The New Deal

STREAMING VIDEO
2 Class Sessions

No set of government policies more fundamentally changed American life than Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Today virtually every American will use one of the streets, highways, bridges, schools, hospitals, post offices, libraries, military bases, courthouses, public housing projects, hydroelectric dams, hiking trails, prisons, jails, or swimming pools that were created by New Deal agencies. Almost all Americans are part of the Social Security program and tens of millions have received welfare payments as a result of New Deal legislation. Few are aware that New Deal agencies built much of the military arsenal that was used by the United States to win World War II and establish the U.S. as the preeminent global superpower. Because of these accomplishments, Franklin Roosevelt is widely considered to be one of the greatest presidents in American history, and the New Deal continues to be the apotheosis, the touchstone, and the dream of American progressivism.

Opponents of progressivism hold a very different view of the New Deal. They point to the fact that in the first years of the Roosevelt administration, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and many Nazi and Italian fascist leaders praised Roosevelt as a “heroic” and “great dictator” and the New Deal as kin to fascism. Anti-progressive critics argue that the New Deal and European fascism grew from the same ideological roots, and produced strikingly similar policies. 

In this two-part live interactive webinar, historian Thaddeus Russell examines the history and legacy of the most influential American political movement of the twentieth century and presents an argument that the New Deal and European fascism were inherently linked and created national cultures that, if not identical, bore the resemblance of siblings. 

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