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143�Franklin Roosevelt's Fascist New Deal�Fhis was the standard liberal defense of

the supposedly nght-wing Coughlin. He was�fighting the good fight, so who�cared


about his excesses7�So how did Coughlin suddenly become a right-winger? When
did�he become persona non grata in the eyes of liberal intellectuals? On�this the
historical record is abundantly clear: liberals started to call�Coughlin a right-
winger when he moved further to the h�Coughlin became a�villain in late 1934
almost solely because he had decided that FDR�wasn't radical enough. FDR's less
than fully national-socialist policies sapped Coughlin's�patience#as did his
reluctance to make�the�_.priest his personal Rasputin�Thus it was the govemment's
"duty" to limit the "profits�acquired by any industry." All workers must be
guaranteed what we�would today call a living wage. The�[io time was he ever
associated with classical liberalism or with the�ecqinomic forces we normally
connect with the right.�Senator Huey Long, the archetypal American fascist, is
likewise�often called a right-winger by his detractors#t�But leaving all that
aside, what cannot be denied is that�Long attacked the New Deal from the left. His
Share the Wealth plan�was pure booboisie socialism. His well-documented opposition
to�the actual Socialist Party was entirely cultural and pragmatic,
not�ideological.�"re is no dictatorship in Louisiana.�There is a perfect democracy
there, and when you have a perfect�democracy it is pretty hard to tell it from a
dictatorship."33 Oddly�^ut the most glaring similarity between Nazi Germany, New
Deal�America, and Fascist Italy wasn't their economic policies. It was�their
common glorification of war.�THE FASCIST NEW DEALS�The core value of original
fascism, in the eyes of most observers,�as iits imposition of war values on
society. (This perception#or�The chief appeal of war to social planners isn't
conquest or death but mobiliz.ation.�Free societies�are disorganized. People do
their own thing, more or less, and that can be�downright inconvenient if you're
trying to plan the entire economy�from a boardroom somewhere. War brings
conformity and unity of�purpose. The ordinary rules of behavior are mothballed.
You can get�things done: build roads, hospitals, houses. Domestic populations�and
institutions were required to "do their part."�Many progressives probably would
have preferred a different organizing principle,�which is why William James spoke
of the�moral�equivalent of war. He wan�He wanted all the benefits#Dewey's "social
possibilities" of war#without the cnsts�Hence. in moi�Hence, in more recent
times,�the left has looked to everything from environmentalism and global�warming
to public health and "diversity" as war equivalents to cajole�the public into
expert-driven unity. But at the time the progressives�Roosevelt's inaugural�iBss
was famously drenched with martial metaphors: "I assume�^Hesitatingly the
leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to the disciplined�attack
upon our common problems."�The chief motive among social planners was to get young
men�out of the mainstream workforce. The public arguments tended to�emphasize the
need to beef up the physical and moral fiber of an embryonic new army.�FDR said
the camps were ideal for getting youth�U1J'^"*~ ^- - #-- -## m^ ^tuupa w^Aw *�.wui
lui goi.uug yuuui�"off the city street comers." Hitler promised his camps would
keep�youth from "rotting helplessly in the streets." Mussolini's various�youth
from "rotting helplessly in the streets" Mussolini's various�wries"#the "Battle of
the Grains" and such#were defended on�similar grounds.�A.second rationale was to
transcend class baniers, an aspect ofthe�program that still appeals to liberals
today. The argument, then as�now, is that there are no common institutions that
foster a sense of�tme collective obligation. There's merit to this point. But it's
interesting that�the Nazis were far more convinced of this rationale�than�the New
Dealers, and it informed not only their Labor Service proNew York was nearly�shut
down by a Blue Eagle parade�in honor of "The President's NRA Day."�A member of the
British�Independent Labour Party was horrified by such pageantry, saying it�made
him feel like he was in Nazi Germany.�The Philadelphia�Eagles football team was
named in honor of the Blue Eagle. A hunNot surprisingly,�victims of the Blue Eagle
received little sympathy in the press and even less quarter�from the govemment.
Perhaps�the most famous case was Jacob Maged, the forty-nine-year-old immigrant
dry cleaner�who spent three months injail in 1934 for�charging thirty-five cents
to press a suit, when the NRA had insisted that�all loyal Americans must charge at
least forty cents. Because one of�ecause one of�the central goals of the early New
Deal was to create artificial�scarcity in order to drive orices up, the
Agricultural Adjustment�Administration ordered that six million pigs be
slaughtered.�Boundful crops were left to rot. Many white farmers were paid not�to
