Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roosevelt dictatorship

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:{{la|1=Roosevelt dictatorship}} – (View AfDView log | edits since nomination)

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This article seems to be a single, large violation of WP:SYNTH framed around disjointed passing remarks and esoteric screeds. The numerous sourcing and weasel word issues only further emphasize the need to swiftly remove this article from the wiki. ~ Pbritti (talk) 05:05, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 06:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 06:16, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 07:22, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment. I did some clean-up on the article ages ago (side note: it never should have been approved for DYK, if you think the current version is bad, it was 100x times worse before with rampant SYNTH and citations that did not actually verify the content they claimed to). The reason I didn't nominate it for deletion myself in 2019 was because the Alpers book ( https://books.google.com/books?id=AaWrbJf3EKcC ) is actually on point, and slightly deeper than random opinion pieces or contemporary news articles, so there's a "real" topic here, if a sliver of one. The ridiculous tag-bombing of the lede is silly - I rewrote a version of that myself, and it's based on Alpers (who was inexplicably removed as a reference since), who unlike all the SYNTHy stuff actually is a reliable source. That said, is it due weight to discuss a brief set of proposals that lasted for like 6 months? For comparison, this is like a separate article on exactly what QAnon was proposing in November 2019-March 2020, and calling it Trump dictatorship or something. I think that there's enough of a "real" topic that it should be merged at worst (we do, after all, cover QAnon and its beliefs), but I agree that for a long time, the article wildly overstated its case (it's not a Roosevelt dictatorship, it's really an article on public attitudes in the 1930s, an era when faith in democracy was wavering). I had taken to ignoring the article due to its extreme messiness, but all the tag-bombing doesn't help the case here. SnowFire (talk) 07:51, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• I've gone ahead and restore the Alpers reference that was inexplicably deleted and some of the tag-bombing. Like I said, this is a real topic, but even Alpers himself is very clear that it did not succeed, so it's an article about something that Didn't Happen but comes up as a What-If sometimes. Maybe the article needs a move more than deletion? Proposals for American dictatorship in the 1930s, idk. The current title is punchy but definitely misleading. I would also be fine with a merge if a good target could be suggested. SnowFire (talk) 08:05, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
• Delete not ever opinion that gets circulated around needs an article in Wikipedia. There is no evidence of real substance here. The substantive issues are much better covered in other articles.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:51, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• Delete I think we would be hard-pressed to find a single U.S president who was not, at some point, accused of dictatorial inclinations by the contemporary press. This article leans hard on such sources, as well as synthesizing. The Alpers's source is fine in of itself but would be better utilized on another article. ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:29, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: this would be at home in an article on something like Dictatorship movements in the United States. This is not the first or the last of these. BD2412 T 07:20, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• I found two more books that go into this in some depth, including analysis of speechwriting notes by Raymond Moley and a discarded draft of an FDR speech to the American Legion. Far from synthesis, it appears that there is genuine historical analysis of how far people were willing to take the idea of having a dictator, and what they thought that it meant. The real problem here is the title. We all know, with the benefit of historical hindsight, that there was not an FDR dictatorship; so the title misleads. But there was genuine political discourse around the subject at the time, and I even turned up a third book that noted how odd that may seem to a modern audience. There is a subject to cover, and political historians have covered it.
• {{cite book|title=The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope|author1-first=Jonathan|author1-last=Alter|publisher=Simon and Schuster|year=2007|isbn=9780743246019}}
• {{cite book|title=FDR and Fear Itself: The First Inaugural Address|author1-first=Davis W.|author1-last=Houck|publisher=Texas A&M University Press|year=2002|isbn=9781585441983}}
• Uncle G (talk) 20:32, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• The article used to discuss Jonathan Alter's work if you check the archives before being removed (not removed by me, to be clear), but disagree with the emphasis on a draft of a speech. Drafts are just that: drafts, aka stuff that did NOT go live, so drawing conclusions from them about what might have been is sketchy. I think we can exercise some editorial discretion and not give Alter's work undue prominence here, I think his beliefs based on the draft aren't really supported by many others. SnowFire (talk) 21:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Potential keep -- If true (and I do not know), it is significant, but it should be called Proposed Roosevelt dictatorship, since it did not happen. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:29, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
• Mild delete -- Recommend adding smaller summary to other pages. Gusfriend (talk) 09:02, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
• Delete title is utterly misleading and SYNTH; other than as political hyperbole and fringe theory, totally WP:UNDUE. No doubt, there is sourcing of discussions during the transition around the expansion of executive power, but nothing that could not easily be covered in Presidential transition of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 09:26, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

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:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.