|
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning | 
| Author: Jonah Goldberg
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $18.45
You Save: $9.50 (34%)
Rating:  373 reviews
Sales Rank: 597
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0385511841
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.533
EAN: 9780385511841
Publication Date: January 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?
Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.
Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.
Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.
Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a “friendlier,” more liberal form. The modern heirs of this “friendly fascist” tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.
These assertions may sound strange to modern ears, but that is because we have forgotten what fascism is. In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg turns our preconceptions inside out and shows us the true meaning of Liberal Fascism.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 368 more reviews...
 "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made" - Franklin D. Roosevelt January 8, 2008
2470 out of 3051 found this review helpful
And boy, does Jonah Goldberg have himself some enemies.
It was inevitable that the review section for Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" would degenerate into the Mother of all Flame Wars. The advance dislike for this book simmered for months, and now the floodgates for negative reviews are open. I'd advise all potential readers of this book to bear in mind how few of the negative reviews appear to reflect a reading of the book.
For those willing to give Goldberg the chance, he offers the following thesis: that the label fascist has its roots in the governing philosophies of Italy's National Fascist Party and Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) Party. He argues that there has been a false duality created between the Soviet Socialists of the USSR and the socialists united under the fascists in Italy and Germany. He argues that the totalitarian impulse, the philosophy of state control of decisions taking priority over individual freedoms, is the core uniting principle behind these movements, and he argues that the ongoing home of such statism is in what has come to be known as the "liberal" politics of the modern progressive movement. As you can imagine, that doesn't sit very well with the targets of his argument (hence the rain of 1-star reviews).
I'd encourage open minded readers of all backgrounds to read Goldberg's book and address his arguments. I find his conversational and somewhat informal style to be witty and readable. That said, longtime Goldberg fans should know that this is not a book-length "G-File" (the hip and irreverent column he wrote for National Review Online). This is a serious scholarly work, and it deserves to be read and judged as such. Goldberg is attempting to right a historical injustice. This book is not attempting, as many seem to think, to say that all liberals are closet Nazis, but rather that, contrary to popular misconception, it is not conservatism, but liberalism, that traces its roots to the fascists. In some ways it is a book-length extension of the question conservatives sometimes pose to liberals: "If you leave out the parts about killing all the Jews and invading Poland, what specifically about the Nazi political platform do you disagree with?" (That platform is handily provided in the appendix.) After Goldberg's book, this question is much harder to simply shrug off.
Still, one doesn't need nearly 600 citations just to allow conservatives to say "I'm rubber, you're glue" the next time they are called a fascist. Goldberg argues that our focus on the atrocities committed by fascists in Germany obscures the fact that the fascist drive is, to a degree, universal in modern politics. The heritage and institutions of America lead it to manifest itself in a different form here. Whether it is the smothering embrace of the "It Takes a Village" mommy state or, to a lesser degree, the big-government, "compassionate conservatism" of Bush, fascism in the U.S. is well-intention, "smiley face" fascism, but it still looks first to the state, last to the individual.
In the end, that's what I liked best about this book. Yes, it's great to have a 5-pound rebuttal to the next person who tries to use "fascist" as an epithet to end criticism of a liberal program. However, what comes through in the end is not so much Goldberg's hatred of fascism, but his love of liberty. Fascism in all its forms is the enemy of liberty, and recognizing it for what it is will always be a prerequisite for stopping it. Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" clears away decades of obfuscation to allow that recognition in both the past and present day politics. Those who continue to fight for individual freedom will enjoy and appreciate this book.
A sharp look at the seeds of the American Left January 9, 2008
973 out of 1508 found this review helpful
This well researched book reveals what many historians have known for decades - and not spoken about. Namely, the direct connection between European Fascism and the political philosophy of the American Left. What this book reveals is that Communism, Fascism, Socialism and the American Left are all versions of the same general political philosophy and that they have for decades stood in direct opposition to the founding principals of our nation: individual liberty, free enterprise and limited government power.
Collectivism includes many significant variants January 8, 2008
599 out of 971 found this review helpful
While Goldberg's political activism is an important factor in his approach to many subjects, the proposition that organizes this book need not be read as a purely partisan project. He is challenging the conventional mapping of political systems on a geometrical model, that is, left vs right, with all the party allegiances and historical props that those catchphrases tend to suggest. So many casual readers will dismiss his thesis by reducing it to a straw man that would be unfair to him and harmful to themselves.
The dichotomy of ideas organizing his analysis entails a battle between the virtues of liberal democracy and the ideals driving various collectivist political agendas. He's not mixing militarist fascism with class-struggle communism, or identifying either of those totalitarian schemes with the progressivist politics which values state solutions to human problems. These are cousins in the collectivist family, with some similar ideas but not all ideological roots in common.
He is making a specific ideological connection between them, in their opposition to the values of classical liberalism (such as the right to private property, the right to a free market, and the responsible freedom of individual citizens in meaningful, local associations, as de Tocqueville famously observed in America.)
The title "Liberal Fascism" is borrowed from H.G. Wells, which is an interesting source, because his collectivist vision is a progressivist, non-military, trans-national instance of the kind of political thinking on which Goldberg puts his finger. It's utopian in its goal, but Wells is driven by a fear of war between nation states, and by the need to equip people to survive; he understands the principle of T.H. Huxley's ethical evolution as turning around Darwin's survival of the fittest. Government can provide help--like 'universal education'--but it can't avoid the need for competition, which helps a person or species evolve.
Contrast the too-peaceful Eloi and the too-savage Morlocks in the failed future in the 'Time Machine.' While one relies on lawfully peaceful existence without any struggle or pain or spirit (even if such 'communal' peace requires sacrificial victims), the other group has locked itself into the militarist pursuit of death (even if it dehumanizes them).
