You've laughed at the hilarious excerpts on Sadly, No! but now Spencer Ackerman gives you the in-depth analysis of Liberal Fascism you've been waiting for. Using non-standard definitions of both "liberal" and "fascism" seems important to this project.
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A Very Serious Argument
26 Dec 2007 11:31 am
Comments (18)
Jonah Goldberg is pretty much the poster child for the downside of the information revolution. Back when there were real gatekeepers, folks who wanted to play a significant role in the public discourse had to be...
A. Demonstrably very intelligent.
B. Extremely accomplished or experienced.
C. Excellent writers or public speakers.
Now you get people like Goldberg, who isn't very smart, hasn't done anything of note and isn't even a good performer in print or on TV, put forth as someone to whom attention must be paid.
Mike
Not to disagree with you Mike, BUT, Jonah has the most important qualification of them all - a well-connected parent who can get her schlubby kid a job, merit be damned.
Also, a non-standard definition of " ".
I'm impressed that someone would write a book about fascism without, so far as I can gather, understanding any of the theoretical literature on the subject.
Impressed not in a good way, that is.
Using non-standard definitions of both "liberal" and "fascism" seems important to this project.
Fascism-that which is undesirable
Liberal-?
By returning to the much more appropriate word "Progressive," it seems that "liberals" are admitting that they are not liberal in any sense of the word (not to mention "progressive" is a much better rhetorical foil to "conservative").
Just so you know, once you've completed the switch, I'm taking the word "liberal" back.
I think the definition of the word "liberal" should go back to the British sense of the word: unfettered lassiz-faire capitalism mated with a "less government is better government" philosophy. That would REALLY start making wingnut heads explode.
Heh. Atrocity Exhibition, indeed.
Gotta agree with Shawn regarding his disagreement with Mike MBunge. Jonah Goldberg is the quintessence of wingnut welfare, an institution that has existed for many decades, long before any "information revolution".
Sorry, MBunge, it's the gatekeepers who have failed, Goldberg works for the LA Times and the Atlantic, and comparable people write for the Times, the Post, Time, Newsweek, the WSJ, and so on.
In many respects the political internet is a response to the takeover of the media by movement Republicans and various other sum ("contrarian" fake Democrats, political fluffers, etc.) The internet (which processes the legit media for you) is your best source of insight into the news today. The major media opinion world is a cesspool. Without the collapse of the legit media, the internet would primarily be used for porn, fantasy baseball, and MySpace.
Sorry, MBunge, it's the gatekeepers who have failed, Goldberg works for the LA Times and the Atlantic, and comparable people write for the Times, the Post, Time, Newsweek, the WSJ, and so on.
In many respects the political internet is a response to the takeover of the media by movement Republicans and various other sum ("contrarian" fake Democrats, political fluffers, etc.) The internet (which processes the legit media for you) is your best source of insight into the news today. The major media opinion world is a cesspool. Without the collapse of the legit media, the internet would primarily be used for porn, fantasy baseball, and MySpace.
While many of the actions taken by the Wilson administration described by Goldberg during WWI were in fact illiberal, they were hardly novel in that era. All of our allies and the Central Powers utilized similar means of political control during that war. Much of the repression was, in fact, inspired by the right wing reaction to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
Goldberg's book is shaping up to be the most embarrassing political book, right or left, since Dinesh D'Souza's last one.
"Sorry, MBunge, it's the gatekeepers who have failed,"
Not really, because what is it that brought Jonah Goldberg to prominence? His running National Review's website. Wingnut welfare has been around a long time, but it wasn't until the internet allowed folks like Goldberg a public platform that they were able to worm their way into the broader public discourse.
Which isn't to look back longingly on the era of the gatekeepers, of course.
Mike
Much of the repression was, in fact, inspired by the right wing reaction to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
Communism's sins are really the fault of non-communists? Talk about blaming the victim.
Reading this Stoller guy's platform, four of these five issues could have come from a Libertarian Party newsletter (rhetorical style aside), though obviously not his preference for a state-run media over a corporate-run media.
Also intereseting is that the one candidate who likely cares about those four issues is...Republican Ron Paul.
Something inside this weird intersection might help explain why some more extreme progressives support Paul and why relatively-Libertarian Repubs like myself (his natural constituency) greatly appreciate him, but will probably vote for Fred.
JBunge, there are a hundred Jonah Goldbergs in the major print media, and most of them rose to prominence through print. (Andrew Sullivan started in print and moved to the net.) Your point has no validity at all. It's a common error, just like the idea that the problem is that voters are too stupid.
What we're talking about is the capture of the legit media by the right wing. Jonah Goldberg's promotion to respectability is part of that story, and a second unfortunate consequence is that people who trust the media for political news and comment are misinformed. This is elite corruption, not some kind of mass stupidity or grassroots insurgency.
One sign of the rightwing media capture is the terrible weakness, shallowness, and illiberalism of the supposed liberals in the legit media, Krugman, Olbermann, and a very few others excepted.
Krugman, Olbermann, and a very few others excepted.
Olbermann doesn't seem to have an ideology beyond reactionism, and the only possible endgame of Krugman's approach to civics is "benevolent" dictatorship. Surely you progressives can do better.
I've always found Chait to be a rather formidable voice on the left.
Shinyk's right about this: "relatively-Libertarian Repubs like myself (his natural constituency)".
As I've said, Paul is a Republican with (big "L") Libertarian leanings.
But then, as Bob Black once said, "Libertarians are just Republicans who smoke dope." In other words, big-L Libs are politically and economically conservative and socially and culturally liberal.
Which is why a lot of the Net and computer geeks and sci-fi fans overlap with Libertarians.
The problem for them is that their demographic is maybe one to two percent of the population - which renders them irrelevant to the dominant culture.
Except for the damage the computer hackers can do and the overall impact the developers of new technology can have. All this stuff is being written on a blog, after all...
Of course, we Transhumans are probably less than one hundredth of one percent of the population - if that.
Ah, but we're much smarter, meaner and have even higher tech (or will have one of these days.)
I can already see that some smart-alecky academic (who's not so politically correct as to be horrified by the implicit sulllying of the reputations of actually interesting thinkers) is going to have a blast tracing Jonah Goldberg's argument to...the Frankfurt School. Viva Marcuse!
Comments closed January 09, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I'd like to think that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are returning, sans writers, solely to ensure that Jonah Goldberg has ample chance to shill his book, at the cost of whatever scrap of dignity he retains after writing the damn thing.
Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 26, 2007 12:08 PM