As the final vestiges of American Capitalism begin to fracture and fall, many recall the Great Depression and the crisis that it created. Into that crisis came Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal which saved America. Though today’s liberals will never admit it, the New Deal was inspired by Italian Fascism, particularly the synarchist element within fascism, better known as “the Corporate State.”
Roosevelt admired Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini a great deal. “'I don't mind telling you in confidence,” FDR remarked to a White House correspondent, “that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.” Rexford Tugwell, a leading adviser to the president, also had difficulty containing his enthusiasm for Mussolini's program: "It's the cleanest … most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious,” Tugwell noted.
At the London Economic Conference of June 1933, Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht smugly told the official Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter that FDR had adopted the economic philosophy of Hitler and Mussolini. Even Hitler had kind words at first for Roosevelt’s “dynamic” leadership, stating that “I have sympathy with President Roosevelt because he marches straight to his objective over Congress, over lobbies, over stubborn bureaucracies.”
It goes without saying that the New Deal was a much milder form of the fascism instituted by Il Duce, but both systems tilted the balance sharply towards the state and away from society. In all of them, government gained power over business and other private interests in the name of and for the people, with the leaders seeking to impose a philosophy of life that subordinated the individual to the needs of the community – as defined by the state.
Overall, the New Deal was designed to pull those parts of the American economy not already controlled by the federal government into its grasp for the purposes of central planning. FDR established an alphabet soup of new federal agencies with the power to regulate specific sections of the economy for the short term goal of to raising wages and prices to push consumer “purchasing power.” FDR made several stabs at establishing corporatism. The first was the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 which was a direct attempt to cartelize industries and unions just like the Italian model, but the courts shot the effort down. The National Recovery Administration later tried the same thing using a different vocabulary. The NRA sought to organize industry into a federally supervised trade association. The term “Code Authority” was substituted for corporation, but it was essentially the same thing. These code authorities had the power to regulate production, quantities, qualities, prices, distribution methods, and other aspects of production and trade. It eventually ran afoul of anti-trust laws and had to be disbanded.
“There seems to be no question that (Mussolini) is really interested in what we are doing,” the president said, “and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced, honest purpose in restoring Italy.”
Roosevelt admired Italy’s Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini a great deal. “'I don't mind telling you in confidence,” FDR remarked to a White House correspondent, “that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.” Rexford Tugwell, a leading adviser to the president, also had difficulty containing his enthusiasm for Mussolini's program: "It's the cleanest … most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious,” Tugwell noted.
At the London Economic Conference of June 1933, Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht smugly told the official Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter that FDR had adopted the economic philosophy of Hitler and Mussolini. Even Hitler had kind words at first for Roosevelt’s “dynamic” leadership, stating that “I have sympathy with President Roosevelt because he marches straight to his objective over Congress, over lobbies, over stubborn bureaucracies.”
It goes without saying that the New Deal was a much milder form of the fascism instituted by Il Duce, but both systems tilted the balance sharply towards the state and away from society. In all of them, government gained power over business and other private interests in the name of and for the people, with the leaders seeking to impose a philosophy of life that subordinated the individual to the needs of the community – as defined by the state.
Overall, the New Deal was designed to pull those parts of the American economy not already controlled by the federal government into its grasp for the purposes of central planning. FDR established an alphabet soup of new federal agencies with the power to regulate specific sections of the economy for the short term goal of to raising wages and prices to push consumer “purchasing power.” FDR made several stabs at establishing corporatism. The first was the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 which was a direct attempt to cartelize industries and unions just like the Italian model, but the courts shot the effort down. The National Recovery Administration later tried the same thing using a different vocabulary. The NRA sought to organize industry into a federally supervised trade association. The term “Code Authority” was substituted for corporation, but it was essentially the same thing. These code authorities had the power to regulate production, quantities, qualities, prices, distribution methods, and other aspects of production and trade. It eventually ran afoul of anti-trust laws and had to be disbanded.
“There seems to be no question that (Mussolini) is really interested in what we are doing,” the president said, “and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced, honest purpose in restoring Italy.”
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