Don't forget
many Progressives. left and right
were fascinated with Fascism and Progressive leaders desperate
to get out of the Great Depression looked at their big gov't ways for guidance
Of course and for good reason, the people tried to distance themselves from their early fascination with Fascism with the war and the aftermath.
For example
FDR said:
There seems to be no question that [Mussolini] 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.
Comment in early 1933 about Benito Mussolini to US Ambassador to Italy Breckinridge Long, as quoted in Three New Deals : Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939 (2006) by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, p. 31
I don't mind telling you in confidence that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.
Comment on Benito Mussolini in 1933, as quoted in Three New Deals : Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939 (2006) by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, p. 31
Mussolini himself praised the New Deal as following his own corporate state, as quoted in a July 1933 article in the New York Times,
"Your plan for coordination of industry follows precisely our lines of cooperation."
Which makes sense since the NRA, with its regulations and industry organizations, was nothing more than another creature of the left- corporatism.
Two fascists leaders admiring FDR's economic policies
Funny how that works...
No need to thank me