This article was originally published by Joshua Mawhorter at The Mises Institute. 

As a history teacher and an economist, it never ceases to amaze me at the success of certain historical myths (in this case, defined as verifiably untrue beliefs) have come to dominate popular understanding. Often it seems that no presentation of facts to the contrary of such myths are sufficient to dislodge them.

Perhaps one of the most stubborn myths—and other myths related to it—is that Roosevelt’s New Deal policies brought about economic recovery from the Great Depression. (Other related myths would be that the Great Depression was caused by unbridled capitalism, Hoover’s economic non-interventionism, and that WWII pulled America out of the Great Depression because big government war spending stimulated the economy and solved unemployment).

Simply by examining a few economic measures—unemployment, GNP, personal consumption, and private investment—it is obvious that the New Deal was a failure, despite unfounded claims that things would have been much worse without it and/or that FDR’s New Deal provided “hope” (unless we mean the type of “hope” Peter Griffin put in the homeless man’s change cup).

The relevant data regarding unemployment, GNP, personal consumption, and private investment are illustrated below (thanks to Dr. DiLorenzo’s How Capitalism Saved America, pp. 180-185):

Unemployment:

 

GNP:

 

Personal Consumption:

 

Private Investment:

(Higgs, Regime Uncertainty, p. 566)

Though it is not reported that Roosevelt expressed the same sort of self-reflection, Henry Morgenthau—appointed by Roosevelt as governor of the Farm Board in 1933 and had say in many of Roosevelt’s decisions—eventually recognized that the New Deal programs had failed to either lessen or end the Depression. Morgenthau eventually testified before fellow Democrats in the House Ways and Means Committee in 1939,

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong…somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises….I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…. And an enormous debt to boot!” (Morgenthau, as quoted in Vedder & Gallaway, Out of Work, p. 77)

In terms of persistent unemployment, gross national product (GNP), personal consumption, and private investment during the New Deal, there was no economic recovery from Roosevelt’s New Deal. Quite the opposite!

And yet, this failure—which ought to be obvious to everyone—has been so effectively repurposed that, if people “know” anything about this era at all, it is that FDR’s New Deal “saved” American from the Great Depression, brought economic recovery, restored faith in institutions, and gave America hope. The so-called conservatives—savvy enough to applaud FDR—think they escape believing such myths when they declare that big government spending for WWII brought America out of the Depression (which is like the New Deal spending on steroids). This has to be one of the most successful PR moves in history—turning the economic disaster and failure of the New Deal into an unqualified success.

Covid Rebranding

February 26, 2025, a headline in the New York Times reads: “The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth than Anyone Else.” (Remember that this is the same newspaper that said there was no starvation taking place in the Soviet Union).

Five years later, the rebranding of the COVID pandemic is already happening and, unfortunately, showing some success. As people start to forget details, want to forget and stop hearing about covid, and time passes, somehow the government response to covid is starting to be understood as well-intentioned, but imperfect leadership, who did their best with what they knew at the time. I’ve personally read statements from people who lived through covid—and who are still reaping the effects of price inflation, cultural division, and many others—basically saying that the government response to covid was limited successful, that it protected people, that it helped them from being destitute, and that we emerged more united as a country.

This perhaps should not be surprising since the crazy-making propaganda of covid was happening all the way through. The inaccurate rewriting of history was happening in real time, during the events, followed by effective reinterpretation after the fact. Therefore, we should not be surprised that many are being misled.

This is why we need vigilant, consistent, rigorous, evidence-heavy revisionism in real time and afterward. The state elites and its allies already have the power and resources to craft a narrative and the average populace is prone to forget and move one with their lives. Otherwise, the situation defaults—as it did in the New Deal—to telling a false story that portrays the government elites as neutral-to-good, disinterested actors who at least tried to “do something” to mitigate disaster. Instead, we need to make sure people know that these power elites and their cronies were the main problem.

Keep in mind the basics: that the US government had a hand in funding gain-of-function research, the government shut down the economy for years (the longest “two weeks” ever), forced people into unemployment, inflated the money supply and spent at a deficit to pay people not to work with stimulus checks (contributing to the economy we’re now experiencing), created a caste system (political elites, vaccinated/unvaccinated, “essential”/“non-essential,” mask-wearer/non-mask-wearer, etc.), restricted American freedoms and basic rights (while calling them “selfish” for being jealous over any rights), made up requirements and restrictions that proved to be arbitrary, prevented people from needed medical treatments that they otherwise would have received, ignored age and comorbidities, stoked cultural division, accused people of being selfish and potentially murderers, selectively enforced policies, pressured people into taking an experimental medical treatment based on lies (the vaccine prevented transmission, stopped covid, etc.) at the risk of their job and/or ostracization, showed no discernable results between compliance and non-compliance, blamed the American people for the failures of their policies, allowed Fauci to virtually run the country for several years, used government agencies to pressure social media companies to censor dissent—even when it was true!—to combat “misinformation” and “disinformation,” closed down schools, stoked fear, robbed people of time and opportunities that cannot be regained, and much more. Following that, they tried to rewrite history, saying they were just making suggestions, that nobody was forced, that they were just doing their best with what they knew at the time, and then Fauci was pardoned (even though he did nothing wrong).

As someone who lived through covid as an adult and was fired from a job for religious-philosophical and constitutional objections to the vaccine mandates and/or weekly testing, and as a historian who cares about the accurate retelling of history, I have a personal interest in ensuring that Fauci and others do not get the Roosevelt/New Deal treatment in the history books. (An additional note: my personal situation worked out for the best in that I got out of public education at just the right time for me, worked temporarily for UPS, found my way to a great private Christian school, and now teach for a private Christian college online and work proudly for the Mises Institute). We need solid content for the long-term—articles, books, courses, videos, debates, etc.—that provides consistent, evidence-based, well-researched, true revisions of their real-time false, propagandistic revisions. Some works have made a start, such as Tom Wood’s Diary of a Psychosis, but more work needs to be done. In fact, a solid history of 2000-2025 needs to be written.

The New Deal and covid get the historical treatment that they do because they are very convenient myths to justify more power to the state and lend themselves to people who presuppose the validity and beneficence of government intervention. They can always fall back on the, “imagine how much worse it would be without these interventions” argument. They love crises because it gives them opportunities for more power and intervention. The general populace—often ignorant of economics, history, and assuming a neutral-benevolent role for government and the need to “do something”—can easily be misled about history just as they were misled during the events themselves.

Some good news is that, for many Americans, the political elite, its cronies (e.g., Pfizer, etc.), and the establishment media may have overplayed their hand during this period. For those who signaled their moral superiority by “trusting the science” and followed whatever arbitrary requirements—while also thinking that they were the “resistance” and would have stood up to Hitler had they been in Nazi Germany—I don’t know if we can reach those people. However, many Americans woke up to the nature of the state, so-called “public health,” the powers in the unelected “fourth branch” of government (the federal bureaucracies, agencies, and sub-agencies that rule by “regulation”), the dishonesty of establishment media, etc. Let’s use that momentum, even years later, to do our best to ensure that the covid era does not get rewritten like the New Deal did. Or, at least, let’s smash every lie, myth, and misrepresentation.