Informing the Right-Wing’s Public Opinion of FDR

The Great Depression as told by Internet memes –

Public opinion of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the twenty-first century is extremely varied and often uninformed. Right-wing republicans and conservatives have accused FDR as a socialist, communist, and fascist. Famous right-wingers, such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and their followers have also consistently blamed the former president for unnecessarily expanding the federal government and installing social programs they believe cause modern economic problems in the United States. In his book A Concise History of the New Deal, Jason Scott Smith addresses and corrects common right-wing criticism of FDR by providing a detailed historical account of the events that cause most controversy and sufficient information that explain why “voices of opposition are discredited.”

Smith adds to the common belief that the 1929 stock market collapse began the Great Depression by faulting excessive capitalism for the collapse. By explaining the economic crash as the collapse of capitalism, he solidifies the idea that the New Deal was FDR’s solution to fix capitalism while simultaneously discrediting modern right-wing belief that FDR’s New Deal diminished capitalism (Smith 2)

Right-wing critics of FDR have forgotten the ineptitude of Republican President Hoover, who only worsened the economic crisis

Right-wing critics of FDR have clearly forgotten the ineptitude of Republican President Hoover, whose lack of action to avoid expanding the federal government only worsened the economic crisis at the beginning of the Depression. Through the use of FDR’s public speeches and Eleanor Roosevelt’s private comments, Smith essentially claims government expansion was necessary for a democratic, capitalist United States to survive. He explains that FDR equated the economic crisis to a wartime crisis, during which times it was necessary to expand the reach and power of the federal government (Smith 32). By viewing uncontrolled capitalism as the enemy in the economic battle that was the Great Depression, Smith simultaneously makes FDR’s logical reasoning for expanding the government easy to understand and shows why Hoover’s ideas to combat the Depression failed. Making these assertions is needed to convince small-government favoring right-wingers that government expansion produced by the New Deal was necessary and helpful. The assertions that expanding the government was necessary and effectual also are needed for Smith to tackle accusations of FDR being communist and fascist.

Accusations of FDR being both fascist and communist simultaneously are enough evidence to prove right-wingers are either misinformed or uniformed. Communism and fascism have some similarities, but, depending on the type of political spectrum used, the two ideologies are opposite. This “Political Spectra” chart provides two spectrums displaying how communism and fascism are similar and opposite. This chart, when analyzed with Smith’s account of FDR, should inform right-wingers that FDR was not communist or fascist. According to Smith, FDR’s reforms are both radical, according to his opposition at the time, and reactionary as his reforms were in direct response to the Great Depression. On the radical-reactionary scale, Smith places FDR in the middle as liberal. On the authoritarian-libertarian scale, Smith still places the former president as liberal by examining FDR’s belief that “necessitous men are not free men” and the government should ensure and protect the things that provide the needs of individuals as found in the Second Bill of Rights.

FDR’s script on his Second Bill of Rights

Rush Limbaugh, a favorite television/radio host among right-wingers, believes FDR’s proposed Second Bill of Rights is socialist legislature. As a favorite show host, Limbaugh is a type of spokesperson for the right-wing making his opinion and judgment of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights representative of the general right-wing public opinion. Limbaugh believes that only the economic market can determine peoples’ rights to earn sufficient wages enough to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation, meaning “what [people] earn is nothing more than our value.” With this translation, Limbaugh is himself determining who in society is important based on worth and devalues those who currently lack the ability to earn sufficient wages. According to such a translation, Limbaugh’s approach to politics and economics is, ironically, more fascist than FDR’s ideology. Smith’s arguments clearly pose FDR’s New Deal as an equalizer for the American people ensuring value of every person by protecting individual human rights (Smith 172).

Rush Limbaugh’s approach to politics and economics is more fascist than FDR’s ideology

Another television and radio host right-wing representative, Glenn Beck, blames FDR for taking away Japanese-American’s rights by putting them in internment “prison” camps during World War II. To counter this, Smith explains that FDR’s advisors spearheaded many of the now most controversial programs and encouraged the president to agree to things whether or not he was decidedly comfortable with a particular program (Smith 50). Smith also explains that leaders of the public works organizations built the internment camps thinking they were helping in the war effort. While FDR ultimately signed off on the construction of internment camps and the relocation of Japanese-Americans, Smith argues FDR was not the mastermind behind the internment camps and the project was approved only because of the changes made to New Deal policy to prepare for war.

