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Jonah Goldberg

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change Paperback – June 2, 2009

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Fierce, funny, and controversial, Jonah Goldberg's #1 New York Times bestseller traces fascism back to its surprising roots--in liberalism.

“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.

Print length

512 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Forum Books
Publication date

June 2, 2009
Dimensions

5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0767917189
ISBN-13

978-0767917186
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“Brilliant, insightful, and important.” —New York Sun

“Well-researched, seriously argued, and funny.” —Publishers Weekly“Bold and witty… [Goldberg] makes a persuasive case that fascism was from the beginning a movement of the left.” —New York Post“Jonah Goldberg is the first historian to detail the havoc this spin of all spins has played upon Western thought for the past seventy-five years, very much including the present moment.” —Tom Wolfe

About the Author

JONAH GOLDBERG is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and contributing editor to National Review. A USA Today contributor and former columnist for the Times of London, he has also written for The New Yorker, Commentary, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

* 1 *
Mussolini:
The Father of Fascism

You’re the top!
You’re the Great Houdini!
You’re the top!
You are Mussolini!
—An early version of the Cole Porter song “You’re the Top” (1)

IF YOU WENT solely by what you read in the New York Times or the New York Review of Books, or what you learned from Hollywood, you could be forgiven for thinking that Benito Mussolini came to power around the same time as Adolf Hitler—or even a little bit later—and that Italian Fascism was merely a tardy, watered–down version of Nazism. Germany passed its hateful race policies—the Nuremberg Laws—in 1935, and Mussolini’s Italy followed suit in 1938. German Jews were rounded up in 1942, and Jews in Italy were rounded up in 1943. A few writers will casually mention, in parenthetical asides, that until Italy passed its race laws there were actually Jews serving in the Italian government and the Fascist Party. And on occasion you’ll notice a nod to historical accuracy indicating that the Jews were rounded up only after the Nazis had invaded northern Italy and created a puppet government in Salo. But such inconvenient facts are usually skipped over as quickly as possible. More likely, your understanding of these issues comes from such sources as the Oscar–winning film Life Is Beautiful, (2) which can be summarized as follows: Fascism arrived in Italy and, a few months later, so did the Nazis, who carted off the Jews. As for Mussolini, he was a bombastic, goofy–looking, but highly effective dictator who made the trains run on time.

All of this amounts to playing the movie backward. By the time Italy reluctantly passed its shameful race laws—which it never enforced with even a fraction of the barbarity shown by the Nazis—over 75 percent of Italian Fascism’s reign had already transpired. A full sixteen years elapsed between the March on Rome and the passage of Italy's race laws. To start with the Jews when talking about Mussolini is like starting with FDR’s internment of the Japanese: it leaves a lot of the story on the cutting room floor. Throughout the 1920s and well into the 1930s, fascism meant something very different from Auschwitz and Nuremberg. Before Hitler, in fact, it never occurred to anyone that fascism had anything to do with anti–Semitism. Indeed, Mussolini was supported not only by the chief rabbi of Rome but by a substantial portion of the Italian Jewish community (and the world Jewish community). Moreover, Jews were overrepresented in the Italian Fascist movement from its founding in 1919 until they were kicked out in 1938.

Race did help turn the tables of American public opinion on Fascism. But it had nothing to do with the Jews. When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, Americans finally started to turn on him. In 1934 the hit Cole Porter song “You’re the Top” engendered nary a word of controversy over the line “You are Mussolini!” When Mussolini invaded that poor but noble African kingdom the following year, it irrevocably marred his image, and Americans decided they had had enough of his act. It was the first war of conquest by a Western European nation in over a decade, and Americans were distinctly unamused, particularly liberals and blacks. Still, it was a slow process. The Chicago Tribune initially supported the invasion, as did reporters like Herbert Matthews. Others claimed it would be hypocritical to condemn it. The New Republic—then in the thick of its pro–Soviet phase—believed it would be “naive” to blame Mussolini when the real culprit was international capitalism. And more than a few prominent Americans continued to support him, although quietly. The poet Wallace Stevens, for example, stayed pro–Fascist. “I am pro–Mussolini, personally,” he wrote to a friend. “The Italians,” he explained, “have as much right to take Ethiopia from the coons as the coons had to take it from the boa–constrictors.” (3) But over time, largely due to his subsequent alliance with Hitler, Mussolini’s image never recovered.

