“This is one of the most horrifying, despicable things that I have seen all day. People who post this kind of adulation for this mass murderer — an immensely privileged millionaire dynastic politician, who imprisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent people in military internment camps solely on the basis of their race, who repeatedly turned away Jews fleeing the Holocaust, who sponsored and administered nativist immigration policies and spoke in openly racist terms against “the mingling of Asiatic blood with European and American blood,” whose policies and whose court appointments resulted in some of the worst adverse civil-rights decisions of the 20th century — the man who authorized the firebombing of Tokyo and the creation of the atomic bombs, who spent the 1930s courting votes from Jim Crow Dixiecrats, who repeatedly used federal forces to imprison striking workers during the Depression, who drove Congress to create the House Un-American Activities Committee and who ordered J. Edgar Hoover to begin the massive covert political espionage program which later became COINTELPRO, . . . — people who post this kind of adulation, I say, thinking that they are doing so in the name of liberalism, are white-washing history and excusing the violation of human rights in defense of immense, unaccountable privilege.
Nobody who professes to have even an ounce of concern about social justice or civil liberty should have anything but disgust for the record of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
Chirp Chirp…crickets chirp. Go be a stooge for the Illuminati you jack ass! FDR was the man!!
FDR did not imprison striking workers. On the contrary, when previous US Presidents, including Democrats,
sent in Federal troops to smash strikes (starting with the great Railroad Strike of 1877), President Roosevelt sent his Labor Secretary to tell the bosses to negotiate with the workers (for example, in the famous sit-in strike in 1937 against General Motors).
FDR was undoubtedly an opportunist.
But the real life alternative to Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s was not the 2014 social values put forth
by Rad but the much worse reactionaries who hated the New Deal and anti-fascist WWII. Would you have
preferred a President Lindbergh?
pls go
It looks like this site is growing in popularity: the number of trolls are on the rise.
While that aspect is certainly annoying, at least it's a good thing on the whole that you're reaching more people. Another benefit is that it gives one more public opportunity to address false arguments and illogical opinions that are lobbed at market anarchism. Although, attempting to debate with people who are being intentionally obtuse or willfully ignorant can be an exercise in frustrating futility.
Keep up the excellent work.
Yes, those "reactionaries" who opposed the insane war fervor that was leading America to another useless conflict that resulted in Eastern Europe being controlled by communists.
Charles Lindbergh is a real hero, not a warmongering corporatist like Roosevelt. He would have been a vastly better president.
They were branded "anarchists" during WW1 and "reactionaries" during WW2. but the same old right opposed entry into vietnam. Then they were called "communists."
Red Allover: FDR did not imprison striking workers.
Of course Roosevelt imprisoned striking workers. He also repeatedly used the National Guard and the Army to break strikes. Here for example is Roosevelt doing both during the 1941 UAW strike at North American Aviation (note also the use of threats to use the draft against striking workers, and see also "Prisoners Taken To Fort" in the follow-up story). Here is Roosevelt seizing direct government control over coal mines throughout the U.S. in order to break the United Mine Workers' Strike in 1943, and once again threatening to use the draft in order to coerce striking workers. (In fact he specifically asked for the maximum age for the draft to be raised to 65, so that he could draft older strikers than he had been able to before.) After the passage of the Smith Act in 1940, which Roosevelt signed and enforced, threats and federal prosecutions were repeatedly used against labor leaders. For more on Roosevelt's record on labor, see GT 2008-11-17: A brief history of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 'Friend of Labor.'
Red Allover: But the real life alternative to Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s was not the 2014 social values . . .
"Don't force people into hellhole military internment camps solely on the basis of their race" is not just a "2014 social value." Nor is "Don't turn away Jews fleeing persecution and murder at the hands of the Nazis." There were plenty of people who were aware of how deeply evil the Army's policies were, and plenty of people who objected to it, at the time. Not least those who were being forced into the camps, and those who were being forced back into the incipient Holocaust.
It may be true that other politicians — perhaps including the actual Republican challengers to Roosevelt, and perhaps including purely imaginary Republican challengers (e.g. Lindbergh, who of course only ran in a Philip Roth alt.history novel) — would have also been bad, or even worse, as president. There's no good way to know, since President-for-Life Roosevelt is the one who actually held power during those years, and the one who actually committed those crimes. But let's just grant it for the sake of argument. If so, this is no excuse at all for Roosevelt's despicable actions.
It is, rather, a reason not to celebrate presidents, who are inevitably, regardless of their party and regardless of their professed principles, war-mongers, liars, and the administrators of unrelenting political violence on behalf of the socio-economic status quo.
My recent post The Age of Bronze
Stupid thinks as stupid is. To quote a great American songwriter, namely John Kay of Steppenwolf cica 1968, "Just stick your head into the sand, just pretend that all is grand, and hope that everything turns out okay!"
Sorry, Rad, but here is the real life alternative to FDR's New Deal and the anti-fascist crusade of World War II.
It would have been a big business run America with unions banned, no Social Security, no minimum wage laws, etc.
and a World War against, not Nazi Germany, but Communist Russia.
Henry Ford, the DuPonts, IBM's Watson, Rockefeller & his Standard Oil, General Motors the Morgan banks–all the economic powers that be wanted THAT alternative to be real.
What stood between them and a fascist US was one fearless Democratic Dutchman in a wheelchair or rather the support that fighting liberal received from tens of millions of working class Americans. What hate the rich felt for "that man in the White House"!
Unless you understand that opposition, you don't understand American history.
You know who else hated him? The hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese people who he forced into concentration camps for years, solely on the basis of their race. Try to tell them how World War II was an "anti-fascist crusade;" see how far it gets you.
In any case: let's say things would have been even worse than that without the one superhero Democratic president. Or without the tens of millions. Well, then which is it? The one, or the tens of millions? If the latter, then of course I agree with you that widespread working class resistance to fascism was an important factor in keeping things from getting even worse than they did get. But of course if you have the tens of millions, then you don't need the one. I deny that working class people can only resist fascism, or bring about social change, by means of casting votes for a millionaire
"fighting liberal" President to do it for them, instead of through direct action.
In fact I find this claim ridiculous, deeply classist, and completely at odds with the hard-driving working-class social activism that pervaded the 1930s, and which Roosevelt was as often as not trying to break or contain through legal mechanisms.
can only express itself or succeed at making social change by means of gathering votes to a millionaire "liberal" politician to the Presidency of the United States. In fact I find this claim ridiculous, and deeply classist.
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