Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change |  | Author: Jonah Goldberg
Brand: Random House
Category: Book
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Rating:  554 reviews
Sales Rank: 22210
Media: Paperback
Pages: 512
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2
MPN: 9780767917186
ISBN: 0767917189
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.533
EAN: 9780767917186
ASIN: 0767917189
Publication Date: June 2, 2009
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Product Description
“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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 554
 Goldberg's Book:: a cynical Excercise in perfidious revisionism that would make Joeseph Goebbels proud August 29, 2010
Drdaystrum
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
The Book "Liberal Fascism" would be funny if it were written in the context of a Monty Python comedy but unfortunately, Goldberg's book demonstrates the very essence of fascism itself by attempting to invert the meaning of a well known word in order to confuse and distort a well documented historical phenomena. To equate Liberalism (from the latin word Liberalis which means "free man") with fascism is tantamount to calling someone a "communist-capitalist, or "Catholic-Jew" or confusing a dog for a dolphin or giraffe with a salamander. The two have nothing in common, and are diametrically opposed virtual "opposites'. History irrefutably shows that liberalism is the mortal enemy of totalitarianism whether it be fascism or communism. Liberal institutions, policies, ideas and individuals have been systematically attacked, persecuted and killed by fascist and communist regimes throughout the historical record. Therefore it begs the question, if right-wing Republicans are anti-liberal, then they are by definition, "anti-liberty" and "anti-freedom". What does that tell you they are for? Do the math! Fascism is thoroughly documented with inconvertible facts throughout the historical record in all it grisly incarnations whether it be German, Italian, Spanish or American fascism. Fascism consistently operates under the guise of nationalistic jingoism and the pious guise of religious fundamentalism, when the opportunity to exploit religion presents itself. The current USA brand is successfully masking itself under the harmless cloak of apple pie, cookies, flag, guns and Jesus, and Fox News which is not news but Goebbels inspired 24 hour a day propaganda willfully designed to mislead and ensorcel the viewers. Very clever, and it works! In essence, Johna Goldberg is a paid propagandist for the true Oligarchical nucleus of American and maybe unwittingly, international "fascism". A word that the true fascist movement cleverly attempts to distort and twist so its unrecognizable and therefor allows them to continue their stealth operations under the sanitized, umbrella guise and grossly misleading term "conservative".
To call Limbaugh, Palin, O'Reilly or Beck conservative is tantamount to describing Charles Manson as a mischievous boy-scout or Hitler & Stalin, "activists". Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Fox (fixed) News and their nefarious affiliates have one singular agenda: to continue their toxic metastases by applying the tried and true methodology of the infamous Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels "Big Lie" which simply repeats a simple theme and lie knowing that if the "lie is repeated often enough, the people will believe it". This is the true mantra of the right-wing and until we recognize it, expose it and defeat it, it will inevitably destroy the essence of American democracy and the "liberal" tenants that this country and constitution were built on. This book is in itself, a cynical, deliberate and contrived attempt to obfuscate the fact that the far right-wing sociopaths have ruthlessly hijacked the Republican party and have saturated their media disinformation industry with zealous assets who dispense pure calumny and lies on a 24/7 basis - all for the deliberate and malevolent purpose of subverting our precious democracy with true USA grade neofascism.
Rod Serling often depicted the horrors or a futuristic totalitarian regime that imprisoned, persecuted and murdered anyone who dared to dissent or critique the tyrants and these fictional regimes who used terror, scapegoating, thug style murder and torture were not based on the passive, anti-war liberal tenants that are the essential components of our own constitution and democracy but more accurately, the horrific brutality and virulence of the true Fascism such as the Nazi's or the Soviet style totalitarianism of the Stalin brand. Anyone who actually believes Goldberg's absurd, utterly pathetic attempt to rewrite the history and meaning of fascism just flunked the Rhesus Monkey IQ test.