That's not to say he didn't have a good ride.

In 1923 the journalist Isaac F. Marcosson wrote admiringly in the New York Times that “Mussolini is a Latin [Teddy] Roosevelt who first acts and then inquires if it is legal. He has been of great service to Italy at home.” (4) The American Legion, which has been for nearly its entire history a great and generous American institution, was founded the same year as Mussolini’s takeover and, in its early years, drew inspiration from the Italian Fascist movement. “Do not forget,” the legion’s national commander declared that same year, “that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States.” (5)

In 1926 the American humorist Will Rogers visited Italy and interviewed Mussolini. He told the New York Times that Mussolini was “some Wop.” “I’m pretty high on that bird.” Rogers, whom the National Press Club had informally dubbed “Ambassador–at–Large of the United States,” wrote up the interview for the Saturday Evening Post. He concluded, “Dictator form of government is the greatest form of government: that is if you have the right Dictator.” (6) In 1927 the Literary Digest conducted an editorial survey asking the question: “Is there a dearth of great men?” The person named most often to refute the charge was Benito Mussolini—followed by Lenin, Edison, Marconi, and Orville Wright, with Henry Ford and George Bernard Shaw tying for sixth place. In 1928 the Saturday Evening Post glorified Mussolini even further, running an eight–part autobiography written by Il Duce himself. The series was gussied up into a book that gained one of the biggest advances ever given by an American publisher.

And why shouldn’t the average American think Mussolini was anything but a great man? Winston Churchill had dubbed him the world’s greatest living lawgiver. Sigmund Freud sent Mussolini a copy of a book he co–wrote with Albert Einstein, inscribed, “To Benito Mussolini, from an old man who greets in the Ruler, the Hero of Culture.” The opera titans Giacomo Puccini and Arturo Toscanini were both pioneering Fascist acolytes of Mussolini. Toscanini was an early member of the Milan circle of Fascists, which conferred an aura of seniority not unlike being a member of the Nazi Party in the days of the Beer Hall Putsch. Toscanini ran for the Italian parliament on a Fascist ticket in 1919 and didn’t repudiate Fascism until twelve years later. (7)

Mussolini was a particular hero to the muckrakers—those progressive liberal journalists who famously looked out for the little guy. When Ida Tarbell, the famed reporter whose work helped break up Standard Oil, was sent to Italy in 1926 by McCall’s to write a series on the Fascist nation, the U.S. State Department feared that this “pretty red radical” would write nothing but “violent anti–Mussolini articles.” Their fears were misplaced. Tarbell was wooed by the man she called “a despot with a dimple,” praising his progressive attitude toward labor. Similarly smitten was Lincoln Steffens, another famous muckraker, who is today perhaps dimly remembered for being the man who returned from the Soviet Union declaring, “I have been over into the future, and it works.” Shortly after that declaration, he made another about Mussolini: God had “formed Mussolini out of the rib of Italy.” As we’ll see, Steffens saw no contradiction between his fondness for Fascism and his admiration of the Soviet Union. Even Samuel McClure, the founder of McClure’s Magazine, the home of so much famous muckraking, championed Fascism after visiting Italy. He hailed it as “a great step forward and the first new ideal in government since the founding of the American Republic.” (8)

Meanwhile, almost all of Italy’s most famous and admired young intellectuals and artists were Fascists or Fascist sympathizers (the most notable exception was the literary critic Benedetto Croce). Giovanni Papini, the “magical pragmatist” so admired by William James, was deeply involved in the various intellectual movements that created Fascism. Papini’s Life of Christ—a turbulent, almost hysterical tour de force chronicling his acceptance of Christianity—caused a sensation in the United States in the early 1920s. Giuseppe Prezzolini, a frequent contributor to the New Republic who would one day become a respected professor at Columbia University, was one of Fascism’s earliest literary and ideological architects. F. T. Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement—which in America was seen as an artistic companion to Cubism and Expressionism—was instrumental in making Italian Fascism the world's first successful “youth movement.” America's education establishment was keenly interested in Italy’s “breakthroughs” under the famed “schoolmaster” Benito Mussolini, who, after all, had once been a teacher.

