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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2324 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 24, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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FDR’s USA

Interesting how the wiki entry for the National Industrial Recovery Act makes no reference to fascism despite it being part of FDR and the brain trust's inspiration for the act.

Man, fascism used to be hip and happening.

Where can I read more about this? None of the related articles have anything to say on the subject.

Where can I read more about this? None of the related articles have anything to say on the subject.

Various critics were deriding FDR as fascist within his first year in office, yet that NIRA article mentions none of it. Herbert Hoover was a prominent critic and wrote 2 anti-New Deal books in 1934 and 1936 specifically pointing out the parallels.

In the part about critics from the left:

Richard Hofstadter noted that critics from the left believed "that the NRA was a clear imitation of Mussolini's corporate state".[35]

There is this line in the criticism of FDR article:

John P. Diggins found only superficial similarities between the New Deal and Italian fascism. However, Diggins produced some quotations indicating that Roosevelt was interested in fascist economic programs and admired Mussolini.[49]

Footnote 49:

Early in 1933, Roosevelt told a White House correspondent: "I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman". In June 1933, Roosevelt wrote to Ambassador Breckinridge Long in Italy about Mussolini: "There seems no question that he is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and to prevent general European trouble". John P. Diggins. Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (1972). Princeton University Press. pp. 279–281.

I haven't read the book by Diggins, but it sounds interesting.

This article by Codevilla talks about it some, but he doesn't cite sources.

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