Though he favors the classical liberalism of the American experiment instead, Goldberg probably likes Wells' positive vision better than he does a utopian communism or militant fascism, even though it's still collectivist.
Jonah seriously tries to reveal the truth rather than obscure it January 10, 2008
338 out of 492 found this review helpful
Jonah Goldberg's first full length literary effort "Liberal Fascism" carefully examines the ways in which the history of fascism diverges from the commonly held myths on the subject. While it doesn't read like a "homework assignment", neither is it typical of his other work where he uses his acerbic wit to delight his fans on the right and enrage his opponents on the left. This is no Ann Coulter book; it's not designed to get anyone's goat. It's a serious work that clearly demonstrates a continuous line of logic from Italian Fascism, and German "National Socialism", straight to the American Left of today.
He so effectively challenges such a fundamental piece of liberal dogma, that his critics on the left will no doubt accuse him of heresy. But such a substantive work is not going to be dismissed so easily. In the end they will have no choice but to actually read the book and attempt to critique it on its own terms. I don't envy them their task. It's such a well documented work that's going to take a true philosophical contortionist to refute it without many obvious and undermining logical contradictions.
By treating the subject seriously he's raising the dialog between left and right, even if some would prefer it otherwise. And years from now this book will be viewed as a cornerstone moment in the political conversation between the left and right. By adjusting the placement of the current political labels, he's revealed a little more of the truth rather than obscuring it, as his more disingenuous critics will certainly claim.
It's a great effort and well worth the read by both his fans and detractors.
 On occasion funny, but mostly just silly and ill thought out January 8, 2008
315 out of 754 found this review helpful
In another example of polemic which might serve as an example of a "how to" guide, columnist Jonah Goldberg adds another salvo in the culture wars with "Liberal Fascism." To his credit, Goldberg can write and maintains a far more serious veneer than the likes of his fellow culture warriors like Shawn Hannity and Bill O'Rilley. Yet despite his often keen sense of humor, Goldberg fails to recognize that the joke is on him, as his whole book looks bizarrely like those he wishes to attack.
In his initial thesis, that many on the left hurl the term fascist with such ease and frequency as to render it meaningless - though he offers little evidence of the second half of his point that those on the left use it to "silence" those on the right, the only political effect the term having had on politics in the last 20 years its jujitsu like use by Senator Al D'Amato to defeat Bob Abrams in NY's '92 Senate race - and then just as quickly uses the word in ways that render it equally fascist. Indeed, Goldberg's logic is often so flawed as to wonder how his editors read his manuscript without giggling.
Take Goldberg's efforts to rebrand the European Fascist states as "liberal." Ignoring the occasional mistakes of facts committed - such as his claim that the Nazi's supported abortion, a strange point since the idea of "choice" was anathema in the Nazi State, abortion being a severely punished crime in most cases - but let us look at the places where he gets his facts correct. Goldberg points out that Nazi Germany offered free healthcare and generous old age pensions, and was therefore liberal, and therefore all liberals are Fascists. Take a moment to consider this - under Goldberg's definition pretty much every state in Western Europe, even those whose leaders he might approve, are thus Fascists (a shock to Lady Thatcher to be sure). Likewise folks like Otto von Bismarck, the 19th Century statesman and conservative by any definition, is transmogrified into a liberal in Goldberg's odd world view. That Hitler, Hirohito, Franco and their ilk more often than not imagined themselves as reactionaries and would be appalled at the liberal label (in WWII the Liberals were the good guys) is another bit of irony which Goldberg chooses to miss.
Part of the problem results from Goldberg committing the same mistake to which he rightly accuses people on the left, misusing language and rendering a term meaningless. While it is true that Fascism is a statist ideology, that does not mean that all statists are Fascists (remember Logic 101, "all beagles are dogs, but not all dogs are beagles"). As an ideology Fascism seeks to dismantle democratic institutions and use the instruments of the state to suppress dissent and is generally militaristic. Thus while Goldberg might correctly point to Woodrow Wilson's imprisonment of those who opposed WWI as Fascist act, Wilson fails in the second test; the Reichstag, not Congress went up in flames. Likewise FDR's internment of the Japanese, while both despicable and racist, hardly counts as Fascist, since the basis was hardly to suppress dissent. Indeed, one might look at FDR as one of histories great anti-Fascists, a man elected in time of national crisis when many, perhaps even a majority, favored some form of authoritarian rule, but who refused such suggestions working instead through the democratic process.
That in turn brings us to the point of Goldberg's book which is the most polemic and absurd. As he seeks to paint every Democrat from Wilson to Clinton with his Fascist brush he skips the Republicans, even as they commit many of the acts which he imagines Fascist under Democrats. Thus JFK's brinksmanship and calls for confrontation with the Soviets fit his definition, but Reagan's like behavior does not. Wilson's suppression of dissent likewise, but dismisses McCarthyism, with the full force of the state used to destroy the lives of American citizens who were deprived of their liberty with a smirk. And of course, George Bush, with his imagined imperium of the "unitary executive" with a right to ignore the democratic will expressed through the legislature, spy on American citizens, and hold them in indefinite detention without access to the courts, is likewise spared criticism.
As I mentioned at the beginning, "Liberal Fascism" is on occasion amusing, even funny. But if Goldberg expects to be taken seriously as a thinker, he has a long way to go. Perhaps the next time he complains about someone calling the National Review a "Fascist rag" that the term in this context is absurd and meaningless as it is through much of his book.
|
|
|
|
Copyright 2008 BetterEditor.net
| |