Perhaps no elite institution in America was more accommodating to Fascism than Columbia University. In 1926 it established Casa Italiana, a center for the study of Italian culture and a lecture venue for prominent Italian scholars. It was Fascism’s “veritable home in America” and a “schoolhouse for budding Fascist ideologues,” according to John Patrick Diggins. Mussolini himself had contributed some ornate Baroque furniture to Casa Italiana and had sent Columbia’s president, Nicholas Murray Butler, a signed photo thanking him for his “most valuable contribution” to the promotion of understanding between Fascist Italy and the United States. (9) Butler himself was not an advocate of fascism for America, but he did believe it was in the best interests of the Italian people and that it had been a very real success, well worth studying. This subtle distinction—fascism is good for Italians, but maybe not for America—was held by a vast array of prominent liberal intellectuals in much the same way some liberals defend Castro’s communist “experiment.”

While academics debated the finer points of Mussolini’s corporatist state, mainstream America’s interest in Mussolini far outstripped that of any other international figure in the 1920s. From 1925 to 1928 there were more than a hundred articles written on Mussolini in American publications and only fifteen on Stalin. (10) For more than a decade the New York Times’s foreign correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick painted a glowing picture of Mussolini that made the Times’s later fawning over Stalin seem almost critical. The New York Tribune was vexed to answer the question: Was Mussolini Garibaldi or Caesar? Meanwhile, James A. Farrell, the head of U.S. Steel, dubbed the Italian dictator “the greatest living man” in the world.

Hollywood moguls, noting his obvious theatrical gifts, hoped to make Mussolini a star of the big screen, and he appeared in The Eternal City (1923), starring Lionel Barrymore. The film recounts the battles between communists and Fascists for control of Italy, and—mirabile dictu—Hollywood takes the side of the Fascists. “His deportment on the screen,” one reviewer proclaimed, “lends weight to the theory that this is just where he belongs.” (11) In 1933 Columbia Pictures released a “documentary” called Mussolini Speaks—supervised by Il Duce himself. Lowell Thomas—the legendary American journalist who had made Lawrence of Arabia famous—worked closely on the film and provided fawning commentary throughout. Mussolini was portrayed as a heroic strongman and national savior. When the crescendo builds before Mussolini gives a speech in Naples, Thomas declares breathlessly, “This is his supreme moment. He stands like a modern Caesar!” The film opened to record business at the RKO Palace in New York. Columbia took out an ad in Variety proclaiming the film a hit in giant block letters because “it appeals to all RED BLOODED AMERICANS” and “it might be the ANSWER TO AMERICA'S NEEDS.”

Fascism certainly had its critics in the 1920s and 1930s. Ernest Hemingway was skeptical of Mussolini almost from the start. Henry Miller disliked Fascism’s program but admired Mussolini’s will and strength. Some on the so–called Old Right, like the libertarian Albert J. Nock, saw Fascism as just another kind of statism. The nativist Ku Klux Klan—ironically, often called “American fascists” by liberals—tended to despise Mussolini and his American followers (mainly because they were immigrants). Interestingly, the hard left had almost nothing to say about Italian Fascism for most of its first decade. While liberals were split into various unstable factions, the American left remained largely oblivious to Fascism until the Great Depression. When the left did finally start attacking Mussolini in earnest—largely on orders from Moscow—they lumped him in essentially the same category as Franklin Roosevelt, the socialist Norman Thomas, and the progressive Robert La Follette. (12)

We’ll be revisiting how American liberals and leftists viewed Fascism in subsequent chapters. But first it seems worth asking, how was this possible? Given everything we’ve been taught about the evils of fascism, how is it that for more than a decade this country was in significant respects pro–fascist? Even more vexing, how is it—considering that most liberals and leftists believe they were put on this earth to oppose fascism with every breath—that many if not most American liberals either admired Mussolini and his project or simply didn’t care much about it one way or the other?

