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Everything You Know About Fascism Is Wrong
ChristianityToday.com ^ | 01/07/08 | Mark Gauvreau Judge

Posted on 01/13/2008 8:15:00 AM PST by Delacon

Goldberg has marshaled a staggering amount of evidence to conclude, as the first chapter has it, that "everything you know about fascism is wrong." Mussolini was weaned on anarcho-socialism (his father Alessandro was a socialist and anarchist). Mussolini and the Italian Fascist party were, in the early years, not anti-Semitic—in fact, the party included Jews. As a young man, Mussolini had carried in his pocket a medallion of Karl Marx, whose influence—combined with the bizarre syndicalist philosophy of George Sorel and a Nietzschean contempt for Christianity—resulted in Italian fascism, a mix of myth-making, prophecy about the rise of the working class, and a relentless determination to aggrandize more and more power for the state. German fascism was not far different, which is why Hitler himself, as Goldberg puts it, was "a man of the left." In short, the very term "fascism" has been misused for decades now. Although on several occasions Goldberg openly invites criticism, admitting that he is not a professional historian, he has done the work of a historian; besides, he is a much better writer than most historians. And the case he makes is as persuasive as it is provocative. Consider Father Charles Coughlin, the "radio priest" of the 1930s, a touchstone of right-wing evil for liberals. It turns out that Coughlin actually advocated collectivist, anti-capitalist theories that were much closer to the left than to the right. Goldberg quotes leftists—among them the "New Deal Priest" Msgr. John Ryan—praising Coughlin. Coughlin became FDR's bitter foe because FDR's collectivist policies did not go far enough. Fascists have often called for the overturning of religious tradition, to be replaced by the dictatorship of the people; have engaged in a "cult of action" that sought to smash the bourgeoisie; and have relegated certain people...

(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Government; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: anarchists; anarchistsocialism; bookreview; fascism; goldberg; jonahgoldberg; liberalfascism; liberalism; progressivism; socialism; starkravingsocialism
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To: tsomer

“The latter point is the linchpin of the whole thing. Even Adam Smith promoted free enterprise as only the best for mere humans. He never got around to writing an intended treatise on God and morality, as I understand.”

Actually Smith went into God and religion in great detail in the book he wrote titled “The Theory of the Moral Sentiments”. This and not the later “Wealth of Nations” was the book that made Smith famous and was his most popular book during his lifetime.

“The administration of the great system of the universe ... the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension: the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country.... But though we are ... endowed with a very strong desire of those ends, it has been intrusted to the slow and uncertain determinations of our reason to find out the proper means of bringing them about. Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them.”

Check it out here:
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/tms-intro.htm


41 posted on 01/13/2008 12:13:58 PM PST by Delacon (Don't Immanentize the Eschaton.)
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To: Delacon
Why conservatives, especially Christians have consistently allowed themselves to have the label fascist pinned on them is beyond me. Hitler was an occultist as were all the top Nazis. National Socialism was born in the Thule Society and assorted earlier proto-nazi groups such as the List Society, Germanen Order, Helena Blatavsky's Theosophy and assorted other occultic groups.

The Third Reich was an occult theocracy!!

42 posted on 01/13/2008 12:24:23 PM PST by fso301
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To: modican
The spectrum should run from dictatorship on the left to freedom on the right. Communism and Nazism/fascism and one man dictatorships (e.g., Idi Amin's Zaire) are on the far left. Frontier America, Colonial New England, with extreme self rule and full liberty of action, are on the far right. Constitutional America (pre-New Deal), with self-rule and protected liberties, was well on the right side of the spectrum. We have been sliding towards the middle ever since, losing both liberties and self-rule.

A monarchy can be more free than a democracy, if the monarch is subject to limitations on what he can do to the subjects. The rights of Englishmen were handed down from tribal chieftains and continued even after the tribes united under a king. That's why our American forebears were free people who set up councils, assemblies and local Town Meetings, and chafed at the consolidation of power by the Parliament/King. We chose to maintain our status as people who had liberties, even as the English centralized power and have steadily lost their freedoms, though they ostensibly have self-rule. Swedish, Canadian and British socialism are left of center, our socialism is just to the right of center but sliding towards the middle. We are losing rights, even as our self-rule seems to still exist. Give Hillary a few years, and our self-rule will also be gone, just as in ancient Rome the Republic became a remnant on which dictatorship was grafted.

43 posted on 01/13/2008 12:26:12 PM PST by Defiant (Hillary needs Obama in the race to make it seem she has experience by comparison.)
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To: headsonpikes
Then Bolshevism was fascism. Lenin was nothing if not an opportunist and he taught Mussolini HOW to subvert a government. Hitler picked it up from Mussolini. What all three men shared was a radical hatred for the elements of western civilization, whether medieval or modern. The leitmotif, whether Lenin’s “nation at arms,” dating back to the French Revolution; the faux-Roman imperialism of Mussolini; or the Wagnerian trappings of Hitler-ism were all incidental to their nihilism and the cult of power.
44 posted on 01/13/2008 12:26:54 PM PST by RobbyS
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To: Mr Rogers
Just wow!

I disagree on what that priest had to say but I definitely disagree what FDR did...

