Qfyilyi

I have this quote:

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the
regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual
rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order

and I have to consider Franklin Roosevelt’s words above as you apply them to some of the following: King Louis XVI, Maximilian Robespierre, Napoleon Bonaparte, Otto von Bismarck, V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini.

The hint given is to think continuity and change over time. I was wondering if anyone would be able to help me figure out what the quote means in this text.

The quote itself looks pretty simple to me. The author is saying that there are certain people who want to establish authoritarian governments (i.e. governments where a handful of power brokers have control over the regimented masses). The people in favor of these authoritarian governments praise their idea as a "new order" in their propaganda.

The author of the quote then dishes out his own propaganda, essentially saying that it's been done before, and there's nothing orderly about it.

However, since we're talking politics, there could be a lot of hidden meaning here. The term (new) world order means different things, depending largely on whether it's capitalized or not.

I generally define "world order" as a sociopolitical snapshot of the world at a given time. For example, we might think of the Roman Empire world order, the colonial world order or the Cold War world order. When people talk about the New World Order (capitalized), they're generally referring either to the current world order or to the coming world order. There's a lot of conspiracy theory swirling around the New World Order, some of it very sound, some of it wacko.

So if you want to uncover the deeper meaning of the text you quoted, you'll have to do a lot of research and try to put the pieces together.

P.S. Franklin D. Roosevelt said this in 1941, so he was presumably alluding to Germany (and perhaps Italy).

This is a simple conceptual parallel. The quote refers to both hierarchy and regimentation, both of which are largely considered antithetical to American ideologies of individualism and democracy, that each person is their own ruler and can essentially be what they want to be (including a bum who doesn't contribute per say).

Order in the historical context of FDR's time was referring to a dehumanizing treatment of people as means to an end, that everything and everyone was in order, in its place like gears in a machine. Between Fascism and Communism there was a belief that it is both your right, and your duty to work. So goes the joke that to buy groceries in the Soviet Union you needed 3 cashiers, because Communism would make redundant jobs in order to give everyone work. It reduces a persons humanity to the purpose they serve in the system. FDR is saying this isn't freedom. To broaden this beyond what it looks like the teacher was looking for, FDR was also fairly aware of trends in Capitalism that looked almost as heinous, which he fought against.

The other rulers listed are just that, rulers. They used the people underneath them like a resource, which was theoretically what the American experiment was contesting (with the massive exception of slavery, sexism, etc, etc). Of course there are specific examples, like Mussolini and Hitler enslaving out-group and lower caste in-group laborers to build war machines, railroads, whatever. What are generals, i.e. Napoleon, if not the quintessential abuser of human potential? All they see is pawns on a board, means to an end. Pathologically ordered.

The previous answer noticed some of this but seemed confused about what New World Order meant at the time, which makes it hard to appreciate what FDR was saying.

research: John F. Kennedy's speech he gave at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on April 27th

FDR and JFK are talking about the same people