The answer resides in the fact that Fascism was born of a “fascist moment” in Western civilization, when a coalition of intellectuals going by various labels—progressive, communist, socialist, and so forth—believed the era of liberal democracy was drawing to a close. It was time for man to lay aside the anachronisms of natural law, traditional religion, constitutional liberty, capitalism, and the like and rise to the responsibility of remaking the world in his own image. God was long dead, and it was long overdue for men to take His place. Mussolini, a lifelong socialist intellectual, was a warrior in this crusade, and his Fascism—a doctrine he created from the same intellectual material Lenin and Trotsky had built their movements with—was a grand leap into the era of “experimentation” that would sweep aside old dogmas and usher in a new age. This was in every significant way a project of the left as we understand the term today, a fact understood by Mussolini, his admirers, and his detractors. Mussolini declared often that the nineteenth century was the century of liberalism and the twentieth century would be the “century of Fascism.” It is only by examining his life and legacy that we can see how right—and left—he was.

* * *

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was named after three revolutionary heroes. The name Benito—a Spanish name, as opposed to the Italian equivalent, Benedetto—was inspired by Benito Juárez, the Mexican revolutionary turned president who not only toppled the emperor Maximilian but had him executed. The other two names were inspired by now-forgotten heroes of anarchist–socialism, Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa.

Mussolini’s father, Alessandro, was a blacksmith and ardent socialist with an anarchist bent who was a member of the First International along with Marx and Engels and served on the local socialist council. Alessandro’s “[h]eart and mind were always filled and pulsing with socialistic theories,” Mussolini recalled. “His intense sympathies mingled with [socialist] doctrines and causes. He discussed them in the evening with his friends and his eyes filled with light.” (13) On other nights Mussolini's father read him passages from Das Kapital. When villagers brought their horses to Alessandro’s shop to be shod, part of the price came in the form of listening to the blacksmith spout his socialist theories. Mussolini was a congenital rabble–rouser. At the age of ten, young Benito led a demonstration against his school for serving bad food. In high school he called himself a socialist, and at the age of eighteen, while working as a substitute teacher, he became the secretary of a socialist organization and began his career as a left–wing journalist.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Forum Books; First Edition (June 2, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0767917189
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0767917186
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #383,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Jonah Goldberg

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JONAH GOLDBERG is the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty at the American Enterprise Institute and is a Senior Editor at National Review. A best-selling author, his nationally syndicated column appears regularly in over a hundred newspapers across the United States. He is also a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, a member of the board of contributors to USA Today, a Fox News contributor, and a regular member of the “Fox News All-Stars” on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

He was the founding editor of National Review Online. The Atlantic magazine has identified Goldberg as one of the top 50 political commentators in America. Among his awards, in 2011 he was named the Robert J. Novak Journalist of the Year at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He has written on politics, media, and culture for a wide variety of leading publications and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. He is the author of the forthcoming "Suicide of the West" (Crown Forum, 2018), as well as two New York Times bestsellers: “The Tyranny of Clichés” (Sentinel HC, 2012) and “Liberal Fascism” (Doubleday, 2008).

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Nik Willmore

The Liberal Formerly Known as Lincoln

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 19, 2008

Verified Purchase

Only one copy left, order now? After the two hours I've had this up in a browser tab? I think Amazon is "over-booking flights", ha ha, hoping nobody will notice the book being a bit late, since Election 08 is a bit off. God, No.1 on Amazon. Wow. This is a turning point in history. Amazon ratings are the *new* "New York Times Bestseller List". I wonder if the activist NYT will list it or "de-list" it? Glen of Instapundit and the utter hissy fit backlash of "bad publicity" ran this thing up, not Oprah! Bloggers are the new Oprahs, and thus 2008 is the year of *real* democracy taking over (just like in the olde days in which blogging was possession of a "pamphleting" printing press).

