Seward Bishop Collins (April 22, 1899 – December 8, 1952) was an American New York socialite andpublisher. By the end of the 1920s, he was a self-describedfascist.
Collins was born inAlbion, New York, on April 22, 1899, to anIrish Catholic family. His father Herbert was involved early on in the development ofUnited Cigar Stores, a chain that would eventually grow to over 3,000 locations.[1] He graduated fromThe Hill School inPottstown, Pennsylvania, and then fromPrinceton University.
Collins entered New York's literary life in 1926, as a bon vivant. He knew many literary giants of his day, had an affair withDorothy Parker, and amassed a large collection oferotica. His bookstore, The American Review Bookshop, was at 231 West 58th Street inNew York City. It carried many journals, broadsheets and newsletters that supportednationalist andfascist causes inEurope andAsia.
In 1936, he marriedDorothea Brande. A man of independent wealth, Collins published two literary journals,The Bookman (1927–1933) and thefar-rightAmerican Review (1933–1937).[2]
Collins was infatuated with the writings of prominenthumanists of his day, includingPaul Elmer More andIrving Babbitt. Politically, he moved from left-liberalism in the early 1920s and eventually away from More's and Babbitt's humanism to what he called fascism by the end of the decade. InThe American Review, he sought to develop an American form of fascism and praised Italian dictatorBenito Mussolini and German dictatorAdolf Hitler in an article titled "Monarch as Alternative", which appeared in the first issue in 1933. In that essay, Collins attacked bothcapitalism andcommunism and heralded the "New Monarch," who would champion the common good over and against the machinations of capitalists and communists. His praise of Hitler was grounded in his belief that Hitler's rise to power that year heralded the end of the communist threat, as is illustrated by this excerpt:
One would gather from the fantastic lack of proportion of our press—not to say its gullibility andsensationalism—that the most important aspect of theGerman revolution was the hardships suffered byJews under the new regime. Even if the absurd atrocity stories were all true, the fact would be almost negligible beside an event that shouts aloud in spite of the journalistic silence: the victory of Hitler signifies the end of the Communist threat,forever. Wherever Communism grows strong enough to make a Communist revolution a danger, it will be crushed by a Fascist revolution.
In a 1936 interview that he granted toGrace Lumpkin in the pro-communist periodicalFIGHT against War and Fascism, Collins stated, "I am a fascist. I admire Hitler and Mussolini very much. They have done great things for their countries." When Lumpkin objected to Hitler's persecution of the Jews, Collins replied, "It is not persecution. The Jews make trouble. It is necessary to segregate them." Collins also called for the revival of amonarchy andfeudalism in the United States.[3]
The American Review ran articles by many leading literary critics of the day, including theSouthern Agrarians, who, though hardly fascists, accepted a Northern publisher for their anti-modern essays. Several of them came to regret (and renounce) their relationship with Collins, however, after his political views became better known. One of them,Allen Tate, wrote a rebuttal of fascism for the liberalThe New Republic. Nevertheless, Tate remained in contact with Collins and continued to publish inThe American Review until its demise in 1937.
In addition to featuring essays by many critics ofmodernity,The American Review also became a vehicle for spreading ideas associated with Englishdistributism, the supporters of which includedG. K. Chesterton andHilaire Belloc.
Collins and his wife, aspiritual medium[citation needed], were actively involved withpsychic phenomena during the 1930s.[citation needed] Their circle of friends includedW.H. Salter,Theodore Besterman and Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, all of whom were affiliated with theSociety for Psychical Research in London.[citation needed]
Collins is remembered primarily as a fascist editor and publisher who detested both capitalism and communism and counted many pre-War writers as his friends or colleagues. His essay "Monarch as Alternative" appears inConservatism in America Since 1930, a collection of essays byconservative writers published byNew York University Press in 2003.
A 2005 biography of Collins,And Then They Loved Him: Seward Collins & the Chimera of an American Fascism, argues that he was never a real "fascist." This book, which is based on Collins's actual papers and letters, as well as hisFBI file, argues that Collins was in fact a distributist who inexplicably calledagrarianism "fascism". The book concludes that Collins then became a kind ofscapegoat after 1941 when many other members of the American social and intellectual elites were eager to distract attention from their own flirtations with fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet his praise of Hitler and Mussolini testifies to his beliefs, at least during the 1930s.
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