From a reader:
Jonah,
I thought of you last night while reading The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 by Sean Wilentz. I was somewhere near the end of Chapter 5, New Morning, when the author was discussing Ronald Reagan’s transformation from a FDR Democrat into a Goldwater Conservative. At some point he mentions a comment or speech by Reagan in which he referred to FDR’s New Deal as having roots in Italian Fascism. It was nice to discover that Reagan recognized early on the similarities between many of the New Deal’s overreaching programs and European fascism.
The author includes this in order to illustrate Reagan’s supposedly unhinged and conspiratorial beliefs that he crafted as a new member of the Right. To be fair I do find Wilentz to be relatively objective. He doesn’t really take a partisan or anti-Reagan approach in the book, but there are bits and pieces of ‘mainstream conventional wisdom’ (i.e. bias) that rub me the wrong way.
Me: Yep, I knew that. Moreover, I discuss it in my book. And, even more importantly, you shouldn’t be reading The Age of Reagan by Sean Wilentz. You should be reading the Age of Reagan by Steve Hayward, a really fantastic book. Wilentz’s may not be bad either, I haven’t read it. But I’ve read enough of Wilentz’s stuff that my hunch is I wouldn’t like it as much as I loved Steve’s.
Anyway, from my book:
The myth of right-wing fascism only began to unravel decades
later thanks to an unlikely figure: Ronald Wilson Reagan, a former
Roosevelt Democrat. In both 1976 and 1980 Reagan refused to retract
his opinion that the early New Dealers looked favorably on the
policies of Fascist Italy. In 1981 the controversy was renewed when
then-President Reagan stuck to his guns. “Reagan Still Sure Some in
New Deal Espoused Fascism,” read the headline of a Washington
Post article.54 Reagan’s refusal to back off this claim was a watershed
moment, though the taboo remains largely intact.
And here’s the footnote, for those interested:
54 Lee Lescaze, “Reagan Still Sure Some in New Deal Espoused Fascism,”
Washington Post, Dec. 24, 1981, p. A7. Reagan was even more straightforward
the previous August: “Anyone who wants to look at the writings of
the Brain Trust of the New Deal will find that President Roosevelt’s advisers
admired the fascist system . . . They thought that private ownership
with government management and control a la the Italian system was the
way to go, and that has been evident in all their writings.” See Steven F.
Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order,
1964–1980 (Roseville, Calif.: Prima, 2001), p. 681; Robert G. Kaiser,
“Those Old Reaganisms,” Washington Post, Sept. 2, 1980, p. A2.