the Reverend Charles E. Coughlin, who in his weekly radio programme (‘The Golden Hour of the Little Flower’) had, since 1930, fulminated against both Communism and capitalism, attacking bankers specifically. In late 1934 he conceived of a wealth distribution scheme by forming the National Union for Social Justice.

Lovecraft took frequent note of Long and Coughlin, and in the end he finally repudiated them—not for their economic policies (with which he was more in agreement than otherwise), but for their genuinely fascistic political tactics. But he never regarded them as serious threats. He writes airily in early 1937 that ‘I doubt whether the growing Catholic–fascist movement will make much headway in America’⁸ (an explicit reference to Coughlin) and later remarks, in regard to a broad group of pro-Nazi organizations in the United States:

Granting the scant possibility of a Franco-like revolt of the Hoovers and Mellons and polite bankers, and conceding that —despite Coughlinism, the Black Legion, the Silver Shirts, and the K.K.K.—the soil of America is hardly very fertile for any variant of Nazism, it seems likely that the day of free and easy plutocracy in the United States is over.⁹ He might have been less sanguine had he seen how Coughlin— who was already becoming increasingly anti-Semitic by 1936— sloughed off his social justice pretence in 1938 and came out forthrightly as a pro-Nazi, attracting millions in the process.