Right-wing criticism of FDR has become a popular topic of debate particularly for comparing President Obama to FDR. Smith’s pro-New Deal stance throughout his book makes FDR’s approach to the 1930s depression eerily reminiscent of President Obama’s approach to the 2008 economic recession. Being informed by Smith’s account of FDR and New Deal history would encourage twenty-first century right-wing Americans to embrace Obama’s social reforms.

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For further reading:

“Republican’s Latest Talking Point: The New Deal Failed” – New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/opinion/12mon4.html?_r=0

“FDR’s Failed Moral Leadership” – American Conservative    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fdrs-failed-moral-leadership/

“A New FDR Emerges: Historians, Teachers, Authors Take a Fresh, Sometimes Critical, Look at Roosevelt” – Prologue Magazine at the National Archives   http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/winter/fdr-emerges.html

(This one has numerous charts and versions of the political spectrum showing the relationships between communism and fascism among other things)                    “Redefining the Political Spectrum: The Rational Spectrum” http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/redefining_the_political_spectru.htm

Klan Ideology in the Conservative Party

MacLean’s descriptions of Klan ideology could easily be read as descriptions of modern conservative ideology

Though Nancy MacLean does not suggest the potential rise of a fourth Ku Klux Klan in her book Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, the “right conditions” or symptoms of social change that she describes as bringing about the rise of the second Klan are also found with some variations in the twenty-first century indicating the potentiality of a fourth Klan. MacLean provides extensive explanation for the resurgence and prevalence of the Klan in the early twentieth-century, which are also applicable to twenty-first century society. According to MacLean, the Klan’s return in the 1920s was the result of a rapidly emerging new social order and its prevalence the result of masses of white, middle-class Protestants fearing changes in society. The “right conditions” for the second Klan’s emergence are a combination of economic trouble or changes, “the rise of divorce, feminism, black radicalism, white racial liberalism, and the postwar strike wave,” most of which are similar to the current conditions (MacLean 33).

MacLean explains early in the book that communism was one of the greatest fears after World War I among Americans who would later join to become the second Ku Klux Klan. Likely a lingering sentiment of the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, politically conservative Americans in the twenty-first century still fear communism and socialism, which can be seen in their propaganda claiming Obamacare is socialized medicine. Conservatives are more irrational and radical than their political counterparts in their fear-based actions and beliefs during wartime or terrorist events. Just as the 1920s Klan “sought to deny political rights to those whom they perceived as threats to [American capitalist power],” conservatives, who are most often Christian, seek to prevent Islam from becoming a well-established religion in the United States because they perceive Muslims as a threat after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The second Klan and twenty-first century conservatives both believe that they have a “right [or] obligation to patrol the moral standards” of society (MacLean 112). The Klan feared the growing resources for African-Americans as well as the lawlessness of their children and children not their own. Conservatives’ protests against equality for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community is the twenty-first century example of the belief in their right to control the morality of society. According to MacLean, the Klan believed that a “hierarchical family was the basis and guarantor of ordered society” and anyone opposed to the traditional family is an enemy of Klan society (MacLean 118). Conservative protest against LGBT equality is the modern equivalent of the Klan attempting to control societal morality. Conservative reactions to LGBT activism often dehumanize members of the LGBT community, a tactic used by the Klan to “loosen inhibitions against aggression” (MacLean 117).

Propaganda from a Conservative webpage on 24 April 2015 shows conservatives aversion to immigrants

MacLean’s vivid and exhaustive descriptions of Klan ideology and contradictions are reminiscent of modern right-wing ideology and its contradictions. Xenophobia is still a common characteristic of politically conservative people, though primarily now a fear of homosexuals, immigrant Hispanics, and Muslims rather than Jews and African Americans like the second Klan. Ironically, conservatives have accused Islam as being “as racist as the Ku Klux Klan” and thus “incompatible with American values” while themselves dehumanizing gays and determining Hispanics to be unworthy of American citizenship.

The way MacLean phrases her descriptions of Klan ideology could easily be read as descriptions of modern conservative ideology. The similarities are so obvious that it seems MacLean’s purpose for writing the book is associating modern conservative ideology with the Klan. MacLean is not alone in making the association between conservatives and the Klan. The New Haven Register has likened Fox News Channel, the typical choice news channel among conservatives and republicans, to the Klan. Other reporters have called out Louisiana politicians and the general Republican population for adopting the Klannish attitudes and principles of previous State Representative David Duke. Because of the shameful stigma surrounding the Klan, such accusations are quickly refuted.

