Category: Fascism in America

• The Business Plot (1933)

  The Business Plot was the allegation, publicly made by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, that wealthy businessmen and political intermediaries sought to recruit him to lead a mass veterans’ movement that could pressure, neutralize, or overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and replace constitutional government with a more authoritarian arrangement. Butler testified under oath to Congress in 1934, and the investigating committee later stated that there was evidence that such ideas had been discussed and might have been put into execution if financial backers had chosen to proceed. The theory’s power lies in the unusual fact that the alleged coup plot was not merely whispered in rumor but entered the congressional record through a nationally known military figure.