To a Kikuyu living in Nairobi, this article would make perfectly good sense.
Posted on 01/14/2008 3:43:32 PM PST by Candor7
Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron – or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really.
His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.
These facts jar because they contradict the political spectrum that has shaped our worldview since the late 1930s, which places communism at the far left, followed by socialism, liberalism in the center, conservatism, and then fascism on the far right. But this spectrum, Jonah Goldberg points out in his brilliant, profound, and original new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday), reflects Stalin's use of fascist as an epithet to discredit anyone he wished – Trotsky, Churchill, Russian peasants – and distorts reality. Already in 1946, George Orwell noted that fascism had degenerated to signify "something not desirable."
To understand fascism in its full expression requires putting aside Stalin's misrepresentation of the term and also look beyond the Holocaust, and instead return to the period Goldberg terms the "fascist moment," roughly 1910-35. A statist ideology, fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism. It is totalitarian in Mussolini's original meaning of the term, of "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Fascism's message boils down to "Enough talk, more action!" Its lasting appeal is getting things done.
In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government, individualism, democratic debate, and capitalism. Its appeal is liberty and leaving citizens alone.
Goldberg's triumph is establishing the kinship between communism, fascism, and liberalism. All derive from the same tradition that goes back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution. His revised political spectrum would focus on the role of the state and go from libertarianism to conservatism to fascism in its many guises – American, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and so on.
As this listing suggests, fascism is flexible; different iterations differ in specifics but they share "emotional or instinctual impulses." Mussolini tweaked the socialist agenda to emphasize the state; Lenin made workers the vanguard party; Hitler added race. If the German version was militaristic, the American one (which Goldberg calls liberal fascism) is nearly pacifist. Goldberg quotes historian Richard Pipes on this point: "Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism." He proves this confluence in two ways.
Woodrow Wilson's Progressivism featured a "militaristic, fanatically nationalist, imperialist, racist" program, enabled by the exigencies of World War I. Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fascist New Deal" built on and extended Wilson's government. Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society established the modern welfare state, "the ultimate fruition" (so far) of this statist tradition. The youthful New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s brought about "an Americanized updating" of the European Old Right. Hillary Clinton hopes "to insert the state deep into family life," an essential step of the totalitarian project. To sum up a near-century of history, if the American political system traditionally encouraged the pursuit of happiness, "more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered."
Second, Goldberg dissects American liberal programs – racial, economic, environmental, even the "cult of the organic" – and shows their affinities to those of Mussolini and Hitler.
If this summary sounds mind-numbingly implausible, read Liberal Fascism in full for its colorful quotes and convincing documentation. The author, hitherto known as a smart, sharp-elbowed polemicist, has proven himself a major political thinker.
Beyond offering a radically different way to understand modern politics, in which fascist is no more a slander than socialist, Goldberg's extraordinary book provides conservatives with the tools to reply to their liberal tormentors and eventually go on the offensive. If liberals can eternally raise the specter of Joseph McCarthy, conservatives can counter with that of Benito Mussolini.
To a Kikuyu living in Nairobi, this article would make perfectly good sense.
Ping
I’ve always refered to WPA art deco (for example Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, and 30th Street Post Office) as “American Fascist architecture”. Sometimes it’s complete with fasces.
And Liberalism fosters Political Correctness in order to hide its visiousness.
Glenn Beck, on his daily radio show, gave a lot of attention to this book and author. It sounds as if there is a lot of good ammunition contained therein, to be used in a battle of wits with the libtards (if they could be said to have such).
Socialists.
.
Don’t you people realize that only Republicans and conservatives (not the same thing) can be called nazis and fascists? The Left says so! Jeez, people!!
( /sarc barely off)
'The youthful New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s brought about "an Americanized updating" of the European Old Right.
Hillary Clinton hopes "to insert the state deep into family life," an essential step of the totalitarian project.
To sum up a near-century of history, if the American political system traditionally encouraged the pursuit of happiness, "more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered." '
Good stuff!
I can’t recall where I heard this, but “liberalism [or perhaps socialism] is the velvet glove worn by the iron fist of fascism”.
Also reviewed by Bruce Thornton writing for Victor Davis Hanson’s website.
Posted here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1952098/posts
In absolute defense of Mr. Wells, the terms liberal and progressive meant entirely different things then and would have been an incongruous juxtaposition for effect then.
Teddy Roosevelt was also termed a “progressive” and he would probably have had modern day "liberals" hanged.
Mr Wells believed in selective breeding to improve the human race, not todays buy everybody a puppy, everybody is totally equal, and if you don’t agree then you are a racist.
This was “progressive.”
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.To think that Wells or Roosevelt would fit the mold of today’s liberal trash is lunacy.
I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.
If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.
No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.
We can have no “50-50” allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.
The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer “Present” or “Not guilty.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Scratch a liberal and under his thin skin is a socialist. Dig a little deeper and you will soon find the Marxist nuclear fuel rod that drives everything he says and does.
Corollary: All Marxists lie.
It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism. You can see this all over the environmental movement. On another thread I had a discussion with someone regarding the advisory role of "science" in policymaking vs. policy driven by science as an absolute = "expert knowledge" over democracy. The new NEPA regulations in the Federal Register elevate "community consensus groups" to the level of elected county government in influence regarding federal land management. It is long known that the Delphic process used by some land management agencies is structured to create a false consensus. Anyone who disagrees is commonly labeled as anti-government = consensus over debate. Conservatives know that government was created to prevent the general public from substantial injury to health amd safety from individual actions. Government was also structured to maximizes and protect individual liberty from majority will. Regulations now routinely impose the "community will" or exact benefits for the public interest - particularly undermining the integrity and value of private property rights = exalting the state over the individual, and promoting socialism over capitalism.
THAT -- right there -- is the kook left DNC Kontrol Kommittee in summary. It must be thwarted by any, and every means; exhausting all legal avenues first, but -- failing that -- employing means beyond the realm of law and order. If those people who would be free must riot in the streets with axes and pitchforks, then that is what must be done. If those who would be free must retake this Republic house-by-house, and block-by-block in armed strife, then that is what must be. Totalitarianism MUST NOT be allowed ascendancy in this Republic.
Now it is," Peace in our Slimes!"
or in the words of an Obama slughorn:
"Change we can believe in."
We don't know what that is, and the MSM doesn't seem to care. No ones even asking , what changes?
(The right to buy weapons is the right to be free)
That sounds like a statment from Robert Hedrock, founder of the “Weapon Shops”, according to VanVogt. Could be wrong about the name, haven’t seen the book in 25 years.
90% off the nations of the world could solve 90% of their problems, if their “leaders” would allow it. Even some one as simple as Gomer Pyle & Barney Fife can see this, if I did.
Our nation’s most serious threat is not islamofascism. It is Marxism! And,,,,The Marxist’s most important weapon against freedom are our nation’s schools.
Freedom will not survive if the Marxists succeed in indoctrinating the next generation of voters. We haven’t much time. In less than a generation our nation could look like Venezuela, Nicaragua, or Bolivia.
Yet,,,American people seem to be asleep!
My copy of “Liberal Fascism” arrived a few days ago and I’ve just started reading it. It’s a killer. Probably one of the most important conservative books in a decade. Highly, highly recommended. It overturns the phony history that liberals have been shoving down our throats for the past 100 years or so.
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