Though very small Klaverns continue to exist today, their attempts to adapt their ideologies to attract other right-wing extremist groups have not been very successful due to the stigma. For the same stigma-related reason, conservatives are more likely to join non-Klan affiliated right-wing extremists. The Klan’s stigma is currently the only thing hindering a fourth Klan from emerging as a powerful political or terrorist force in the twenty-first century.

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***Due to the nature of this assignment, significant information regarding the Klan/Conservative Party similarities and relations has been left out. The following links are for further reading if you are interested in other information I researched: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/organizations/ku-klux-klan,

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/item/19981-obama-tax-policy-shows-bias-against-stay-at-home-moms,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/anti-gay-groups/,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/29/hurricane-sandy-gays-same-sex-marriage-obama-romney_n_2038781.html,

https://thatdevilhistory.wordpress.com/tag/ku-klux-klan/

Final Closure for the Triangle Fire

As I was reading Von Drehle’s book Triangle: The Fire that Changed America and doing research for the essay on it, I found some rather recent news concerning the fire. The book goes into great detail describing the funeral procession through New York City for the 6 remaining unidentified bodies from the fire. (Apparently there were more than 6 bodies remaining, but some were identified in the last moments before the funeral) The recent news piece about the fire described the scene, “Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers turned out in a driving rain for [the] symbolic funeral procession sponsored by labor unions and other organizations, while hundreds of thousands more watched from the sidewalks.” 

In 2011, the 6 unidentified bodies from the fire were finally identified. The process of identifying the bodies This recent news concerning the Triangle fire conveniently surfaced around the centennial anniversary of the fire. You can read the full New York Times article here.

From left, Max Florin, Fannie Rosen, Dora Evans and Josephine Cammarata were among the final six unidentified victims of the Triangle Waist Company factory fire of 1911, which killed 146 and influenced building codes, labor laws and politics in the years that followed. Source: “100 Years Later, the Roll of the Dead in a Factory Fire Is Complete,” Joseph Berger, New York Times, 20 Feb. 2011

“Crime of Carelessness”

I found this while doing research on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and thought it was interesting and rather entertaining. “Crime of Carelessness” is a 1912 silent film from Thomas Edison Inc. that is supposedly a response to the tragedy of the Triangle fire in 1911.

Flames of Feminism in the Triangle Fire

The Triangle fire was the dramatic event the feminist and labor movements needed to bring about reform

Throughout his book Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, David Von Drehle uses personal stories from notable female activists as well as victims and survivors of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City to explain that multiple events worked collectively to bring about women’s suffrage and workers’ safety reform. As suggested by Von Drehle, the fire, workers’ strikes preceding it, and the involvement of young progressive politicians and women activists in the investigation and ensuing trial were together the catalyst for the “rethinking of the place of women in society” and “a new model for worker safety in American mills and workshops” (Von Drehle 267). Workers’ strikes and women’s protests gained participants quickly for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century labor and feminist movements respectively, however both movements were slow to be effective in bringing about social and political reform. The Triangle fire was the dramatic event the feminist and labor movements needed to bring about reform. Von Drehle uses Alva Belmont, an activist in one of his strike stories, to question the effectiveness of both social movements.

Suffrage propaganda / Alva Belmont reported in newspaper

If women stressed the goals of the feminist movement more than those of the labor movement both movements could have gained success more quickly

After giving up her house to pay the bail of several young women strikers who were arrested for their strike activities, Alva Belmont once claimed to a reporter, “There will be a different order of things when we have women judges on the bench. Let me assure you, too, that the time is not far away when we will have women judges” (Von Drehle 77) Perhaps if women stressed the goals of the feminist movement more than those of the labor movement both movements could have gained success more quickly. The feminist movement’s primary goal being women’s political representation through suffrage was more important to middle-class women than the working-class women who were dually concerned with labor rights. Still, as Von Drehle makes clear with his extensive use of personal accounts from women, women’s involvement in the labor movement was essential for its success since women made up a significant portion of the workforce in early twentieth century New York City. The presence of women’s labor unions, such as the WTUL and ILGWU, and women activists, such as Alva Belmont, in protests and strikes “brought gender visually into the communal response.” Both movements were ultimately successful because the two social movements had similar goals (ultimately the protection of women and all citizens whether it be political protection through representation in voting or physical protection in workplace safety). Women involved in the labor movement would acknowledge women’s particular vulnerability but specifically “stressed the need to protect all workers from the potentially hazardous environment of the shops.”
Though the initial aftermath of the Triangle fire focused more on labor issues rather than gender issues, women were still the central focus as they made up the majority of witnesses in the trial of factory owners Blanck and Harris. Women gained equally as much political recognition as labor activists as women’s labor and feminist organizations began flourishing and growing in numbers in the aftermath of the fire and trial.

