Someone Should Tell Trump That Fascism’s Out of Style.

I happen to be reading the second volume of William Shirer’s memoir, which covers the first years after he returned to the United States from Europe in 1945. Shirer had been the CBS correspondent first from Berlin until 1941 and then following the Allied retaking of France and the final assault on Berlin.

He became famous when his history of the Nazi years, Rise, and Fall of the Third Reich, became an international best seller after 1960 when the book first appeared.

Shirer was born and raised in Iowa and was a typical, Presbyterian kid from the Midwest. He was politically a liberal within the old time, Republican liberal mold.

When he came back to New York in 1945 he got a job with CBS as a political commentator on their radio network which Edward R. Murrow was beginning to expand with the advent of TV.

Shirer left CBS in 1947 and never returned to broadcast journalism. In fact, he was booted out of CBS because he was considered to be ‘soft’ on Communism and was one of the early media victims of what would be known as McCarthyism which cost hundreds of individuals their reputations and their jobs.

My father was briefly investigated for alleged, Left-wing sympathies but what saved him from any serious difficulties was the fact that he worked for a…