I think a few here is fond of the old Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but looking into the actions that he did during the years into the prelude of World War 2 was really interesting. At his behest, he supplied Joseph Stalin and the whole Soviet Union of military equipment and intelligence to prepare for the Nazis. I really don't think that Americans during at the time was on board with supplying another enemy, the communists, with their own handmade products just to hold off the Reich.
Let's not get started with the internment camps he did against Americans of Japanese lineage after the Pearl Harbor attacks, how the Democrats were tight-lipped about it to this day, and the communist project that the former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt did in Arthurdale, Virginia, that was still left untold on how many people died due to starvation on that god forsaken experiment of hers.
FDR was certainly enamored with Stalin, or, “Uncle Joe,” as he called him. At best FDR and his goons like Bill Donovan were far to chummy with the communists. At worst (and more likely) they were in bed with them. Our federal government was lousy with soviet spies during WWII, all the way into the cabinet, and Donovan was responsible for it. FDR and Donovan made sure the OSS gave the NKVD everything they wanted.
And I firmly believe that the remenents of the FDR administration are responsible for Patton’s death. I believe they had him assassinated at the behest of the Soviet Union because he posed a huge existential threat to the USSR and was alleged to be the only man that Stalin was afraid of. FDR, Donovan, Eisenhower, all those big names did more harm than good to the US and it’s interests during WWII.
I understand the argument, but I wouldn't necessarily say that's a good explanation of what went down, and I'm not even sure I'd agree to the concept that he was the most tyrannical. FDR might still have that one beat. Lincoln clearly didn't want to become "King of America" or anything, and neither did any of the Unionists.
Worse, I'd say that the US had basically fallen apart because of the lead-up to the Civil War.
If you want to talk about extreme federal over-reach, James Buchanan asking the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to personally "solve" the issue of slavery by legitimizing the Fugitve Slave Law which absolutely destroyed the concept of State Sovereignty and was pushed by The Slaveocrtic South, not the North. When the decision came down it utterly invalidated the citizenship of any Americans that were considered black, regardless of their actual citizenship status, military service, political position in government, property ownership, business ownership, family lineage, or whether they even met the correct definition of what any particular states actually claimed was "white"... all while citing English Law, which had basically never allowed Slavery in England in the modern era and was the ideological center-piece of the Abolishionist movement. And the invalidation of citizenship wasn't even in the Fugitive Slave Law. SCOTUS just added that in their decision alone!
The idea that SCOTUS could just literally invalidate 100% of your rights and use Federal power to ignore extradition treaties between the states and even unwillingly deputize uninvolved citizens into private slave patrols was fucking maddness and was why the North voted for the Republicans in the first place and told the Whigs and Democrats to utterly fucking eat shit.
When the Republicans made it clear that they had no intention of enforcing an unconstitutional law and an unconstitutional ruling by SCOTUS, it was this that the Slavocrats justified the right of secession. Because the Republicans weren't prepared to abide by the constitution (by enforcing unconstitutional judicial edicts). Thus, they claimed they had the right to leave the union since the federal government wasn't abiding by the constitution.
But that's just it, nor were fucking they. The Slavocratic government didn't give a fucking shit about the Constitution! SCOTUS had basically over-ruled the whole thing and assumed supreme executive power for no apparent reason than the whims of, of all people, James Buchanan!
Of course the country fucking exploded. What the fuck else would have happened. SCOTUS is trash.
Lets also not forget that due to the fuckery of the slave states and Buchanan, we here in Kansas were shooting each other over the issue before it was cool.
You think the accusations of voter fraud were bad in 2020? We voted on whether or not we were going to be a Slave-State or Free, and some counties that only had 20 residents saw over 1,000 votes because of people crossing the state line from Missouri to vote and make us a Slave-State. Pierce (and later Buchanan) just wanted to ignore the very obvious fraud so that they could put it all behind them and get it over with because, like you said, they didnt want to deal with it. Hell, Pierce went so far as to call the Free-State government in Topeka "insurrectionist" against the "true" Slave-State government in Lecompton.