45 posted on 01/13/2008 12:30:01 PM PST by John123 ("What good fortune for the governments that the people do not think" -- Adolf Hitler)
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To: Delacon

Thanks, Delacon


46 posted on 01/13/2008 12:41:41 PM PST by tsomer
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To: Delacon

See the Hayek quote on my FR home page, it’s the third one, two paragraphs. It’s directly applicable here.


47 posted on 01/13/2008 3:03:46 PM PST by FreedomPoster (Guns themselves are fairly robust; their chief enemies are rust and politicians) (NRA)
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To: Delacon
While you're at it, pick up a copy of Living History (remaindered, if you can find one), and one each National Review and the Utne Reader. When you get to the cashier and she gives you the raised eyebrow, just smile and say "Know thy enemy."

Pops their circuit-breakers every time.

48 posted on 01/13/2008 3:40:57 PM PST by Tenniel2 (Weakness invites attack -- on the playground, in the boardroom, and in the Middle East.)
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To: FreedomPoster

FP, five will get you ten, that quote is in the book.

“No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.”

— F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom


49 posted on 01/13/2008 4:20:58 PM PST by Delacon (Don't Immanentize the Eschaton.)
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To: RobbyS
Lenin was nothing if not an opportunist

I like to see it that way, but please, to change Reality one has to engage with it.
You do not get millions of Followers unless there is a reason.
Remember, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, etc, where just the show pieces of their time, there was a huge Force behind.
Zeitgeist is the best Therm I can come up with.
And if you think you are immune from it, you did your first mistake.
50 posted on 01/13/2008 6:36:58 PM PST by modican
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To: modican

As Solzanitzyn points out in “Lenin in Zuerich,” Lein got everything wrong about what was going to happen in Russia because he wrote and wrote like a Marxist. The Revolution was supposed to start in Germany, not Russia, because Russia was not historically “ripe.” But after the Germans shipped him in to undermine the Russian war effort, and he finally figured out what his real options were, he managed to overturn the existing government and set up a whole new kind of state. As as theorist he ws full of it’ as a tactician, he masterful. In short, he went in with a plan, saw the plan would not work and—after a rustification in Finland— came back and with his former foe and new ally. the Jew Trotsky, created the Soviet state. most of in violation of Marxist principles. Now the ATTITUDES were the same as Marx: the hatred of religion etc. But he bided his time until he consoldiated his power. Events took him by surprise, of course, and he was struck down, and Stalin came into take things in a different direction, certainly away from what Trotsky planned. But Lenin ws no mere ideologue blindly follwing the script of the mastermind.


51 posted on 01/13/2008 8:14:12 PM PST by RobbyS
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To: captain_dave
Yes, it was going to be a socialist answer to the unemployment problem of "The Great Depression." At that time the SS was called the "Storm Abteilung." The storm department was largely a bunch of unemployed leftovers from WW1 who had defended Hitler in fistfights and brawls against communists, but were expecting what we today call socialistic programs. They were leftists in the classic sense.

The leadership was purged by Hitler in 1933 and the SS as we know it today was established. The unemployment was then solved with military spending. At that point Germany was Fascist.

For a good read go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

52 posted on 01/13/2008 8:31:52 PM PST by Bogie
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To: John123
You're blind if you don't recognize that our present government is socialist.
53 posted on 01/13/2008 8:54:04 PM PST by Bear_Slayer (When liberty is outlawed only outlaws will have liberty.)
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To: Delacon

Goldberg’s proof that fascism and liberalism are identical is the perfect way to prove the connection between liberals and Islamo-fascists. They are the same and working together to destroy Western Civilization.


54 posted on 01/13/2008 10:14:50 PM PST by FFranco
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To: Delacon

A great and important post. Fascisim is the main thing we “right wingers” are fighting now even though the left wing idiots continue to try, with their usual “big lie” techniques, to brand “conservative” as fascists. If you had to use one word to characterize Hitlery and her minions, it would be “fascist.” And it applies to too many others also, including many of the RINOs who often espouse fascism without even realizing it. Thank you for the post.


55 posted on 01/13/2008 10:28:39 PM PST by Weirdad (A Free Republic, not a "democracy" (mob rule))
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To: Weirdad

Yes, nearly all our enemies can be classified as Fascists: liberals, Islamo-fascists, RINOs, and even Commies, because they are all socialists in one way or another. It is VERY important that we make this point when debating them.


56 posted on 01/13/2008 10:52:25 PM PST by FFranco
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To: Bear_Slayer
You're blind if you don't recognize that our present government is socialist.

I was discussing fascism in the post you are referring to. But you are right about our current government being socialist...

57 posted on 01/14/2008 7:08:57 AM PST by John123 ("What good fortune for the governments that the people do not think" -- Adolf Hitler)
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To: John123
Yes, you were discussing fascism, which is really only an element of all tyrannical governments, especially socialism & its cousin communism.

When a responsible people rule themselves they understand and appreciate liberty.

When a people (the majority) will not rule themselves, do-gooder politicians feel they know what is best and institute policy to manage people.

At some point, leaders with less-than-noble reasons, under the guise of "doing good" use socialism to control and rape a people.

I believe we have entered that place in time, and within the next 3-5 years will see our country become like any other 3rd-world rat-hole.

58 posted on 01/14/2008 7:31:11 AM PST by Bear_Slayer (When liberty is outlawed only outlaws will have liberty.)
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