Liberal Fascism (Jonah Goldberg) on C-SPAN2 Book TV @ 10PM Central 1/12/08

Yes. You apparently are.

Please explain to us again why the National Socialist Worker’s Party of Germany, which was democratically elected on a hard-core socialist platform, was not really socialist. And while you’re at, perhaps you can share your wisdom with us on whether Stalin was really a communist.

You are way out of place here among the generally well informed people on this website.

Late-arriving lurkers/posters should note that Goldberg’s BookTV
(C-Span2) presentation on his book can be viewed over the Internet
by punching the “Watch Now” red button at the URL below.

If you have dial-up, you might only get a jerky video display
(like a music video from the 1980’s MTV), but should get a decent
audio feed.

OOPS!

Here’s the URL promised in post 42 for viewing Goldberg’s presentation
over the Internet via RealPlayer pop-up:
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=9028&SectionName=Politics&PlayMedia=No

“Goldberg’s thesis is equally laughable.”

The Nazi National Socialists were not really socialists, eh? Naw, they were right-wing supply-siders who cut the capital gains tax to grow the economy. Yeah, right.

You’re pedantic ignorance is beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed here on FR. You must be a prof at U. of Colorado or something.

I am about 1/3 through the book and it’s bad ass.

Highly recommend it

Thanks. I recorded it on CSPAN, and it was excellent. The only problem was that he talked a bit too fast at times, and many of his points no doubt sailed right over the heads of the people who needed most to hear them. Like that other ignoramus on this thread who refuses to face the fact that the Nazis were socialists.

Yes. You apparently are.

Please explain to us again why the National Socialist Worker’s Party of Germany, which was democratically elected on a hard-core socialist platform, was not really socialist. And while you’re at, perhaps you can share your wisdom with us on whether Stalin was really a communist.

You are way out of place here among the generally well informed people on this website.

:roll eyes: Here's a hint, socialism is *Hegelian*. Do you know what that means? What is the central tenet of fascism? I'll give you a hint, it has to do with the word "fasces".

You have *no* idea what any of these words mean. It's rather pathetic really.

The Nazi National Socialists were not really socialists, eh? Naw, they were right-wing supply-siders who cut the capital gains tax to grow the economy. Yeah, right.

You’re pedantic ignorance is beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed here on FR. You must be a prof at U. of Colorado or something.

LOL... have you ever had a thought that wasn't a talking point?

“You have *no* idea what any of these words mean. It’s rather pathetic really.”

I can look those words up in the dictionary as well as anyone, and in fact I did that once long ago just to kill time. I won’t waste my time again now.

The original meaning of the word “fasces” is as relevant to a discussion of Hitler as the original meaning of the word “Python” is to the popular programming language that now bears that name. They are just names that were arbitrarily applied.

You’re obsession with the original meaning of words is typical of pedants who obsess with irrelevant details and completely miss the “big picture.” According to your kind of “thinking,” the New England Patriots are certainly not a football team because the word “football” refers to a game where the ball is kicked but not carried, as everyone should know. And everyone who disagrees is just ignorant, of course.

I’m about done wasting my time with you. Go ahead and get the last word if it makes you feel better. Let’s see if you can top your earlier gems of wisdom. That’ll take some doing, but I’ll bet you’re up to the challenge.

I can look those words up in the dictionary as well as anyone, and in fact I did that once long ago just to kill time. I won’t waste my time again now.

The original meaning of the word “fasces” is as relevant to a discussion of Hitler as the original meaning of the word “Python” is to the popular programming language that now bears that name. They are just names that were arbitrarily applied.

You’re obsession with the original meaning of words is typical of pedants who obsess with irrelevant details and completely miss the “big picture.” According to your kind of “thinking,” the New England Patriots are certainly not a football team because the word “football” refers to a game where the ball is kicked but not carried, as everyone should know. And everyone who disagrees is just ignorant, of course.

I’m about done wasting my time with you. Go ahead and get the last word if it makes you feel better. Let’s see if you can top your earlier gems of wisdom. That’ll take some doing, but I’ll bet you’re up to the challenge.

LOL... you think you're going to understand socialism by looking it up in the dictionary? Just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber.

The original meaning of "fasces" is extremely important. Do you know why Nazism was called *National* socialism? Again, your smug ignorance is astounding. Fascists were hardly arbitrary in their naming.

The details are hardly irrelevant, unless you think actually *understanding* political ideology is irrelevant. Frankly that's why you're such a sucker for hacks like Goldberg. He throws together a bunch of quotes, tells you what you want to hear and because your mind is such an incoherent muddle you repeat his assertions verbatim.