But we decided that this was the hill we were going to die on, and started bringing in guns. Then when the first shot got fired (ironically, by the Pro-Slavery side, much like what would later happen), we started fighting, and fought like mad against the outsiders trying to overwhelm our state. It only stopped because us Kansas digging in our heels and fighting back had caused some other Northern states to start having some "dangerous" ideas and so the South had to start focusing on the National level instead of dealing with one state. Didnt stop the fact that we were locked out of the US Government until the succession happened because it was only at that point that there were finally enough votes to get us in as the Free-State we were supposed to be.
And of course, during the Civil War we were on the receiving end of several revenge attacks by the South, because they directly blamed us as the cause of all of this, since we had the utter temerity to not just lie down and take it when they cheated.
Sounds utterly fascinating. Got any good book recommendations?
None off the top of my head, but they exist since Bleeding Kansas is one of the causes of the Civil War. A lot of it is stuff I learned just from living here, doubly so because I live in the Eastern Kansas, which is where most of the fighting happened. I actually live near the Beecher Church (the abolitionist who brought the guns in). And yes, this is the same Beecher family that wrote Uncle Toms Cabin.
Oh yeah, Bleeding Kansas went on for years as ideological militias actually waged war over it.
I love how the Democrats have always tried to import or expel voters to win elections.
I did a cursory glance at the history of Kansas and the numbers pretty much speak for themselves. Kansas... when it wasn't even a state... contributed 20,000 soldiers to Unionist forces, including the first black unit to see Combat in the Civil War... and 1,000 to the Confederacy. If that isn't a case of "revealed preferences" I don't know what is.
For rural areas, that's absolutely enormous. The population of Kansas in 1860 was listed as 107,000 approximately. That's a little under a 20% mobilization for a voluntary service. Just to be clear how ridiculous that is: 20% mobilization in Hearts of Iron 4 can only be instituted with an edict called: "All Adults Serve".
That's clearly a bunch of Kansans screaming "You fuckers didn't learn your lesson the first time!"
Minor correction, but we were actually just barely a state in time for the Civil War. Our statehood was on Jan. 29, which was a few days after the first round of secession, because many of the Southern Slave states that had been blocking our statehood were no longer there to do it.
But yeah, Kansas gets overlooked a lot in the Civil War due to the fact that we were out of the way enough to not see any major fights. But as you said, we contributed one of the largest armies as a percentage of population of any state, and IIRC we also suffered the most civilian casualties as a percentage due to said Confederate revenge raids. The Sack of Lawrence was so brutal it got the Confederate government to suspend its guerrilla program. Officially, because it was not the sort of brutality they had authorized. Unofficial, I want to believe they heard the 1st Kansas screaming “Do you bastards have a death wish?!” in the distance and feared for their safety.
That would stand to reason, Civilian casualties in the Civil War were vanishingly small. The Battle of Gettysburg incurred only one civilian death by arms, and it was an errant shell that struck a farm-house. The only other places I could see possible statistically significant civilian casualties might be in Mississippi (counter-insurgency against union occupation), West Virginia (insurrection and counter insurgency against Virginia), and Missouri (which I believe was engaged in small scale local conflicts).
It wouldn't totally surprise me. Guerrilla campaigns can spiral out of control quickly, but reprisal attacks have a nasty habit of losing all fucking control together. Even from the Japanese bias perspective of The Rape of Nanking, the commanders basically admit that they lost all command and control once the troops started engaging in executions and looting. They actually report personally trying to restore order against some specific troops that were engaging in wanton destruction, but they admit to loosing so much command and control cohesion that they were left without the ability to even stop the destruction. It is not unheard of for an army to lose all cohesion when sacking a town to the point that there is not ability to command it. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that partisans burned Lawrence and their commanders actually lost control, and then recalled any further operations due to the fact that they weren't sure they could successfully control their own army.
I think things would have been different had he not been assassinated. Though he should have just let the south leave, as they probably would have come back anyway later.
I didn't know John Podesta posted here.
Also, remind me who attacked Fort Sumter?
Neo-Confederate BS.
You should look up what happened to precipitate the attack of Fort Sumter. Occupying a previously unoccupied fort and sending a massive military convoy to reinforce it isn't exactly a peaceful overture.
Dude, the war was 150 years ago. You don't need to keep fighting it. We're allowed to state uncomfortable truths about our side. Or maybe you're unaware:
Nor was seizing the dozens of federal forts around it.
The stupidity of Jefferson Davis, for one.
