(Conspiracy Nation, 4/1/04) -- Some controversy has been caused by cynical mention of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) in a Conspiracy Nation report of March 31, 2004 ("Skolnick: USA In 'Financial Anguish'", www.shout.net/~bigred/Anguish.htm)
In the Conspiracy Nation report, independent investigator Sherman H. Skolnick is reported as calling Roosevelt a "counter-revolutionary." Conspiracy Nation also pointed out that FDR's muched acclaimed New Deal policies did not solve the problem of massive unemployment in the 1930s.
"Rosalinda," a correspondent at the Rumor Mill News (www.rumormillnews.com) web site, writes that Skolnick's "facts are wrong when he says that... Franklin Roosevelt's policies did not help the USA economy.... It is sheerly hallucinogenic to maintain that all the road school dam, bridge, port, hospital, armory, parks building was not a vital key to the USA emerging from the Depression."
The relevant section from the March 31, 2004 Conspiracy Nation report, to which Rosalinda responded, is as follows:
"Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), contrary to misguided belief, did not succeed in turning around the 1930s Great Depression. Yes, there was a flurry of government activity after FDR was elected in 1932. But high unemployment dragged on throughout the decade. Skolnick sees FDR as in fact a counter-revolutionary, whose big talk and frantic legislation did little except ameliorate the discontented masses and fool them into believing something was being done."
Conspiracy Nation stands behind its assertion that high unemployment dragged on throughout the 1930s. See, for example, http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v25n4/cpr-25n4.pdf "Throughout the New Deal era, the median annual unemployment rate was 17.2 percent. At no point during the 1930s did unemployment go below 14 percent."
Respectfully, Conspiracy Nation sees World War II and not "all the road, school, dam, bridge, port, hospital, armory, parks building [projects]" as what at last lifted the U.S. out of the Great Depression. This is not to say that FDR's various infrastructure building projects did no good: they ameliorated the crisis.
In order to understand Skolnick's portrayal of FDR as counter-revolutionary, it's useful to take another look at the former president.
In The Roosevelt Myth, author John T. Flynn asks the reader to take a second look at Roosevelt. Flynn describes "an image projected upon the popular mind which came to be known as Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is the author's conviction that this image did not at all correspond to the man himself and that it is now time to correct the lineaments of this synthetic figure created by highly intelligent propaganda, aided by mass illusion and finally enlarged and elaborated out of all reason by the fierce moral and mental disturbances of the war."
Because there was a war (World War II) going on, there was a rallying around the nation's leader and FDR became mythologized. World War II is over. Let's take a second look at Roosevelt.
Curtis B. Dall, FDR's son-in-law, is one of the relatively few authors who dissent from the prevalent Roosevelt iconography. In FDR: My Exploited Father-In-Law, Dall "portrays the legendary president not as a leader but as a 'quarterback' with little actual power. The 'coaching staff' consisted of a coterie of handlers ('advisers' like Louis Howe, Bernard Baruch and Harry Hopkins) who represented the international banking cartel. For Dall, FDR ultimately was a traitor manipulated by 'World Money' and motivated by conceit and personal ambition." (http://www.rense.com/general27/curtss.htm)
This is not to say that Roosevelt was wrong to encourage improvement of the national infrastructure, Rosalinda's "road, school, dam, bridge, port, hospital, armory, parks building [projects]." The point is, FDR could have done much more. Roosevelt was counter-revolutionary by tossing crumbs to the masses in order to stave off any true revolution. Author H.G. Wells described it thus: "[FDR] is continuously revolutionary in the new way without ever provoking a stark revolutionary crisis." (http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/2/FDR.htm)
Remember, FDR was a "blue blood." His ancestry traces back to Russell & Company (opium and slave traders and founders of Skull and Bones) of which Roosevelt's grandfather, Warren Delano, Jr., was a top business partner. (Bloodlines Of The Illuminati by Fritz Springmeier. Ambassador House, 1999. ISBN: 0-9663533-2-3) It would be nice to believe that FDR was heroic and betrayed his class; the truth points in a different direction, to a canny politician who, like the palm tree, bent but did not break.
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