America's leading intellectual fascist ...

... was an African-American who passed as white. University of Houston history professor Gerald Horne's book, The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States, reveals that the now mostly forgotten man who was a friend of white supremacists and helped popularize and give intellectual credence to fascist ideology in the U.S. as a "rational" response to the Depression had been a black street preacher as a boy in Atlanta. Dennis was eventually tried as a Nazi collaborator but the case collapsed when the judge died of a heart attack. Gary Younge has the twisted, fascinating story in the Guardian.

Horne, by the way, has written extensively on race and politics, including Reversing Discrimination: The Case for Affirmative Action and Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950: Moguls and Mobsters