Posted on 01/16/2008 10:19:41 AM PST by bs9021
Liberal Fascism Explained
by: Amanda Busse, January 16, 2008
Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg is tired of being called a fascist. In his latest book, Liberal Fascism, he fights back against the term that those on the right are often saddled with, reminding readers that the original fascists leaned more toward the left.
Goldberg, the editor-at-large for National Review Online, argues in his book that fascism under Benito Mussolini and Nazism under Adolf Hitler came from the same intellectual source as Progressivism, the birth-mother of American liberalism. The term “liberal fascism” comes from a speech made by author H. G. Wells when he told a group of Young Liberals at Oxford that Progressives must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.”
“I’m not saying today’s liberals are Hitler’s cousins,” Goldberg said at his first discussion of the book held at the Heritage Foundation. “They’re more like his grand-niece once removed.”
The author claims the point of the book is to give an accurate definition and history of fascism, a word which he asserts is commonly misused.
“Many modern liberals and leftists act as if they know exactly what fascism is. What’s more, they see it everywhere—except when they look in the mirror,” Goldberg’s book reads. “Indeed, the left wields the term like a cudgel to beat opponents from the square like seditious pamphleteers.”
The side of fascism he attributes to American liberalism is not that associated with the works of George Orwell or the racism and genocide of the Holocaust. It is much less brutal, “smiley-face fascism,” as he puts it. He asserts that liberals hold political principles which are similar to those found in many fascist regimes.....
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
They ARE Hitler’s cousins. Unfortunately people have yet to realize this, and it will be to late once they start being people in the public square.
should read:
They ARE Hitler’s cousins. Unfortunately people have yet to realize this, and it will be to late once they start ‘beating’ people in the public square.
It was a beautiful moment.
When I was in college, a common theme was that Communists were so far left and Fascists so far right that they eventually met.
When I questioned the professor that fascism was a phenomenon of the left, he became unglued. No greater insult to that Commie, for sure.
In denial to the end.
Oh, oh--a Freeper with really long whiskers.
Think about it. TR advocated interventionism in both the economy and in foreign affairs. He glorified war. He was a "jingo." And while he supported radical policies domestically, he was a bitter opponent of radical organizations (much like Bismarck before him). Add to this our youngest president's preaching of "the strenuous life" sounds much like the vitalism and worship of "action" of early Italian fascism. Also, despite his progressivism, he had a belief in white supremacy not only endemic to his time but also influenced by Darwinian theory.
TR died just ten weeks before Mussolini organized the Fascisti in Milan. If he had lived to witness the new movement I believe it would have struck a chord with him.
Gun control advocates love to use the word facist to anyone who supports gun rights. I love to remind them that it was Hitler who gathered up all of the guns from the populace.
Even as an ex-president (while he wasn't as loathsome as Carter) he couldn't keep his mouth shut, as his predecessors had--and was a major force in getting the US into WW 1, IMHO, the mistake of the century---
I have been saying this for YEARS!
Wow!
You are both vicious AND witty.
Any more heroic tales to tell about yourself?
You do know the origin of neo-con is the Trotskyite, Irving Kristol, right?
I have Jonah’s book, over 400 pages.
A must read
information with historical facts, and several
pages of notes in back of book
He was also on C-SPAN last weekend and backs up
No, the origin of the term neoconservative is the socialist, Michael Harrington. He used the terms as a derogation of “splitters” such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. Kristol and Podhoretz began to use the term as an ironic honorific, then later used the term in a more neutral sense.
Interesting.
I didn’t realize that the label, “Neo-conservative” was a derisive term used by a student of the Trotskyite, Max Schactman to identify other former Trotskyites.
I got this book this weekend and I am very pleasantly surprised as to the size, character, good research etc.
Thread on my study soon.
This is all true, but my main point was that TR's peculiar youth, activism, social Darwinism, advocacy of "the strenuous life," of American jingoism, and statism (while simultaneously being strongly opposed to radical organizations) make him the closest thing to Mussolini in the America of that time period. Also check out TR's speaking style--the jutting jaw, the arm-waving, the moralism. And I am not saying that TR would have advocated a one party state (at least I don't think he would have), but if you boil fascism down to its essentials (vitalism, interventionism, militarism, and opposition to leftist organizations) TR is almost a fore-echo of Mussolini.
It would have been interesting if he had lived to see Mussolini's "experiment."
This is the time when economic forces were powerful enough to be percieved as buying state legislatures to get Senators and then nimble enough to buy Senators, or their campaigns, with even greater efficiency after the change of the 17th amendment.
The proactive leaders used the traits you cite to try to get the advance on those forces the percieved as thwarting effective leadership and once it worked, bad actors saw the efficiency.
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