How quickly we forget that Mussolini was also Time's "Man of the Year."
Good point. FTA: "America has a dictator," Benito Mussolini proclaimed, watching FDR from abroad. He marveled at how the forces of "spiritual renewal" on display in the New Deal were destroying the outdated notion that democracy and liberalism were "immortal principles." "Roosevelt is moving, acting, giving orders independently of the decisions or wishes of the Senate or Congress. ... A sole will silences dissenting voices." ... "Without question," he continued, the "sea change" in America "resembles that of fascism." Indeed, the comparisons were so commonplace, Mussolini's press office banned the practice. "It is not to be emphasized that Roosevelt's policy is fascist because these comments are immediately cabled to the United States and are used by his foes to attack him."
Both Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany invoked FDR's New Deal as proof that their own programs were, in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's famous phrase, "the wave of the future."
And pièce de résistance: At one point, FDR aide Harold Ickes had to warn the boss that Americans had started to "to unconsciously group four names, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Roosevelt."