Reddit reviews Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
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culture, politics
My two cents....
Whoever labeled libertarianism as far right is completely off. Libertarianism itself tends to reject a left/right scale.
On that matter, fascism also rejects a left/right scale. In the 30s, fascism was considered by Americans and Europeans alike to be a wonderful new idea, a novel third way. Fascism was essentially authoritarian and totalitarian, to accurately describe it, rather than being placed on any political spectrum.
Authoritarian/totalitarian government can have a policy of rigid socialism, or also of free marketeering--the fact is just that either policy, or any other policies, are enforced by a central authority and the population is forced to participate, with no choice of it being voluntary.
In my mind, libertarianism is the anti-fascism, and fascism is present significantly in the platforms of both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.
A good, thoughtful book on the topic is called Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. Pick it up for 86 cents plus shipping: http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346780346&sr=8-1&keywords=liberal+fascism
It's already a police state. America has more people locked up in jail than China with less than a sixth of their population.
We live in a state of "happy fascism," I'd recommend you read Liberal Fascism.
Case in point.
National Socialism AKA Fascism is a Far-Right political ideology. Although there has been some attempt to associate them with the left (primarily from far-right wingers who resent being associated with Hitler), the consensus of most scholars is that fascism is a Far-Right ideology.
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841
Read it.
Looking forward to
I've heard that Malkin's book In Defense of Internment is pretty spectacular. This site provided some refutations.
Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg should be a riot too.
Intelligent critiques of progressivism do exist. Glenn Beck doesn't provide any, though. This is a good book. I don't agree with everything Prof. Watson says, but he does a good job of examining some of the philosophy behind the progressive movement. And despite its dumb title (which I think is a little hyperbolic, though not completely off-base), Jonah Goldberg's book does a decent job as well.
Hitler ran on a family values campaign against Paul Hindenburg and characterized himself as returning to Prussian/Junkers conservative values.
His funding largely came from the Junkers/Industrialists who saw him a a return to those exact values.
More importantly, The Prussian/German conception of conservativsm is no where NEARLY as constrained as the US libertarian/conservative view, by way of example we need only look at arch-conservative Otto Von Bismark - who was - very nearly one of the top 4-5 politicial/military geniuses of our species, in the last 500 or 1000 years.
What was he notable for among many other things.
Implementing more or less Universal Healthcare in Germany....in 1891 - in an effort to short-circuit one of the socialist political points in a parliamentary election.
Of course if you've read Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" or any of the more recent "revisions" to fit Hitler in a "liberal" light, then I'm sorry to say - you've been misinformed.
> There is no such thing as 'right wing' fascism, since the american right wing is about individual sovereignty.
This is just not a statement of fact. There are examples of left wing and right wing fascist societies. I'm also not sure what the american right wing has to do with the political spectrum as a whole (seeing as how it's universal). Mussolini's fascism most certainly pushed more right than it did left as well as some religiously inclined right wing fascist societies specifically in the middle east.
> Mussolini was a Socialist all his life. He was not a right winger.
This is also factually untrue. 2 He was a socialist in his earlier years than got kicked out of the socialist party. He then proceeded to invent fascism as "A third way". He often stated that socialism was dead and only hung on because of a grudge. This is why fascism isn't really a left/right thing but rather it's specific to the individual state. Meaning, a state can be left wing fascists or right wing fascists. This was a book point in the book Liberal Fascism.
Note that two core principles of fascism reject both egalitarianism and all class warfare. Two key principles for a society to be socialist, communist, or even far left.
> See, this is just an excuse. Hitler's National Socialism was essentially a form of Socialism that used as its binding glue a national fervor. How does one change throw something onto the other end of a spectrum when he was 99% similar to Stalin, who is ostensibly a left-winger, just because Stalin wanted International Socialism instead?
No. Nazism is not socialism. Hitler's Germany was socialist as well as Nazi. Socialist is an economic system whereas fascism is a social system. This is like saying leftist Netherlands are far right because they are capitalist. His economic system was certainly left wing, his social / government system was not.
> Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler were all Collectivist, materialist left wingers.
This is also factually untrue - specifically the bit about Mussolini. Mussulini's fascism was utilitarian by nature and individualistic at the same time. Essentially this blend was authoritarian right wing. Think Augusto Pinochet for something similar (though he was not fascist, but rather authoritarian and right wing).
> Hitler hated the Communists first from their attempted coup d'etat of Bavaria (Later Hitler's source of political power for a reason), and the Jews as a byproxy of that, and his views on race as a byproduct of that.
You keep talking about hitler and Nazism. I understand this is an off-shoot of fascism I suppose but this is like talking about a mixed-market welfare state when discussing free market economies.
>I'm very liberal minded.
You mean modern American liberalism (which isn't liberal in the slightest), or do you mean Classical Liberalism (ie, modern day Libertarianism)?
