The circumstances surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, are not without precedent. That you haven’t heard of an earlier attempt than Donald Trump’s to establish authoritarian rule in the U.S. is due not to the fact it failed, but because corporations that create high school text books choose not to mention it.

By 1920, Republicans had been in the minority for 10 years. When their control of Congress was achieved and Warren Harding was elected president in 1920, they set out to undo Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to carve lasting peace from the ruins of World War I. They weakened the League of Nations by refusing to join, choosing a foreign policy of isolationism from world affairs.

Capitalist ventures boomed. Nine years of reckless economic activity ended with collapse of the stock market. During the next five years, banks failed, U.S. unemployment reached 20%, and this Great Depression had spread across the globe. When President Herbert Hoover could find no means of ending the economic collapse, the Democratic candidate prevailed in 1932. President Franklin Roosevelt offered the people a “New Deal.”

Republicans in Congress, conservative justices on the Supreme Court, and business leaders opposed New Deal programs that would ultimately create 3 million jobs, as well as initiatives to improve the circumstances of desperately poor people.

The historic scene thus set, here is the largely dismissed historic event that unfolded.

The Nov. 20, 1934, issue of the New York Post headlined, “General Butler Accuses N.Y. Brokers of Plotting Dictatorship in U.S.; $3,000,000 Bid for Fascist Army Bared; Says He Was Asked to Lead 500,000 for Capital ‘Putsch’; U.S. Probing Charge.”

Highly decorated Gen. Smedley Butler was a well-known officer, having led successful Marine military campaigns in the Caribbean, Central America, the Philippines, and China.

In 1930s Britain, many in the ruling class favored alliance with Germany against the Soviet Union. In Germany, business and industrial interests supported Adolf Hitler, assuming they would be able to control him.

Butler revealed that here in the U.S. there was a big business plan to take over the government in Washington. A spokesperson for the plotting group, Gerald MacQuire, said that if he so chose, Roosevelt would be allowed stay on in a role like that of President Paul von Hindenburg in Germany. An executive secretary would be in charge. Butler was told to expect formation of a large organization to support the plot from behind the scenes.

The establishment-controlled press ridiculed Butler’s story, but in August 1934 there appeared a conservative organization made up of Democrats and Republicans called the Liberty League. Prominent members were executives of such corporations as J.P. Morgan Bank, DuPont Chemical, Phillips Petroleum, General Foods, General Motors, and Sun Oil. The League’s purpose, the press was told, was opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal and preservation of their fortunes.

MacGuire was quoted, “We need a fascist government in this country … to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America.”

Butler was told the League wanted him to lead 500,000 veterans in a coup to overthrow Roosevelt. J.P. Morgan banking interests favored having the more authoritarian Gen. Douglas MacArthur lead the coup.

It chanced that in retirement Major Gen. Butler had begun to question the soldierly role he had been ordered to play by the government, that as a military leader he had been used to subdue democracies and advance U.S. imperialist interests. He would soon publish a book titled “War is a Racket.”

He would not go along with the request, instead taking the information he’d been given to Congress. The plot was acknowledged by House Un-American Activities Committee Chairman John McCormick of Massachusetts, but no arrests were made.

When their chosen leader of a fascist rebellion refused, the plan unraveled and those promoting revolt denied involvement.

On Jan. 6, 2021, we experienced an effort to steal our state’s electoral ballots. Riot leaders sought to substitute fake electors from seven states in order to select the loser, Trump. The official ballots were alertly hidden from the plotters. Prominent persons were involved and are now being prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Take no solace in the 1934 and 2021 failures to establish fascism.

The current plot is ongoing. Republican-controlled legislatures in many states have used gerrymandering and voter suppression rules to control future voting and the counting itself. The clock is ticking on the last days of our democracy.

Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an investigative journalist and historian currently editing his newest work, “Breaking the Silence: Revisioning the American Narrative.”