Nationalism, he wrote, was the real theme of FDR’s administration and of the New Deal. What Roosevelt was after wasn’t a socialist-style redistribution of income but a redistribution of power: among competing economic and social groups, to be sure, but, most important, to Washington, with the national government guiding the nation in an unprecedentedly direct manner toward the national ends defined by the president. Professor Beer wrote:
Franklin Roosevelt’s nationalism was, first, a doctrine of federal centralization. The principle of federal activism, which some have seen as the principal dividing line in American politics since the 1930s, was introduced by the New Deal. But Roosevelt called not only for the centralization of government, but also for the nationalization of politics.
Interesting, FDR was an economic nationalist, but alot of ideas were borrowed from fascist Italy under Mussolini.