A year in which a State Doomsday Religion ("The Sky is Falling") took a tumble or ten ("And None of the Kings Men Couldn't Put Gore Back Together Again"), and *no* major stories involved the "Modern" or "Post-Modern" Art World ("The Emperor's New Clothes")...thus rendering *it* a bit of jolly but culturally irrelevant history of Manifestos followed by shock tactics against the religious Right (which wants control of you, just like the environmental bleeding-heart Left), now that a few comic strips can cause riots and the killing of Theo Van Gogh, again, who died of heartbreak weeks after suicidally syphilitic Vincent, so the peasants, who, being pre-industrial rural peasants, had never seen Impressionism, used his paintings as ceiling patches, after the wife of the bartender who ended up with all his work in a trunk or two used all of the "nude study" sketches to start the fireplace, since they were too obscene to use as bar gifts...which is how they got in the hands of peasants. Then they found out how valuable they were, in Paris, only a year or two later, but I digress about that mess. But from then on the idea that "normal people" could not understand or care about Fine Art indeed created a century of art about Art, and you had to know that "Gogh" wasn't pronounced "Goh" but "Gough" as in "Cough" or you'd be snickered at even worse for not thinking a few signed reproductions of an upside-down toilet was worth ten million dollars, which Academic MARXISTS in art and history departments worldwide, still do!

Who purposely created this Orwellian jumble? The Right? The Torries? NO. It was Labor. It was the Damned Democrats. Who forced black kids into white schools in the South? You guessed it. Who started the Drug War? Same people. Who sold out both the poor and the discriminated-against? Their self-appointed WHITE MALE leaders. This sounds like a rant, but indeed it is loud, because I am angry, as those of us in the middle (taxes *and* red tape suck) are looking at this year's election and thinking...blah...same old four letter word. At least let us catch up with Ketchup empires and other smiley-guitar-playing fake tan types. Fake religious Hill Billary's make Machiavelli look like a saint, minus the paint. The taller guy wins most times, anyway, until a feisty short one in a wheel chair re-sets the same old cycle.

Way back in '01, black rock star Prince wrote some lyrics for piano about Abe Lincoln and how the Left was the "party of labor" so didn't really want slaves freed since they might (and did) head up to NYC and Boston as a real threat to fat Irish unskilled labor jobs. A fair use excerpt:

He was not or never had been in favor
of setting r people free
if it wasn't 4 the 13th Amendment
we woulda been born in slavery
He was not or never had been in favor
of letting us vote so u c...
Abraham Lincoln was a racist who said
"U cannot escape from history"

REAL history is not kind to those who pave roads to hell. This is a book about that. Another book like this, is 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' which in a hundred pages less than this book shows how BANAL evil is. That NAZI means "National Socialist Working Party" must be known. The old cliché is "never forget" (the genocides of WWII), but 10X that died of starvation or outright murder due to LEFTIST socialism in Russia and China alone, the book about THAT is 'The Black Book of Communism."

I have never voted. I am a scientist who now designs products and jewelry, but 911 woke me up to politics, not so much Obama vs. Thompson (where's Condi when you need her?), but to the greater waves of History. This book digs deep. Being self-employed, I hire a student or two during peak gift seasons, so taxation and Red Tape is a huge issue for me, the Job Creator, so I tend to like Republicans, but my Libertarian streak makes me not want to actually vote for them, so I don't. But the final book I will mention is about the Laufer curve, which suggests that tax revenue (via Reagan era "supply side" economics) bumps the economy up, which makes for MORE tax revenue than high taxes do. The book about this, and my last suggestion is 'How the World Works' by Wanniski except for my really last last suggestion about why it's quite risky to topple dictators and *too* quickly introduce democracy (since the majority vote for Hitler types who promise to give the high tech farms and banks to uneducated citizens who then promptly starve to death for lack of knowing how to even fix a tractor) is 'World on Fire' by Chua.