The Nazis, unlike Goldberg's fantasy, were vicious, sadistic fanatics who were enthusiastically funded by huge corporations such as I. G. Farben, Flick, Krupp, Siemens, and many other organizations who, like Hitlers coterie, were not only virulently anti-liberal in every facet of their being (as also written in Mein Kampf), but were primarily about racial purification including (as seen in the most well preserved Nazi texts, documents and films) the obsession to exterminate whole racial and ethnic populations including Jews, liberals, communists, socialists (that's right, socialists), gypsy's, homosexuals, handicapped, deformed, and so called "inferior mongrel stock" such as Russians, Pols, Slavs in general and of course blacks or anything perceived as "non-Aryan". This is a characteristic that bears no remote resemblance to any tenant of liberalism or democracy. The SS Einsatzgruppen was assigned the specific task of murdering millions of Jews, or any "liberal" dissidents that were a threat to the Nazis. The Nazi dream was psychotic fantasy built on old Norse and Germanic mythology, the blond, blue eyed Aryan, vast armies, statues and the whole insane dream of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Reinhardt Heydrich, Hermann Goering, Hess, Martin Bormann and the entire grisly SS. Goldberg and his right-wing puppet masters have insidiously subverted our history and in fact, our dictionary. The fact that Hitlers Nazis merely had a word included in their general title that said "National Socialist" had nothing whats so ever to do with ACTUAL, literal socialism and was initially used to deceive and lure in unsuspecting new members. Hitler very quickly proceeded to sever any resemblance between true socialism and his Nazi fascist party. He simply exploited the term just as tyrannical kings or theocrats used pious religious dogma as an excuse to commit terror. Any credible documentation that was not written by Fox News or some delusional right-wing puppet clearly documents how the Nazi's arrested, imprisoned and killed hundreds of thousands of communists, socialists and of course liberals, Jews or anyone who opposed Fascist Nazism.
The rightwing will also absurdly site the pact with Stalin - are you kidding me? Hitler used Stalin to a point then proceeded to quickly brake the pact, betray Stalin and launch an all out attack on Russia. Apparently the right-wing zealots are hoping you will forget the massive Nazi assaults on Stalingrad, Moscow and a host of Russian cities that were burned to the ground. But again, propagandists like Rosenberg are designing these books for the clueless, uneducated or delusional ideologues. He is hoping his target audience will conveniently forget that liberalism and its ideas are the absolute inverse, and polar opposite of fascism and totalitarian communism or any of its deleterious surrogates. Its a fact as unassailable as the known properties of gravity and geophysics. Again, if you believe Goldberg's book, then you are likely less intelligent than a proto Australopithecus:-)
The fact that Goldberg has used this mendacious abortion of history that he has the unmitigated gall to present as a scholarly exegesis on fascism, demonstrates beyond any doubt, the extent of pure fabrication and lies the extreme right-wing are willing to sink to. To compare the Nazis to liberals is so astoundingly obscene, its almost too much for any sane mind to read without suffering from brain asphyxiation and permanent nausea. Next, Goldberg or Glenn (neuro-dysfunctional) Beck will write a book claiming that the Civil War was started by aliens from the Zeta Reticuli system to harvest Southern blood, WWII was commie conspiracy and our founding fathers were angels sent by Jesus to free the colonies from Satan worshiping European Druids.
Fascism is under cover, and its winning. The hour glass is running, its almost checkmate. As Rod Serling once said during his closing narration of a show about herd instinct, mass hysteria and scapegoating, "and the pity of this, is that it is not confined to the Twilight Zone".
 Defining Fascism, Correcting Misconceptions, Focus on the Culture War, and Anticipating the Critics August 29, 2010
Jan Peczkis (Chicago IL, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having read this work, and those of the critics, I am amazed at how most of them have not grasped what Goldberg has plainly stated. Goldberg defines his terms: FASCISM: "Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is TOTALITARIAN in that it views everything as political and holds than any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good." (p. 23). LIBERAL FASCISM: "In this book, I have argued that modern liberalism is the offspring of twentieth-century progressivism, which in turn shares intellectual roots with European fascism...In the United States, the movement known elsewhere as fascism or Nazism took the form of progressivism--a softer form of totalitarianism that, while still nationalistic, and militarist in its crusading forms and outlook, was more in keeping with American culture. It was, in short, a kind of liberal fascism." (p. 390). "For another, arguing that progressives were a product of their time simply reinforces my larger argument: Progressivism was born of the fascist movement and has never faced up to its inheritance." (p. 254).
REDUCTIO AD HITLERUM is a common liberal tactic of today. (p. 244). Very many things usually attributed to conservatism or fascism are not unique to them. Bismarck's Kulturkampf was liberal. (p. 362). Anti-Semitism was not characteristic of fascism: early Italian fascism was hardly anti-Semitic (p. 62), and Communism became anti-Semitic. (p. 75). Nationalism is not invariably right-wing unless one considers Castro, Pol Pot, Guevara, etc., as right-wingers. (p. 71). Militarism was championed, in the early 20th century, not only by fascists, but also by Communists and the western democracies. (p. 5, 106). The German exceptionalism under Nazism can be compared with some forms of Afrocentrism today. (p. 65). Also, "As a result, the Nazis played the same games against the Jews that today's left plays against `Eurocentrism', `whiteness', and `logocentrism.'" (p. 368). The eugenics movement was not conservative but liberal in that it was squarely based on the perfectibility of society by government action, and was supported by many socialists. (p. 249). The restrictions against freedom under McCarthyism were dwarfed compared with those earlier enacted by the progressive President Woodrow Wilson. (pp. 113-114).
