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Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning Hardcover – January 8, 2008

4.4 out of 5 stars 795 customer reviews

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Product Details

  • Series: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
  • Hardcover: 496 pages
  • Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (January 8, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385511841
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385511841
  • Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.5 x 9.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (795 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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By David McCune on January 8, 2008
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
And boy, does Jonah Goldberg have himself some enemies.

It was inevitable that the review section for Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" would degenerate into the Mother of all Flame Wars. The advance dislike for this book simmered for months, and now the floodgates for negative reviews are open. I'd advise all potential readers of this book to bear in mind how few of the negative reviews appear to reflect a reading of the book.

For those willing to give Goldberg the chance, he offers the following thesis: that the label fascist has its roots in the governing philosophies of Italy's National Fascist Party and Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) Party. He argues that there has been a false duality created between the Soviet Socialists of the USSR and the socialists united under the fascists in Italy and Germany. He argues that the totalitarian impulse, the philosophy of state control of decisions taking priority over individual freedoms, is the core uniting principle behind these movements, and he argues that the ongoing home of such statism is in what has come to be known as the "liberal" politics of the modern progressive movement. As you can imagine, that doesn't sit very well with the targets of his argument (hence the rain of 1-star reviews).

I'd encourage open minded readers of all backgrounds to read Goldberg's book and address his arguments. I find his conversational and somewhat informal style to be witty and readable. That said, longtime Goldberg fans should know that this is not a book-length "G-File" (the hip and irreverent column he wrote for National Review Online). This is a serious scholarly work, and it deserves to be read and judged as such. Goldberg is attempting to right a historical injustice.
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Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Excellent history book! Jonah Goldberg does an excellent job explaining and proving the intrinsic and direct link between fascism in general, Italian fascism and the 20th or 21st century progressivism and actually other forms of socialism (nazism, hitlerism, communism, stalinism, etc.).
I'd highly recommend this book to everybody regardless of their political orientation. If you are a modern liberal (not a classic liberal) you benefit by better understanding who you are and what your ideology actually is. If you are an American conservative or libertarian (or a classic liberal) you will become more informed and be able to better debate a liberal.
Frankly, considering the importance of the information this book brings forth, I'd make it mandatory reading for seniors in high school or at least for for college students of journalism, political studies and related fields.
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Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
First of all, allow me to say that I have purchased and read this book -- something I believe few, if any, of the negative reviewers have done.

This is an important work, tracing the intellectual development of the idea that the all-powerful people's State should always trump the individual and be in firm control of all aspects of the population's culture, education, defense or military expansion, information, health and economy, from its modern beginnings under Wilson to the currently epoused nanny state. One could go further back to the French Revolution or further to Thomas More, of course, but given the deplorable state of history knowledge in the US, this might well be counter-productive. Monarchies need not be considered as they are not states that derive their legitimacy from the people -- but rather from God and inheritance.

The most negative aspect of this book is its title, "Liberal Fascism." A careful reader will learn what is meant by the author, but the vast majority will simply see the juxtaposition of the two words, "Liberal" and "Fascism" and read into this anything their pre-conceived ideas suggest. Actually, the author meant to describe something like "Benevolent Fascism", "Soft Fascism", "Smiley-Face Fascism", or my favorite, "Fuzzy Fascism" (e.g. Fascism that will not hurt you.) The word "Liberal" is used to put a more moderate or liberal face on Fascism, something more appropriate to nanny-state fascism. If the reader misinterprets the title, then little rational discussion can ensue.

The strengths of the book are in its rediscovery of the truly disturbing policies of the Wilson administration in 1917 and 1918 whereby opponents of his administration and policies were brutally suppressed.
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Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
“Liberal Fascism” is really a history book, not the book of political analysis I expected it to be. I didn’t love this book (written in 2007—apparently a 2009 version is updated to include talk about Obama), even though it’s famous among conservatives. I’m not sure why I didn’t love this book. Maybe it’s because despite the book’s aggressive thesis, it is over-careful not to give offense. Maybe I think its thesis is overstated. Maybe it’s because the strain of combining a complete history, intellectual analysis, and polemic regarding the American Left for the past century shows, in lacunae in the book. Or maybe it’s because the style of writing, which I would call “unflashy expository,” just isn’t compelling to me. Nonetheless, I still think the book is very much worth reading, because the history it relates is valuable to know.

“Liberal Fascism” carefully charts the long and sordid record of liberal America’s wholehearted embrace of fascism—that is, of the all-encompassing and all-powerful State as the embodiment of human society. Goldberg writes largely as a corrective to the manufactured twin myths that liberals do, or ever have in the modern era, loved liberty, and that threats to that liberty in America historically originated on the right.

Of course, any educated person is well aware that state-centered leftisms, from Stalin to Fidel Castro to Hugo Chavez, are in most important ways identical to the prototypical fascism of Mussolini. Goldberg, however, locates the historical origin of modern American fascism not in Bolshevism, or Mussolini, but in Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives. This is the core thesis of the book—Progressives were fascist, and all American liberals since them have been their heirs and complicit in their fascist program.
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