There *is* such a thing as a Modern Man's (yes sir Captain Janeway) Essential Contemporary Library, and yes, we are living in a historical period in which dues are being paid, and old horses are being left to die.

Edit: This is not a page-turner. It's a hard-nosed college-class-required type of tome. I was so enthusiastic before. I still am, only deadened, like a marriage after six instead of a single year. Yes, it *does* over-simplify, over-generalize a *bit*, but that's the point, for otherwise it would be a mere random collection of RECENT history, and recent history is the most boring type, since you get no sense of nostalgia from it, of "Cool, everybody was killing each other," church vs. state (Medici vs. Vatican) sort of armchair history. This is a book. As in a BOOK. Like the Complete Works of Shakespeare, or War and Peace, or the complete works and letters of Ayn Rand. Yes, lifetime reading material, but it's a week later, and am I much smarter for having spent my week on actually finishing it? This is a non-sensational text version of typical "talk radio" styled anti-leftism minus the pizzaz. If this is READ, cover-to-cover, by the millions of people like me who have bought it, then by god we really do still have a Civil Society. Yet, because it does not actually demonize the Left, but merely document its once-new-now-abandoned hall of mirrors (vs. the utter simplicity of small-government politicians), it's like reading a 500 page book on how magic tricks really work. If people who are buying this are really finishing it, then we are indeed entering an Enlightened period, but it's an adult one, above the level of even college kids. I don't mean to say it's like a textbook. More like a classic work of literature that is kind of boring to read, but which exactly because it's not propagandistic or overly emotional, is one of the few books that made me realize what the formerly foreign phrase "Civil Society" really means. Thankfully, it's not a dated "2008 election" book. It's one you'll keep, whichever side wins this year's vote by 1%.

14 people found this helpful

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David McCune

"I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made" - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 8, 2008

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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. This book is not attempting, as many seem to think, to say that all liberals are closet Nazis, but rather that, contrary to popular misconception, it is not conservatism, but liberalism, that traces its roots to the fascists. In some ways it is a book-length extension of the question conservatives sometimes pose to liberals: "If you leave out the parts about killing all the Jews and invading Poland, what specifically about the Nazi political platform do you disagree with?" (That platform is handily provided in the appendix.) After Goldberg's book, this question is much harder to simply shrug off.

Still, one doesn't need nearly 600 citations just to allow conservatives to say "I'm rubber, you're glue" the next time they are called a fascist. Goldberg argues that our focus on the atrocities committed by fascists in Germany obscures the fact that the fascist drive is, to a degree, universal in modern politics. The heritage and institutions of America lead it to manifest itself in a different form here. Whether it is the smothering embrace of the "It Takes a Village" mommy state or, to a lesser degree, the big-government, "compassionate conservatism" of Bush, fascism in the U.S. is well-intention, "smiley face" fascism, but it still looks first to the state, last to the individual.

In the end, that's what I liked best about this book. Yes, it's great to have a 5-pound rebuttal to the next person who tries to use "fascist" as an epithet to end criticism of a liberal program. However, what comes through in the end is not so much Goldberg's hatred of fascism, but his love of liberty. Fascism in all its forms is the enemy of liberty, and recognizing it for what it is will always be a prerequisite for stopping it. Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" clears away decades of obfuscation to allow that recognition in both the past and present day politics. Those who continue to fight for individual freedom will enjoy and appreciate this book.

3,135 people found this helpful

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armstrong

Well sourced information, that could be appreciated by open minds, but perhaps upset some political bigots.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 1, 2018

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Before I bought and read this book I first looked at the low rating reviews and then the high rated reviews. Having now read this book I conclude the higher rating comments to be if not more honest then at least more accurate. Thus since there are so many excellent higher rating reviews I see no great need to add more to what has been said in them.

