Musings on politics, foreign affairs and culture.
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JAN
Liberal Fascism: The Blog
Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized
So apparently there’s a blog to promote the new book.
I avoided the whole kerfuffle over Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, mostly because I haven’t read the book yet. I don’t care about snippets, and would rather give the book a fair shake in its entirety.
With all that being said, here’s my problem with the crux of Goldberg’s thesis:
- The book is clearly not intended to create meaningful or constructive dialogue. I suppose most books aren’t, as the idea here is to sell books. But with that kind of title–essentially correlating Liberalism with statist Fascism–you are obviously pandering to a particular audience that will lap that kind of hyperbole right up.
- I think Goldberg confuses authoritarianism with outright Fascism. The American Left is certainly capable of being intolerant and illiberal, but mostly in how they choose to achieve their ends. But Fascism is a much different “end” than the stated goals of most American Liberals and Progressives.Â
- The kind of Liberal elitism Goldberg warns against–which he links somewhat questionably, it would seem, to the eugenics movement (pull out the Pivot of Civilization quotes)–seems to run contrary to the “fasci” in Fascism. This is not a binding national ideology, but rather, a collection of do-gooder know-it-alls who want to run your life for you. The two are in conflict, since one relies on the people, whereas the other at time spurns them.
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January 9, 2008 -
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Kevin: have you read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom? Goldberg isn’t the first one who think that there’s a link between so-called liberalism and fascism.
Kevin, that is exactly the point. While I’ve also only read snippets it does appear safe to assume that the book is directly written to appeal to a segment of the right which buys this type of argument from the right wing noise machine. It certainly sounds like it falls in the Ann Coulter vein of attack books. I’d be very surprised if this book has anything of value for anyone beyond the true believers.
There are certainly problems with ideologues of both the left and the right and certain analogies towards fascism can be found from either. In today’s political climate, it is even more absurd to level this charge towards the left as opposed to the right.
It is certainly also hyperbole to call Bush a fascist as some on the left do, but the parallels are far stronger than the case Goldberg apparently is arguing. It is the right wing which supported a preemptive war. It is the right wing which supports restrictions on civil liberties while supporting a perpetual war against "terror." It is the right wing which defends wire taps. It is the right wing which supports torture. It is the right wing which has engaged in a 50% plus one strategy of government to try to ignore all opposing views, even from the moderates in the Republican Party whenever possible. It is the right wing which has eroded the checks and balances on executive power. It is the right wing which panders to the religious right to further reduce individual liberty. It is the right wing far more than the left which engages in the type of argument we see from Goldberg in writing off those he disagrees with as fascists.
Michael, have not read it, but I am familiar with the theory. Ron, I agree that the book is kind of a non-starter. I mean, if he creates controversy, people will buy it. That is his goal, I guess. I bought it…damn thing is nearly 500 pages! Why!? Â
Does it take that long to smear people? :)
I tend to think of Jonah as a cautionary tale for today’s youth — here’s what a lifetime of carnival food does to person both mentally and physically.
I also wonder if Giuliani entered the fascism love fest in Jonah’s mind:“Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.â€http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9502E0D91E3DF934A25750C0A962958260
Chomsky(in his linguist clothing, not the socialist) showed in the 50’s — ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’ — that a sentence could be well-formed and still meaningless, but he had never proved the same could not be true of an entire book.