The Triangle Factory fire became a significant event in women’s history as women were the primary actors in the events surrounding the fire. Modern women have recognized the fire’s significance in women’s history and continue to be the primary sponsors of public remembrance of the event. Recent poetry published concerning the Triangle fire recognizes the importance the fire had on women’s history. The modern poets writing about the fire have very little in common with the ethnic women garment workers of New York who experienced the historic fire except that they are working women. Perhaps it is women’s experiences from second-wave feminism in the 1960s-80s and the current third-wave feminism that make them sympathetic toward the women affected by the Triangle fire and its preceding strikes. The collective memory of injustice and oppression of women workers surrounding the events of the Triangle fire is a testament to the strength of feminist identity.

Education as Entertainment

“That reminds me of a song!” is a frequently used phrase in my family. Sometimes the phrase becomes “that reminds me of a movie.” We enjoy relating everyday things and life events to pop culture. Since everyday life for me is school, school, and more school, I will often think of such little things as they relate to my studies.

For example: The early chapters of Von Drehle’s Triangle were significantly focused on feminism as it affected the labor movement. As middle-class women (primarily focused on women’s suffrage) became involved in the labor movement in Triangle, I kept thinking of Disney’s Mary Poppins with Mrs. Banks chanting “Votes for women!” and her song “Sister Suffragette”. I did go to YouTube and listen to the song.

However, another suffrage video that automatically played after it was far more amusing to me as it combines a little education and a little pop culture (even though it wasn’t a “that reminds me of a song!” moment). Maybe the video is really an example of entertainment prompting education and learning (I suggest this because I actually want to learn more about women’s suffrage after watching the video). But I think it shows that education can be entertaining (which may have been a tiny debate in my early 20th century America class this week). Anyway, I hope you find it equally as brilliant and hilarious as I find it.

Entertainment can be educational. Education can be entertaining.

Two Classes, One Subject / Early Thoughts

We are nearing the end of the first full week of the quarter. I’m currently reading David Von Drehle’s Triangle: The Fire that Changed America for History 465 (Early 20th century America). Apart from the prologue, there’s been no real mention of the infamous fire at the Triangle Waist Company in 1911 New York City until I had finished chapter four. It seems much more focused on the labor movement, but the first thing I really noticed in the book was the significant amount of feminist activities in the NYC at the time. So far, it appears to me that first-wave feminism fanned the flames of the labor movement in the early 20th century. I suppose it’s not necessarily a surprising fact, but I did find it interesting in comparison to the material read in History 467 (Vietnam, Watergate, and after…or just 1960s-80s). For Hist 467 I read two reviews/articles on Daniel Rodgers’ Age of Fracture and found feminism addressed in conjunction with another social movement, this time second-wave feminism and the Civil Rights movement. The book is not all about feminism. From my interpretation, Age of Fracture focuses on the current splintered nature of society and the blurriness of power, individuality, etc. that followed as a result of significant changes in politics and economics affecting society and vice versa from the 1960s or 70s to present day. But I considered the real focus of the book and attempted to apply some of the ideas.

The macroeconomics found earlier in the 20th century, being focused more on the welfare of the population, seem to have been a catalyst for the initial ideas spurning first-wave feminism (of which my basic interpretation is that women were not legally represented well enough to meet their needs as a significant portion of the population). The focal shift from macro to micro, or all of society to the individual (in both economics and politics) makes the difference between first-wave and second-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism addressed more personal issues concerning social equality, such as sexuality, reproductive rights, and treatment at the workplace. Like first-wave feminism encouraging the labor movement, second-wave feminism also appears to have encouraged or emboldened the Civil Rights movement as the two movements often had similar equality goals whether it be gender or racially based.

It may just be a coincidence that my assigned readings in both classes involved the feminism and I suspect it is unlikely to be a true theme in either class. However, with the correlation between the feminist movements and other major social movements, feminism easily appears to be a defining feature of the 20th century. But my question from these early readings: What makes feminism so powerful?