Like I said, pathetic.

So the derivation of the word “fasces” is more important than the fact that both socialists and fascists (and “liberals” for that matter) aggressively confiscate private property and redistribute wealth? Yeah, right.

We can only hope that people like you, who bury their heads in the sand and deny the clear fact of Nazi socialism, are in the (small) minority. Such blatant denial of reality is no less foolish than denying the holocaust. If your ignorant views prevail, the stage is truly set for a resurgence of Nazism.

Let me just try one more time to hit you over the head with a clue bat. If this doesn’t do the trick, you are beyond any hope.

Why Are We Socialists?
by Joseph Goebbels

We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.

Socialism is the doctrine of liberation for the working class. It promotes the rise of the fourth class and its incorporation in the political organism of our Fatherland, and is inextricably bound to breaking the present slavery and the regaining of German freedom. Socialism therefore is not merely a matter of the oppressed class, but a matter for everyone, for freeing the German people from slavery is the goal of contemporary policy. Socialism gains its true form only through a total combat brotherhood with the forward-striving energies of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is everything, the future, freedom, the Fatherland!

The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions. The sin of Marxism was to degrade socialism into a question of wages and the stomach, putting it in conflict with the state and its national existence. An understanding of both these facts leads us to a new sense of socialism, which sees its nature as nationalistic, state-building, liberating and constructive.

The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. It is beginning to fulfill its political mission. It is involved in a hard and bitter struggle for political power as it seeks to become part of the national organism. The battle began in the economic realm; it will finish in the political. It is not merely a matter of pay, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day-though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform-but it is much more a matter of incorporating a powerful and responsible class in the state, perhaps even to make it the dominant force in the future politics of the Fatherland. The bourgeois does not want to recognize the strength of the working class. Marxism has forced it into a straitjacket that will ruin it. While the working class gradually disintegrates in the Marxist front, bleeding itself dry, the bourgeois and Marxism have agreed on the general lines of capitalism, and see their task now to protect and defend it in various ways, often concealed.

We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces. We have no intention of begging for that right. Incorporating him in the state organism is not only a critical matter for him, but for the whole nation. The question is larger than the eight-hour day. It is a matter of forming a new state consciousness that includes every productive citizen. Since the political powers of the day are neither willing nor able to create such a situation, socialism must be fought for. It is a fighting slogan both inwardly and outwardly. It is aimed domestically at the bourgeois parties and Marxism at the same time, because both are sworn enemies of the coming workers’ state. It is directed abroad at all powers that threaten our national existence and thereby the possibility of the coming socialist national state.

Socialism is possible only in a state that is united domestically and free internationally. The bourgeois and Marxism are responsible for failing to reach both goals, domestic unity and international freedom. No matter how national and social these two forces present themselves, they are the sworn enemies of a socialist national state.

We must therefore break both groups politically. The lines of German socialism are sharp, and our path is clear.

We are against the political bourgeois, and for genuine nationalism!

We are against Marxism, but for true socialism!

We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature!

We are for the National Socialist German Workers Party!

[End of Nazi rant in favor of socialism]

So the derivation of the word “fasces” is more important than the fact that both socialists and fascists (and “liberals” for that matter) aggressively confiscate private property and redistribute wealth? Yeah, right.

We can only hope that people like you, who bury their heads in the sand and deny the clear fact of Nazi socialism, are in the (small) minority. Such blatant denial of reality is no less foolish than denying the holocaust. If your ignorant views prevail, the stage is truly set for a resurgence of Nazism.

Let me just try one more time to hit you over the head with a clue bat. If this doesn’t do the trick, you are beyond any hope.

Just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber.

Apples(socialism) and Oranges(fascism) are both fruit(totalitarian ideologies). As fruit both of them have seeds(i.e. they confiscate private property). Does that mean an Apple is an Orange?

Not that I expect you to understand that analogy(any higher order thinking is obviously beyond you). But I'm sure you'll cut and paste more garbage that you don't understand and that will make you feel better.

I do have one question for you, though. Do you really not realize how ignorant you are? Are you really that stupid? Or are you desperately trying to "win" the argument with all this idiocy?

The issue here is not whether fascism is identically equivalent to socialism, which is the issue you seem to be pedantically fixated on. Of course there are subtle differences. But the major aspects are very similar.

Most notably, socialism and fascism are both *leftist* ideologies. Goldberg is correcting the BIG LIE started by Stalin and mindlessly regurgitated ad nauseum by leftists that communism and fascism are “opposites,” and by implication that fascism must therefore be a right-wing ideology. That lie has infected our political discourse and used for decades as a tool to keep conservatives on the defensive, defending themselves from being compared to Nazis.