Goebbels had it right about the big lie. Goldberg is similar to Coulter. No matter how ridiculous and foolish he is, he can get it in print and the specified number of right wing book buyers will be standing in line, looking for justification for themselves. A National Socialist (in German terms) is not a socialist, but a racist, an extreme nationalist, a chauvinist about exercises of national power and a long list of of attributes that fit no one as they do Goldberk and his ilk.Goldberg  isn’t simply playing the usual semantic games of the neo-cons and the nutjobs who’ve rewritten our language, he borders on being a holocaust denier. The methods of twisting the truth he engages in were used by the Nazis to justify the murder of the Jews –and of Germany’s communists and actual socialists. The Jews and liberal Germans died at the hands of the Nazis and the German right. The German right financed Hitler. From the beginning right wingers supported him, notably Ludendorff, who but for his fame and service could have faced serious charges. The right saved him.The SPD, Germany’s only socialist party, was forced into exile after a bitter struggle with Hitler. Hitler conflated communism with socialism and set about to destroy both beginning in the immediate post war years. The right has been rewriting our history and that of every other nation to fit their twisted reversal of language. This is an example. "National Socialism" was added to the German Workers Party (DAP) to form the NSDAP. It was pure propaganda just as Goldberg writes. The last gasp of the "workers" disappeared in the night of the long knives when Hitler’s henchmen killed Roehm to solidify Hitler’s alliance with German industrialists and capitalists. The sanctity of private property was guaranteed by Hitler’s manifestos. He talked of a fair shake for workers, but only in a context of a secretly nation girding for war. First of all, Hayek is a conservative icon of the first order, but he is quoted selectively and out of context. There is rarely if ever a mention of his having written a tract, "Why I am not a conservative." Which would make him left? No, Hayek was a liberal and a liberal economist, aka a classic economist. Liberal is free, unfettered. We liberate countries — or did — and we liberalize economies.  He thought there were no conservatives in the United States. He was essentially a liberal economist engaged in a dispute with a neo-liberal economist, Keynes among others, about how to interpret an apparent fallacy of classical liberal economics.Goldberg goes beyond mischief when he claims a secret history of a liberal fascism. The words combined are a contradiction in terms.  He’s been challenged on this before, in the NRO itself,  www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-dieteman030601.shtmlThere was nothing "socialist" about National Socialism in Germany or Fascism in Italy. A liberal democracy has free people, free governments, written constitutions and free markets. Hayek himself felt some of the more rigid laissez faire approaches ignored basic social needs.  National Socialism has a fairly benign meaning outside our understanding of Germany — it simply combines socialism with nationalistic patriotism. That is somewhat contrary to the original concepts which were international.Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf about the Marxists who had seized and perverted the German nation. In the case of Bavaria, it was first the communist who briefly took power, but overall he was talking — and Mein Kampf is quite clear — about both communists and the SDP, which was the party charged with cleaning up the mess made by the German right during the war. In addition to Jews, Hitler killed communists, socialist, anarchists, syndicalist – virtually any kind of "ist." Goldberg’s blurbs refer to Nazi National Health Insurance. Bismarck, a far right monarchist,  instituted national health in 1883 and was also responsible for accident insurance for workers and old age pensions. German workers wanted the stability of the old Germany back and Hitler pretended to give it to them. He needed their bodies for war. When the war was over, German capitalist had profited and banked those profits, through American right-wingers among others. Krupp, Thyssen and all the other famous German magnates somehow made it through what Goldberg claims was  a totalitarian socialist state with their property intact. It wasn’t an accident, as Goldberg knows. A basic reading of Kershaw, Fest, Richard Evans or any other serious historian of Hitler and his Reich demonstrate what an utter and complete farce this fool has written. It gets reviewed with some seriousness — by  American fellow fascists of Goldberg. These are people who wanted end to war crimes trials so they could ally themselves with the German right in their fevered war against what the claimed was sovietism, but in fact was a war to destroy free markets by controlling labor and small capitalists. Goldberg creates a "secret history" from his overheated imagination that seems to keep thinking of ways to twist a work of fiction so that it can become the next big lie. The American right has a big, dark cloud of foulness hanging over it. If there was anything subversive to free thought, free markets and free people, it would be Goldberg and his friends. They are as dangerous as any idiology that has ever sought to undermine the constitution. Stalin would have liked to do it perhaps. But Goldberg and friends have actually done hat Stalin could only have dreamed of. They are destroying American liberalism and freedom.Â