A film by Encyclopedia Britannica from 1946. It asks viewers to gauge where their communities lie on the scale of democracy vs. despotism, and points out that key indicators are concentration of wealth and power, civil liberties and freedom of the press, and respect for others. Especially pertinent today.
(Thanks to MGRIS for posting this.)
These ideas were expressed in film by public servants who were still connected to FDR and the New Deal, mostly anti-Fascist ideas, including how economic stratification lays the groundwork for fascism.
Despotism in America was NOT just a fantastic theory of "black helicopters" before they existed. There were strong political forces demanding Despotism in the US and an end to the Constitutional system and Bill of Rights, a way to solve the "problem" of democracy/republicanism by destroying it, permanently and violently.
When Roosevelt came out with an economic plan to compromise with Labor and Unemployed and Poor, and to jumpstart the Economy, a tremendous outrage and a backlash arose from far right, from "Christian" groups, and from pro-Fascist (even pro-Hitler) elements in American business and media, as well as from grassroots "brownshirt" elements who expressed racist ideas about Jews, Blacks, and others.
The sympathetic view was that FDR actually *saved capitalism* -- not destroyed it as some said -- by forcing it halfway to meet the vast majority of working class, and to compromise with Labor Unions which had countered repression by seizing total control over factories. (But the extremist ideologues insist that FDR himself was a Communist, a secret Red, and a "crypto-Jew" for promoting partial wealth redistribution by govt and work programs.
Some of the biggest corp names and families in America -- DuPont, GE, GM, ALCOA, Standard Oil -- tried to organize a fascist coup around Gen. Smedley Butler and the American Legion, to sideline Roosevelt (or oust him) and to install a military dictator as Roosevelt's "helper", to do the will of Wall Street. USMC Gen. Butler exposed the Bankers' Plot. Congress launched an investigation, but weakly. The media suppressed the scandal and ridiculed Butler's allegations.
It's hard to comprehend how FDR gathered the Left wing political forces he needed to implement the changes he instituted, and to sustain them or most of them, for as long as he did. The New Deal worked. Astonishing that FDR even instituted stringent banking reform, such as Glass-Steagal, which was not overturned until the 1990s, leading into these recent speculation booms on dot-coms, real estate, and speculation on commodities such as $150 oil and rice famines.
