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David T. Beito, professor of history at the University of Alabama and keeper of the blog Liberty and Power at the History News Network, discusses his book (with co-author Linda Royster Beito) Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s madness, his Justice Department’s witch hunt against those who opposed the New Deal regime and march to war, FDR’s direct and personal use of the IRS to persecute dissenters, widespread opening of mail, rumors of actual fascist threats to the Roosevelt administration, the role of Martin Dickstein, the only U.S. Congressman proven to have been an actual KGB agent, in spreading the “brown-shirt under every bed” meme, the Old Right anti-New Deal coalition, the persecution of Edward A. Rumely, the bogus mass sedition trial during WWII, the distance between the America First Committee and the pro-Nazi types, the Communists repeated flippa-floppas back and forth on the war question and hard core support for sedition persecutions and the foundations of the modern police/imperial state in the Roosevelt years.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:52 — 9.1MB)