It is rarely mentioned today (Ken Burns, for example, erases it from his history of the Roosevelts), but the initial framework for what was to become the New Deal was influenced not by any left-wing vision but actually by Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's "corporate state." The Democratic Party was never a left-wing party and never approached the politics of even some of the mildest of the European social democratic parties. Recent calls by liberals and Repugglydems for a 'New New Deal' should be curbed with the full extent of this knowledge....
It's also surprising that Burns makes little of Marine general Smedley Butler's testimony before Congress that major corporate magnates had approached him to lead veterans in a rightwing movement and take power forcefully, something along the lines of Mussolini's infamous 192,2, March on Rome. See Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR (New York: Skyhorse, 2007).