Incorrect, Lincoln was only sending supplies and informed the governor of South Carolina that this is what he was doing. It was not by Lincoln's orders that Anderson occupied Fort Sumter, which by the way, he had every right to do as it was federal property.
Well then next time state something that's true. Also, it's not 'my side'. I'm European. I think it was political malpractice for the British and French not to have backed the Confederacy, as that led to the rise of the American Leviathan. I'd much rather have two, maybe three or four Americas that are constantly at each other's throats.
And you fell right into the trap. I knew you were going to cite that latter. Apparently, you were unaware that as he was writing that, he was also drafting the Emancipation Proclamation, waiting for an opportune moment which came after Antietam. That letter was only an assurance to Northern conservatives who would think that he is making the war about abolition and not preservation of the Union.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a military move, not a humanitarian one. Lord Dunmore and Admiral Cochrane both used similar proclamations during the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812, respectively. Lincoln just had the added complexity of assuaging Loyalist states.
Honestly, it was a complete disaster, from a humanitarian perspective. The Union columns had no ability or interest in helping these "freed" slaves, and it's estimated a quarter of them died of starvation and disease. But it did help sow chaos into southern states, both economically and socially, so it accomplished it's purpose.
As to his views on it, he seemed mostly Jeffersonian. On one hand, slavery was unnatural and wrong, but on the other, whites and blacks could not coexist on the same functional level.
Still can't. They should be sent back to their natural habitat, and left to live as they will.
It was justified as a military necessity, as POTUS does not have the power to free slaves as a 'humanitarian move'. But only someone completely unfamiliar with Lincoln's long record of opposition to slavery could be fooled by that - and his subsequent support for abolition.
Until very late in his life, yes.
He did have the power to provision his military to be able to assist with the humanitarian crisis he created, though. It wasn't just "justified", it was the only purpose. Foment rebellion, decrease productivity, and inspire fear.
Which is completely logical. He may have had the raw resources and manpower, but he fought a far more determined enemy. It was a good play.
As I said, only someone wholly unfamiliar with Lincoln's public and private statements over the years would think that Lincoln did not care about slavery. He flip-flopped on secession (having supported it in 1848), but one thing he never changed his mind on was slavery.
He was more of a fascist, who could probably out-Mussolini Mussolini.
If you look at the Fascist Manifesto, it's spooky just how Progressive it is.
FDR deeply admired Mussolini and fascism.
FDR on fascism: "It's the cleanest … most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious."
FDR was arguably the most authoritarian President that the U.S. ever had.
https://mises.org/library/three-new-deals-why-nazis-and-fascists-loved-fdr
In terms of harm committed to the nation, only Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society policies can be said to be more disastrous than FDR's policies.
https://ammo.com/articles/lbj-great-society-war-on-poverty-welfare-state-helped-ruin-black-communities
I know all about Lincoln's authoritarian acts, I just think FDR still narrowly wins the title because FDR held overwhelming power for a much longer time and FDR didn't even respect the two term tradition that every other President respected.
It's a good thing communists never allied with fascists to invade Poland or this comment would look silly.
The USA-USSR alliance ended immediately after WW2. What's your point?
Not really, just the easiest to take out. The Soviet Union was never going to be an easy victory, and with the United States defending the Fabian Socialists, there was no real chance of anyone really defeating her quickly.
This is the only intelligent comment in this entire thread.
ArchVile is a self-admitted fascist. You're a self-admitted communist. Both of you butthurt bitches agreeing in this very thread. I guess history does always repeat itself.
I am? Then you can clearly show where I 'admitted' that.
Back on the KiA days. Ive been in this community a while now
Checkmate, atheist.
Fascism is just communism with the illusion of private property and the propaganda telling you to hate a different out group than the wealthy.
It's not even the illusion of private property.
Fascism is "Communism in Practice", because "Communism in Theory" flies in the very face of human nature.
FDR would have never went to war against Germany or Italy where it not for Japan and Pearl Harbor.
FDR admired fascism and the fascists admired him.
I agree that Mises does have a slant on certain issues but here that is not the case.
Wasn't that office set up after Pearl Harbor?
I agree that FDR did have many commies in his inner circle and the man himself had far leftist leanings.
At the same time FDR openly admired Mussolini but he never spoke positively about Hitler.
Isn't it possible that all of these following statements can be true at the same time?
