Politics & Power Quote by Henry A. Wallace

Wallace is doing something sly here: he’s calling out fascism not as a uniformed export, but as a shapeshifter that survives by borrowing the local accent. The line about wages not buying goods is a deliberately kitchen-table entry point. Inflation, scarcity, and falling purchasing power are the kind of grievances that don’t need ideology to feel real. Wallace’s warning is that fascist movements can launder their own class politics through a convenient foreign villain, turning legitimate economic pain into anti-American theater while protecting domestic elites and authoritarian machines.

The subtext cuts two ways. First, it’s an indictment of propaganda’s efficiency: you don’t have to fix wages if you can narrate them. Second, it’s a jab at American complacency. By framing “Yankee imperialism” as a cover story, Wallace implicitly argues that U.S. policymakers can’t assume every anti-U.S. slogan is organic nationalism; sometimes it’s strategic ventriloquism. That’s also why the phrasing “learn to speak and act like natives” lands with a chill. He’s describing political mimicry as technique: fascists don’t arrive as outsiders; they naturalize themselves, adopting folk language, patriotic symbols, even anti-imperialist rhetoric.

Context matters: Wallace, a New Deal liberal pushed out of the Cold War mainstream, was obsessed with how economic insecurity becomes the raw material for authoritarianism. The quote is less a defense of U.S. innocence than a diagnostic of how authoritarian leaders weaponize resentment. It’s a reminder that “anti-imperialism,” like “law and order,” can be either a principle or a mask - and the mask often fits perfectly.