It is the socialists and leftists that actually have much more in common with Nazism. Until that point is widely understood, conservatism will be at an artificial disadvantage with modern liberalism.

And, yes, the Nazis were obviously socialists. They were fascists too. The two are not mutually exclusive. One can be conservative and protestant at the same time, for example, but that doesn’t mean that all conservatives are protestants or vice versa.

Is that clear now? Good Lord...

One more point here. I think it is safe to say that all fascists are socialists, but not all socialists are fascists. Communists, for example, are socialists but not fascists. Stalin made that very clear. But off hand I can’t think of any fascists that were not socialists. Socialism is really just the economic aspect of leftism. So that is really just saying that fascists are leftists. And that is what Goldberg is saying — correctly.

The issue here is not whether fascism is identically equivalent to socialism, which is the issue you seem to be pedantically fixated on. Of course there are subtle differences. But the major aspects are very similar.

Most notably, socialism and fascism are both *leftist* ideologies. Goldberg is correcting the BIG LIE started by Stalin and mindlessly regurgitated ad nauseum by leftists that communism and fascism are “opposites,” and by implication that fascism must therefore be a right-wing ideology. That lie has infected our political discourse and used for decades as a tool to keep conservatives on the defensive, defending themselves from being compared to Nazis.

It is the socialists and leftists that actually have much more in common with Nazism. Until that point is widely understood, conservatism will be at an artificial disadvantage with modern liberalism.

And, yes, the Nazis were obviously socialists. They were fascists too. The two are not mutually exclusive. One can be conservative and protestant at the same time, for example, but that doesn’t mean that all conservatives are protestants or vice versa.

Is that clear now? Good Lord...

They *are* mutually exclusive. You don't understand the background of either ideology(or anything else for that matter, you seem to exist only to regurgitate what you're told). Your idea of reasoning is diatribes and assertions. Truly sad.

Do you even know who Hegel was? And how he figures into this?

One more point here. I think it is safe to say that all fascists are socialists, but not all socialists are fascists. Communists, for example, are socialists but not fascists. Stalin made that very clear. But off hand I can’t think of any fascists that were not socialists. Socialism is really just the economic aspect of leftism. So that is really just saying that fascists are leftists. And that is what Goldberg is saying — correctly.

No. None of that is "safe to say". In fact it's amazingly ignorant. The fact that your muses are Goebbels and Stalin has a lot to do with it.

RussP - great input. Thanks. I’ve learned some good stuff from you. Keep up the good work!

“The fact that your muses are Goebbels and Stalin has a lot to do with it.”

Do you know who Goebbels was? He was one of the chief Nazi propagandists, and the clue bat I hit you with (to no apparent effect) was an example of the hard-core socialist campaign literature that got the Nazis *democratically elected*.

Of course the Nazis probably did not believe their own propaganda, nor did Stalin believe his own communist garbage. In both cases, the ideology was a trick to gain power. But we don’t say, therefore, that Stalin was not a communist, nor does if follow that Hitler was not a socialist.

As for Stalin being my “muse,” my point was that Stalin originated the whole notion that fascism is a “right wing” ideology. In declaring ideological war with rival leftists who were gaining momentum, he called them the opposite of communists. His stooges in the West then took the cue and proceeded to label the Nazis as “right wing” fascists. Most of those stooges had praised Nazi socialism prior to that point.

For you to fault me for quoting Stalin in that context is ridiculous. In fact, I’m starting to realize that I’m just falling for your schtick. No one could really as ignorant as you are pretending to be. You are obviously just trying to provoke me. I’ve fallen for it up to now, but I’ve wasted enough time.

You have a habit of referring to writers of the past without quoting or even paraphrasing anything they wrote. Then you chide me for not having read them. If that is not pure and simple pedanticism, I don’t know what is. If they wrote something relevant to the current discussion, why don’t you give us a clue what it was.

I am an aerospace engineer, and I don’t have time to waste reading Marx. If that makes me inferior to you in your little mind, then so be it. I don’t really care. I deal in the realm of reality, where you can’t just make stuff up and pretend it’s true. You can claim that the Nazis were not socialists, but if I claimed with a straight face that the moon missions were staged, I would be laughed at.

You seem to be some sort of liberal (modern sense) academic. Liberal academics are notorious for believing the most asinine things. Many if not most of them believed, for example, that Soviet communism was superior to Western capitalism and free enterprise. In fact, many of them still believe that communism will prevail, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that you believe that too.

Well, there I go again, wasting yet more time with you.