Perhaps you're the one who needs to read up on the roots of your political philosophy.
http://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318974177&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841
The article makes the mistake of assuming that fascism is a right-wing phenomenon. It is actually a left-wing psychosis, as rather amusingly pointed out in Liberal Fascism, a book which details how it was so-called progressives who supported euthanasia, fascism, state power over the individual and so forth.
"Just look at how the extreme left has been attacking its own over the last few years".
It's not the last few years, it's literally the entire history of the left. After the French anti monarchist leftists ditched the royals (the term left came from the side of parliament the anti monarchists sat on) they almost immediately turned to purging their own. Name a socialist or communist government that didn't purge from its own leadership, if not population and or rival factions.
The only real part of the left that doesn't fit the mould historically is trade unionists. There is always a bit of infighting within unions and between competitive unions, but in general they tend to back the idea of strength in solidarity.
I disagree with you that the extreme left are somehow less dangerous. It's an over simplification, but I'm a believer in horseshoe theory (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory)
I think extremism regardless of the side of the political spectrum can be very dangerous...
Also some food for thought,
I also think modern day nazis are far more comfortable on the far right with "free man of the land" hick farmer types who hate the government, foreigners, etc as much as they do vs trade unionists and university students who dress like they are at Woodstock and who are still naive enough to think communism might work next time.
> Wow. You sir are basically just compassionless. You assume the worst in people who were fighting against horror and oppression, and force them to adhere to your narrow world view for some ideal "truth" that doesn't actually exist.
Compassionless? Because I'm willing to call a spade a spade? Because I'm willing to call out a lie rather than preserve someone's feelings? You've got a rather strange concept of compassion, one that I'm not interested in.
> You haven't shown me why I should believe the authors wanted their texts to be taken literally. Your points basically amount to "They are liars because I want them to be liars." I'm astounded at the delusion you exist in.
You want another example? Have you heard of Jonah Goldberg? He's primarily a political pundit, and a reactionary one. Not too long ago he published a book, non-fiction, entitled Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. He's not engaging in allegory, here. He's claiming that fascism as conceived and run by Mussolini and Hitler is an inherently liberal concept that has been at working secretly in the US for some time. This idea is quantifiably false and his historical analysis has been pretty much laughed off by the historical and political analysis communities alike. The book isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
But he wrote it and published it. We have every reason to think that he believes every word in it. And what's more, he used it to galvanize like-minded political partisans in the US. Nobody takes him seriously except his target audience. It's a lie, and they believe it.
Sound familiar?
Welcome to the jungle
The fascism=left meme has spread among the "South Park Republicans" with frightening speed.
>Its as if fascism is making a comeback but people aren't calling it that.
You might enjoy the book Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. The LA Times hired him on a while back to write an Op-Ed column for them. It was enough to make Barbra Streisand write in to cancel her subscription! Here is Goldberg's response to that flattery. Her main complaint was that replacing Robert Scheer with Jonah Goldberg made the paper less diverse even though Goldberg is basically a demographic carbon copy of Robert Scheer aside from Goldberg being a conservative.
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg
>“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.
Part of how the USA promoted a Cold War consensus was through the conflation of fascism with communism, through a common root of "totalitarianism" that liberal states are ostensibly immune to. The logic isn't very sound to either group internally, but commonalities do exist: common origin of thought in Hegel, similar criticisms of liberalism, centralization of power to a particular bureaucracy, valorization of revolutionary violence, a sort of transcendentalist logic that removes the need for a constitution, etc. The fact that there are about 0 policies that fascism and communism have in common was not considered particularly relevant.
Oh also this idiotic book exists.
...or "national socialism"
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841
Old enough to have read this and know that progressives like to lie about their disgusting filthy pasts.
Do you know what Jonah Goldberg's claim to fame is? Nothing. His mother persuaded Monica Lewinsky into hanging onto a semen stained dress. Jonah got a writing gig riding on his mother's coattails.
Here's a good piece from Harper's debunking the piece of crap that Liberal Fascism is.
If that's not amusing enough I suggest you check out the Amazon tags for Jonah's book. They include such masterpieces as:
books written while high on cheeto dust
ein volk ein reich ein bag von cheetos
cheetohnacht
cheeto macht frei
cheeto-erotic asphyxiation
cheetohouse five
gulag archipecheetoh
mein fuhrer i can type
There is actually a really great book about this point, definitely worth a read.
It certainly can happen here. It will call itself something innocuous like the "Green New Deal."
https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=liberal+fascism&qid=1550012805&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Liberal Fascism
It is somewhat true, read Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism. I found it intriguing, he traces all the stances of Fascism and relates it to the liberal beliefs like abortion and other things.
He was on par with Mussolini and the other socialists in Europe. Read people. Get an education. http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841
The appendix is an essential part in starving populations in Africa, here it isn't, same thing for the foreskin, when you go naked maybe you need a hat over you purple head otherwise, let them do what they want to do.
Once again, the child belongs to his parents not to the state, that is what you liberals can't get through your fascist heads, you want to impose liberalism to everybody, that, paradoxically is Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning