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Franklin the Fascist
Much of D’Souza’s treatment of the FDR administration and the New Deal is dedicated to comparing it to fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This is to be expected in a book dedicated to proving that the roots of the American left lie in fascism/National Socialism. After all, the New Deal and its effects on the country remain the primary legacy with which supply-siders, right libertarians, and the like must deal.
What’s curious about D’Souza is the extent to which he will excoriate FDR for things that could be fairly laid at the feet of Lincoln – but because Lincoln was a Republican, they are ignored or excused. D’Souza writes, “The Leviathan government we have now wasn’t all FDR’s doing, but it was started by FDR. Before him, we had economic liberty as a constitutional right. After him, we didn’t.”[1]
To start with, it’s a truth nearly universally acknowledged that the expansion of federal power began not with FDR but with Lincoln, who used the power of the federal government to crush the secessionist movement. This is to be expected – the Republican party was a party of concentrated federal power at the time, including the use of this power for the abolition of slavery.
Moreover, as dewy-eyed as D’Souza and his cohorts wax rhapsodic economic freedom, it’s an unfortunate fact of history that the U.S. right through the period of World War I operated with an overwhelmingly protectionist economy, setting high tariffs to prevent cheaper imported goods from outcompeting with domestic goods. You can say what you want to about protection as an economic policy, but what you can’t say is that it even closely resembles free trade. Republican governments and Democratic governments imposed tariffs. Curiously, the current noise about tariffs is being made by the Trump administration.
Not once does D’Souza consider the idea that FDR might have done the things he did as president, whether justified or not, because he truly believed that they were the best things for the country. In this regard – not to mention his similar attacks against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – he is guilty of the same behavior he blames the left for of impugning the patriotism and good intentions of Trump.
To further prove that FDR was a fascist, D’Souza brings up his relationship with Hugo Black, a onetime KKK member, senator from Alabama, and eventually Supreme Court justice named to the court by FDR himself. Needless to say, Black, like all pro-segregation politicians, is a highly problematic figure. That said, it’s also important to remember why FDR cooperated with Black and other Southern Democrats in the manner D’Souza alleges.
While Democrats were a majority in the legislature, they were not on board with the New Deal – particularly among the Southern wing. Avoidance of the race issue was the price that FDR paid for the Southern wing’s support for the New Deal. It’s reasonable to believe that this was a deal that FDR made with the devil. At the same time, it’s easy to think that from the comfort of not being in the situation.
Humorously, D’Souza writes, “Not until 1954, when Republicans controlled the presidency, the House, and the Senate did they finally eliminate the exclusions that denied many blacks Social Security and other benefits.” As stated before, D’Souza offers no citation here to check his assertion, but it’s reasonable to assume that he is referring to the Brown decision, which while limited to outlawing segregation in education ultimately was extended to all publicly provided services. It’s humorous because one of the nine Supreme Court justices who vote unanimously in the Brown case was Hugo Black. Conveniently, that’s a fact omitted by D’Souza.
Finally, D’Souza indicates that FDR was a fascist and racist for interning Japanese Americans during the war but not German or Italian Americans, at least to the same extent. It should be clear that there is no justification for interning any American regardless of their ethnic background. Italians and Germans were interned, but largely only foreign nationals, which is what countries do with foreign nationals in times of war.
In closing out this chapter, D’Souza details how, in his opinion, the left has sought to conceal FDR’s complicity with fascism. He lays much of the responsibility at the feet of FDR himself for changing his tune regarding fascism, citing an April 1938 message to Congress by the president. However, D’Souza doesn’t mention just how much had changed between the beginning of FDR’s presidency by then. First of all, Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia and Italy had been expelled from the League of Nations. Further, Hitler had annexed Austria and begun to press for the Sudetenland. On top of all that, the Spanish Civil War had been raging for two years.
The rest of the blame D’Souza lays at the feet of historian Ira Katznelson. Here he does provide citations, although they are to the wrong book (D’Souza’s quotes from Katznelson come from Fear Itself, and not from When Affirmative Action Was White). Nor does D’Souza quote Katznelson faithfully.
D’Souza writes that Katznelson uses the phrase “most profound imperfections” to refer to FDR’s administration overall, with its “racist and dictatorial tendencies.”[2] In fact, while Katznelson uses the phrase, he uses it to refer to the New Deal, not the overall administration.[3] Nor does Katznelson actually use the phrase “rotten compromise,” as D’Souza claims. Rather, Katznelson quotes the phrase as used by Avishai Margalit.[4] This is sloppy scholarship, to be sure.
Back to the Present
In his eighth chapter, D'Souza returns to the Trump presidency. Here, he turns his fire on the holy trinity of the left -- academia, Hollywood, and the media -- which he says operate as a veritable "state within a state," undermining Trump's legitimacy. This, D'Souza tells us, is a recent development ushered in by the student protest movements of 1968 and codified by progressive Gleichschaltung.
In his discussion of the academic left, D'Souza identifies three key villains: Heidegger, Marcuse, and Soros. Marcuse, we're told, was one of the group of Jews around Heidegger to absolve Heidegger of his Nazi sympathies. The treatment of Marcuse is wrapped up in an analysis of the Frankfurt School and Adorno, particularly the latter's The Authoritarian Personality and the former's theories of fascism being rooted in fascists' sexual repression.
This is entertaining stuff when viewed through D'Souza's puritanical lens. It's also amusing given D'Souza's apparently predilections for adultery and felonious behavior. He does descend into a fairly disgusting Pink Swastika-style characterization of the Nazi Party as tolerant of homosexuality, which has some basis in truth, at least in the early years of the movement.
Presumably, D'Souza attacks Marcuse because he represents the underlying philosophical principles of the New Left, which drove much of the student unrest of the 1960s. He's actually on relatively firm ground in his analysis but spins out of control when he attacks Trayvon Martin and Black Lives Matter and characterizes Bill Clinton as engaging in "predatory behavior," this from a confirmed adulterer.
Most objectionable is D'Souza's treatment of Soros, which repeats the oft-repeated of Soros as collaborator with the Nazis in 1944 Budapest. Even if what is alleged about Soros were true, nobody who has not been in that particular position is any place to judge his actions. Certainly, D'Souza has not been.
The last, short chapter of this book is a list of suggestions of how we can "de-Nazify" the progressive fascists of today. Rather than address his "points" here, I suppose I should acknowledge that, since starting this series of posts, we were "lucky" enough to have a genuine demonstration of fascism in the United States last week in Charlottesville, Va. We should be clear who the fascists are at this point, Trump's equivocations aside.
There's an enormous difference between a group of very young, perhaps misdirected people who organize and are willing to use violence because they are at fear for their lives and a group of presumed adults who come almost uniformly from highly privileged backgrounds and who rally beneath identifiable symbols of hatred to protect that privilege. That anyone would draw an analogy between the two is like agreeing with the abusive husband who blames his wife and says, "She makes me hit her."
D'Souza's whole book is dedicated to such an undertaking. Thankfully, he is getting pushback from progressives more than Jonah Goldberg ever received for his book. Dinesh D'Souza, meanwhile, soldiers on. Perhaps if his current book tour comes my way, I'll ask him some of my questions in person.
[1] Dinesh D’Souza, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left (Washington: Regnery, 2017), Loc. 3242.
[2] Ibid, Loc. 3308.
[3] Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Norton, 2013), 7.
[4] Ibid, 486.
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