Historical Comparisons: The ‘Foiled’ U.S. Fascist Coup Plot of 1934, The ‘Successful’ Brazilian Fascist Coup Plot of 2016

‘In December 1933, retired US Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, winner of two Congressional Medals of Honor, toured the country on behalf of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was urging WWI veterans to organize in order to win the benefits promised to them after the war. Butler apparently believed that the American Legion was controlled by Wall Street financiers, and he believed that veterans were better served by the VFW than the American Legion. In fact, Butler once proclaimed that he had never “known one leader of the American Legion who had never sold them out–and I mean it.”
In November 1934, Butler testified to a congressional subcommittee that representatives of powerful industrial interests and the American Legion were trying to induce him to lead American Legion veterans and other ex-WWI soldiers in a campaign to lead a military coup d’etat against President Roosevelt.’
Read more: Historical Comparisons: The ‘Foiled’ U.S. Fascist Coup Plot of 1934, The ‘Successful’ Brazilian Fascist Coup Plot of 2016