FDR admired the efficiency of Mussolini's fascist regime. FDR praised Mussolini openly. Mussolini praised FDR openly.
FDR used Pearl Harbor as the reason for the U.S. to go to war.
FDR was influenced by a certain wealthy group of influential elites to attack Germany as well as FDR having many communists in his inner circle and FDR being a communist sympathizer himself.
All of these things can be true at the same time.
"Hitler's goal was not 'world domination' but to save Europe from communism" Why did he invade countries like The Netherlands who weren't a threat to them?
He brought it on himself! By invading West Europe he had to deal with Britain and France, he should have just armed his country against the inevitable Soviet invasion instead of attacking Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Since he did, Britain had to get involved and they would do anything to get the US on their side.
"Bolsheviks were actively infiltrating and subverting all of these countries" Evidence?
I think you may be the single biggest moron posting here. So what did your beloved Fuehrer accomplish by starting a war on two fronts, except to bring communism to Europe? His aim, by the way, was to create 'living space' for his race.
Wow, he held a position also held by 80% of the German population, including the Marxist Social Democrats who crushed the Spartacist Uprising.
It was nothing of the sort, you're just repeating what you heard at some point. Compare the Treaty of Versailles to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and you will find it far milder. And it was also far milder than what the Germans wanted to impose on the Western allies.
They definitely had no legitimate beef over something that you just made up.
Wow, you managed to get something right. The Greer incident is an example. And FDR was right, by the way.
It makes sense if he had more than two brain-cells, which cannot be said of most people on this thread. Like I said elsewhere on this thread, just as it was political malpractice for the British and the French to not back the Confederacy, as it fatally undermined their position in the world, it would have been similar malpractice for FDR to allow the USSR to be conquered by the Nazis. That would have created a greater power than the world had ever known, which would inevitably create security problems for the US.
Alexander wasn't trying to depopulate Asia in order to replace them with Macedonians. He just wanted to rule them. Now do Generalplan Ost.
And this is also correct, and remarked on by Hitler himself. "Who remembers the Armenians today?" As he was discussing doing a similar thing to the Polish population.
There is a tiny difference between the wholesale atrocities committed by the Germans and those committed by the Allies, and even the Soviets.
Are you serious? Only some of the top brass was hunted down, and of them, some of them were not even punished. Mengele is a great example. (Though I do not know if he was a Nazi ideologue or just a psycho.)
And most people are fine with Germany, incorrectly with my opinion (but not because of the Nazis). So this is a bad comparison.
Note that I didn't claim that "he wanted to take over the world". I did point out that your whitewash was just that.
Meanwhile some US companies such as IBM were working with Nazi Germany.
Pearl Harbor being allowed is plausible.
So we have OP claiming that FDR's great crime was that he helped the USSR beat off the Germans, and here we have a claim that FDR did not care at all about defeating Germany. Which is it? Also, have you heard of something called 'constraints'? A president is not a dictator, and it has often been remarked that Germany did FDR a favor by declaring war, because that would have been quite difficult.
The Italian state apparatus was very incoherent, which makes fascism hard to actually do. FDR easily beats Mussolini.
I guess the main thing is that fascists weren't so hung up on equity.
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Herbert Hoover was true originator of the New Deal, and FDR simply went bigger. Since Roosevelt had to run against the New Deal to get elected, the 1932 Democrat platform looks radically libertarian.
Yup, this is where, I believe, the Leftists co-opted the term Liberal in American history.
The Democrats, progressives, corporatists, and socialists all turned on Hoover and suddenly claimed that he was responsible for the Great Depression for not interfering enough once FDR got in power. They completely memory-holed the 1932 Democratic election
This line is particularly egregious considering how much FDR's policies re-shaped the entire agricultural sector.
I believe this is referred to as "sedition" and "insurrection" nowadays.
FDR was not a Leninist. He was a Democratic Socialist like many of the Fabians.
Fabian Socialists vs National Socialists vs Revolutionary Socialists. That's WW2 in a nutshell.
All of the stuff you're pointing out, is just the stand behavior of Socialists. Roosevelt, like most Leftist intellectuals, admired the Soviet Union and totalitarianism because it fit so well with how to develop a planned economy & society. It's why Maynard Keynes praised totalitarianism and fascism with his theory of money.