As for the rise of Nazism in Germany, "What cannot be overestimated is that German students were first and foremost rebelling against the CONSERVATISM of both German higher education and the older generation's `bourgeoisie materialism.'" (p. 168). The much-mythologized corporate support for Hitler was virtually absent in the 1920's, and later tended to follow Hitler's successes (p. 58, 288-289). Also, "The fascist bargain goes something like this. The state says to the industrialist, `You may stay in business and own your factories. In the spirit of cooperation and unity, we will even guarantee you profits and a lack of serious competition. In exchange, we expect you to agree with--and help implement--our political agenda.'" (p. 290). Goldberg's quip is priceless: "In reality, if you define `right-wing' or `conservative' in the American sense of supporting the rule of law and the free market, then the more right-wing a business is, the less fascist it becomes." (pp. 285-286).
Other misconceptions are corrected. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was liberal in the sense that it supported many reformist and progressive policies. (p. 259). Contrary to Sinclair's JUNGLE, meatpackers actually favored government inspection of meat (because it favored selling their products and it handicapped smaller producers.) (p. 291). Father Coughlin was no rightist intellectual grandfather of Rush Limbaugh: Coughlin favored government interventionism over free enterprise, essentially deifying the New Deal. (e. g., p. 138). Pre-WWII American isolationists included liberals, not just conservatives. (p. 157).
Some have argued that the progressive programs enacted by the likes of Bismarck, the European fascists, and the American New Deal were simply tactical moves designed to head-off Communist revolutions. Consider Bismarck. His progressive policies were groundbreaking and far-reaching--so unique that they inspired many socialist policy makers (p. 263). They were clearly far more than would be expected as a mere concession to pacify the masses. Goldberg comments: "Bismarck's `top-down socialism,' which delivered the eight-hour workday, health care, social insurance, and the like, was the gold standard for enlightened social policy." (p. 95).
The European fascists favored a large number of socially-progressive policies. (e. g., see p. 46). The connection between Nazi policies and those of the New Deal were not superficial or incidental. In fact, the connection was widely celebrated at the time. (p. 123). In any case, according to Goldberg, whatever the caveats were behind the policies in question, they do not nullify his thesis, but actually reinforce it: "The German and American New Deals may have been merely whatever Hitler and FDR felt they could get away with. But therein lies a common principal: the state SHOULD be allowed to get away with anything, so long as it is for `good reasons.' That is the common principle among fascism, Nazism, Progressivism, and what we today call liberalism." (p. 131).
Goldberg compares the culture war in Nazi Germany with the more recent one in the U.S. He comments: "In 1935, mandatory prayer in school was abolished, and in 1938 carols and Nativity plays were banned entirely. By 1941 religious instruction for children fourteen years and up had been abolished altogether and Jacobinism ruled supreme...In like manner, the American Kulturkampf of the 1960s begins not with the hippies, the Vietnam War, or even civil rights. As befits an attempt to clear the way for a new political religion, it starts with the effort to eliminate prayer in school." (p. 365).
A nauseating heap of neocon propaganda August 18, 2010
Carl Stoll (Washington DC)
0 out of 9 found this review helpful
I will be very brief. This book is a nauseating heap of lying neocon propaganda. The author desires to prove that socialism equals dictatorship, i.e. all socialists are opposed to democracy. He then dishes out a distorted version of 20th century Italian history that confirms his propaganda message. Curiously, however, he neglects to mention the most celebrated opponent of Fascism, the martyred Giacomo Matteotti. Matteotti is a key figure in 20th century Italian history. His name is nowhere mentioned in this book. Why not? Because Matteotti was a socialist who courageously opposed Fascism in the name of freedom and democracy and was murdered by the Fascists for his pains. Matteotti's murder by Fascists was a climactic event in Italian history. Matteotti is the proof that Goldberg lies when he charges all socialists with being opposed to freedom. That is why this sordid piece of propaganda never mentions his name.
Catching up on history they leave out in school August 16, 2010
James Kahler (Glendo, Wyoming)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Great book. You come away with a much better understanding of today's world and what is happening!!
Libs Can't Handle the Truth August 15, 2010
Chris A. Paul (Tulsa, OK USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a book for thoughtful people willing to suspend what the media has told us are the answers about Fascism. The author distinguishes Fascists from Nazis and, contrary to what some "professional" reviewers would have you believe, does not simply label Liberals as Fascists, but rather explains how classic liberalism was hijacked and transformed into the "Progressive" movement which is at its roots fascist in nature.
This was written before Barack Obama was elected, and is somewhat prophetic.
It is flawed by a title and cover illustration that take away from the serious nature of the discussion, but otherwise is worth buying, reading, and sharing.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 554
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