work their land (which meant that many black tenant farmers went�hungry). All
ofthese policies were enforced by a militarized govemment.�In urban centers the
plight of blacks was little better. Bv erantin&�tflPcollective bargaining powers
to unions, FDR also gave them the�power to 1nck blacks out of the labor force. And
the unions#often�viscerally racist#did precisely that. Hence some in the black
press�It's ironic that in the 1930s it was far from out-of-bounds to call�the New
Deal or FDR fascist. Yet for the two generations after World�War II it was simply
unacceptable to associate the New Deal with�fascism in any way. This cultural and
political taboo has skewed�American politics in profound ways. In order to assert
that the New�Deal was the opposite of fascism#rather than a kindred
phenomenon#liberal intellectuals�had to create an enormous straw man out�of the
modem conservative movement. This was surprisingly easy.�Since "right-wing" was
already defined as anti-Roosevelt, it did not�ake much effort to conflate the
American right with Nazism and�us, fior example, liberals portray American
"isolationism" as a distinctly conservative�tradition, even though most
of�the�leadiing isolationists associated with America First and similar�eauses in
the 1930s and 1940s were in fact liberals and progressives,�including Joe Kennedy,
John Dewey, Amos Pinchot, Charles Beard,�J. T. Flynn, and Norman Thomas.�The myth
of right-wing fascism only began to unravel decades�itei- thanks to an unlikely
figure: Ronald Wilson Reagan, a fonner�Roosevelt Democrat. In both 1976 and 1980
Reagan refused to retraet his opinion that�the early New Dealers looked favorably
on the�pQlicies ofFascist Italy. In 1981 the controversy was renewed when�then-
President Reagan stuck to his guns. "Reagan Still Sure Some in�New Deal Espoused
Fascism," read the headline of a Washington�Post article.54 Reagan's refusal to
back offthis claim was a WE�This kind of skewed rationale gets to the heart of
liberal fascism.�Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has
become an ideology�of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles�
don't matter. It also highlights the real fascist legacy of World War I�and the
New Deal: the notion that govemment action in the name of�"good things" under the
direction of "our people" is always and�everywhere justified. Dissent by the right
people is the highest fonn�of patriotism. Dissent by the wrong people is troubling
evidence of�-^ent fascism. The anti-dogmatism that progressives and fascists |
�alike inherited from Pragmatism made the motives of the activist the j�only
criteria for judging the legitimacy of action. "I want to assure j�you," FDR's
aide Harry Hopkins told an audience of New Deal activists in New York,�"that we
are not afraid of exploring anything�,within the law, and we have a lawyer who
will declare anything you�want to do legal."56�The Nazis promised�to make people
feel they belonged to something larger than themselves. The spirit�of "all for
one, one for all" suffused every Nazi�pageant and Darade.�"At the heart of the New
Deal," writes�William Schambra, "was the resurrection ofthe national idea, the
renewal of the vision�of national community. Roosevelt sought to pull�This has
been the liberal enterprise ever since: to transform a democratic republic�into an
enonnous tribal community, to give every�member of society from Key West, Florida,
to Fairbanks, Alaska,�that same sense of belonging#"we're all in it
together!"#that we�allegedly feel in a close-knit community. The yeaming for
community is deep and human�and decent. But these yeamings are often�misplaced
when channeled through the federal govemment and imposed across a diverse�nation
with a republican constitution.�This�was the debate at the heart of the
Constitutional Convention and one�that the progressives sought to settle
permanently in thek favor. The�An^ yet ever since the New�Deal, liberals have been
unable to shake this fundamental dogma�that thp ftotpi can be the instmment for a
politics of meaning that�transforms the entire nation into a village.�. FDR
believed in America and the�Americ?in way of life#or at least he firmly believed
that he believed�in them. He still stood for election, though he did violate the
tradi-rfn that presidents�only serve two terms. He respected the system,�though he
did try to castrate the Supreme Court. He was not a tyrant,�though he did put over
a hundred thousand citizens into camps on�the theory that their race could not be
tmsted. There are good arguments to be had�on all sides of these and other events.
But one thing�1C dear: the American people could never be expected to countenance
tyranny for too�long. During wartime this country has historically done whatever
it takes to see�things through. But in peacetime�the American character is not
inclined to look to the state for mean:no and direction.�Liberals have responded
to this by constantly�'�

searching for new crises, new moral equivalents of war.�

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