Keynesian Economics has probably done the second most harm to the United States after the Sexual Revolution.
I'm kind of amazed at how strong the US has been under it, even regarding the devastation it's caused. Japan's been basically knee-capped and hasn't fucking progressed since the year 2000. Somehow, the US has managed to continue to be strong despite the collapse of the rust-belt, and it even managed to recover from a death-blow of putting 46 million people out of work.
If the US can get out from under Keynesianism, it will basically have a second American century.
You just found out that FDR was a politician?
FDR stole people's gold.
you just realized this?
Nah, a long time ago. It's for the left.
FDR was a National Socialist who sympathized with the commies.
He didn't supply Russia before WW2, that was done after Pearl Harbour.
He did supply Britain with all sorts of goods before the US got involved, he got the USN and USAAF to hunt U-boats near the shores of the US and Iceland and there was Lend/Lease, which was on terms suitable to the USA.
I agree about Eleanor, she was a communist and cheated on FDR quite a few times, mostly with US Marine Corp officers
He praised fascisms but also covered up the holodomor and Katyn massacre and called Stalin a friend of democracy so either loved authoritarianism of all stripes or had zero principals and went with whatever got him what he wanted. He also had polio and we know now that people who had polio in childhood seem to be at somewhat increased risk of being hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder later in life so his brain could of been addled and fucked.
Small but important point. They also did this to other I migrant groups like German's as well. If you were german, the camps were used as a way to scare you I to be uber american.
That's called balance of power. A Germany that conquers the USSR would be a regional hegemon and thereby a threat to America.
Exactly zero percent of the right-wingers attacking him for that have any problem with it. It's an "I hate Abraham Lincoln because he was a racist"-tier argument.
I'm one of those right-wingers that have a problem with it.
Props, but I think it's generally a criticism that is made in quite bad faith. In retrospect, it was a bad policy, as Japanese Americans were loyal to an astonishing extent, but it's easy to second-guess.
Please, the majority of the right isn't even prepared to entertain the concept of racial internment. The only people on the right who would welcome it are the extreme white nationalists. Particularly in regards to Asians.
What if racial internment were necessary for the survival of the country?
There is really no point where that is ever necessary.
There are basically two situations that could seemingly justify it, and you still shouldn't do it because it's a shit longterm strategy.
The worst-case Anschlaus scenario - The vast and sweeping majority of an entire ethnic group, that already lives in your country, and is in positions of power all over the country, are literally attempting to submit assimilate your country into a separate racial supremacist country of a different race, and that country plans on treating you as a racial inferior in your own country.
Even in this absolutely dire case, which I don't think has ever happened before, your primary objective would be for mass repatriation. Your "internment" camps are basically to deport them, not to keep them. And even then, you'd probably be better off partitioning the country if you were being threatened by a larger racialist power.
The other scenario is the Sea People's scenario - There are so many refugees from some land that to even contain them, you have to basically let them colonize some territory, and they keep pressuring you because of some ability to generate more military force than you... as an irregular military force. Again, you would not be interning your own people in this case, even if they were the same race as the invading horde (and I mean that literally). Not only that, you'd want to spend most of your time trying to set the horde against itself by promoting sectarian tensions, and guarding your border better.
Again, imprisoning loyal subjects due to their race alone, is utterly asinine. In particular situations like this, you need loyalists who are aware of the culture and politics of the horde. You wouldn't imprison them, you'd promote them.
All other situations, including colonization, sectarianism, imperialism, terrorism, religious extremism, would require different responses, and literally all of them could still be handled under a standard of individualism, rather than collective punishment.
It really just makes no sense. The hypothetical scenario where internment is a good idea is such an extreme case that it's never happened.
It's like asking: what if you needed to mass execute 75% of your own population to save your country? How that would there even be a cause for such a situation. At some point, the context of the scenario would be so different that a solution like that would be unreasonable compared to, effectively, defeatism or a recognition that you can't achieve your goals practically.
At some point, if "winning" is so unreasonable, then you need to are including as "winning".
The only reason anyone would do this, is because they are a wild-eyed racist like FDR, who was basically seizing the wealth of Asians in California, and then importing black voters into Asian communities to improve his political standing.
I shouldn't have to explain why it's stupid to intentionally racially balkanize your country, but these are the Democrats and Socialists we are talking about.