Checkmate, True Leftists

[© tweed]

"FDR was a neoliberal racist warmonger." - True Leftists, probably

The irony is, that's what TNF types really thought in the 1930s.

it all looks well and good now, but the 1930s saw mass labor organization, much of it by people with all sorts of socialist sympathies and memberships, and plenty of organizers loyal to Stalin.

"[Norman] Thomas said Roosevelt has not 'carried out most of the demands of the Socialist platform—unless he carried them out on a stretcher.'"

in other words, FDR was a center-left liberal, and prone to swings in his degree of 'activism':  1936-39 were probably the peak years of the 'left' in FDR's center-left.

[© tweed]

"neoliberal" is a timebound word.  you can't say anybody was a neoliberal or neoconservative prior to, say, the circulation of the Powell memo.  FDR and Truman were liberals, in the true sense of the word: compromisers, who graciously allowed labor a seat at the table, but not to run the show.

nowadays anyone who even pretends to allow labor a seat at the table gets called a communist.  that's some effective corporate indoctrination at work.