A Marxist criticises FDR
On the 75th anniversary of the New Deal. From James Hajduk.

... the New Deal failed to lift the U.S. out of the Great Depression. There’s also a rather shocking failure to come to terms with New Deal foreign policy with its Wilsonian arrogance, also now on display in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is no accident that George W. Bush invoked Harry Truman, FDR’s vice president [and the only world leader to use nukes, and on civilians], in a speech defending his “war on terror”.

Contemptuous of his superior, Navy Secretary [Josephus] Daniels, a pacific Methodist from North Carolina, he chafed to thrust America into the First World War.

In 1941, the FBI arrested 19 leaders of the SWP [Trotskyite communists] under the provisions of the Smith Act for having the temerity to oppose Franklin Roosevelt’s war. When asked by the prosecutor what form opposition to war to Europe would take, party leader James P. Cannon answered “we would not become supporters of the war, even after the war was declared”. For this thought crime, Cannon and the others were sentenced up to 16 months in prison.

Nazi Germany, FDR — although unwilling to offer any shelter to Jewish refugees — viewed as the resurgence of an unmitigated expansionist menace; much as did Churchill.