By way of a more personal observation I would say that perhaps those ordinary people who religiously believe they are good fair minded socialists; this book may upset them because they probably not only won't know the roots of their political ideology, but probably won't want to know it either. For those who only wish to make sense of Western socialism it may shed some light on the inexplicable. Those who look and listen with an open mind and are bewildered by the world the find themselves in, may gain some new knowledge but not necessarily be surprised. Any expert opposed to socialism may appear biased in focusing on the negative aspects and staunch defenders of socialism as they see it will accuse such experts of outright lying as is the case with some negative commentators of Goldberg. This I believe is due to laziness on the part of these critics who seem to fail to notice that Goldberg actually quotes fascist socialism principles enunciated by the innovators and proponents of the ideology, with 52.5 pages checkable of references. Thus he has no need of lies or cranky opinions to make his case.

I believe in a socialist society but not as we know it,"Jim" (Captain Kirk of the star ship Enterprise.).

23 people found this helpful

Philip James

Origins of The 'Regressive' Left

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 14, 2019

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It's been just over 10 years since this book was released and the misuse of the word's Fascist and Nazi continue to be apart of everyday life, often being used by individuals who would define themselves as Liberal, Left-wing, Leftist and Progressive against people who identify as Libertarian, Conservative, Anarcho-Capitalist , Classical Liberal, or anyone who is simply to the Right of Joseph Stalin.

The great irony of course, is that those individuals who define themselves as Liberal, Left-wing, Leftist and Progressive, are much closer to being Fascists and Nazis in their ideology than those who identify as Libertarian, Conservative, Anarcho-Capitalist and Classical Liberal, as Jonah Goldberg argues well in this book.

The book ultimately argues that Fascism has already took over the USA in the form of Progressivism, which is an America answer to Fascism and thoroughly argues the parallels and ideological roots of Progressivism to Fascism. Goldberg argues the seeds of Progressivism were planted under the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson and were nurtured under FDR, JFK, Johnson and Clinton.

The book is well researched and a lot of the arguments in the book are strong, however, I think it's worth pointing out a couple of issues:

1) Defining the political spectrum is a tricky thing, because it varies depending on the person you ask. Goldberg in this book seems to define it the way most American Conservatives define it: 2D left to right axis, the Left is Big Government/Authoritarianism whereas the Right is Small Government/Libertarian. I personally disagree with this and think the spectrum is defined by a: 2D left to right axis, the Left being Equality/Egalitarianism, the Right being Hierarchy.

By Goldberg's own standards, Neoconservatives should be defined as Left-wing, as they have increased the size and scope of Government. He even acknowledges that Neoconservatives are for Big Government in his book, yet still refers to them as though they are members of "The Right".

I do agree with Goldberg that Fascism shares roots with Progressivism, but this does not mean Fascism is not Right-wing, but this also does not mean everyone defined as Right-wing is a Fascist. In the same vein, not everyone defined as Left-wing is a Progressive.

2) Goldberg argues that if you're someone who believes in the founding principles of American, which is Classical Liberalism and want to return the Nation to those principles, then the Conservative movement is the way forward. However, as political commentator Michael Malice often says: "Conservatism is Progressivism driving the speed limit", or in other words, Conservatives always seek to maintain the status quo and the status quo of modern day America is a Progressive society. This is true not just in America, but all across the Western, e.g. the modern day Conservative party in Britain are basically Tony Blair's New Labour.

I would recommend the book, as it does have a very good job of detailing the origins of Progressivism and the roots it shares with Fascism, but it fails at it's other two objectives: arguing that Fascism isn't Right-wing and the solution to Progressivism is more of the same that the Conservative movement has done for the last 50+ years.

8 people found this helpful

Tom

EYE OPENING

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 7, 2019

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Some very well structured and searching arguments in this. Should be on a 'must read' list!

4 people found this helpful

Mr. J. Riordan

Worth every penny.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 3, 2018

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I can't agree with quite everything in this book, but it is nonetheless superb in general. There is no political concept so routinely misapplied as Facism, and this book serves as a good starting point for a long overdue confrontation with the problem.

One person found this helpful

Mr. P. Briody

A modern classic.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 21, 2017

Verified Purchase

Everybody, I mean everybody, should read this book. Brilliant.

5 people found this helpful

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Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change Paperback – June 2, 2009

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