If You've Got Nothing Nice to Say

I just hope The New York Times Book Review is as kind to my book when the time comes as they were to Jonah Goldberg (of course, realistically we're all just desperately hoping to be reviewed at all): "Yet the title of his book aside, what distinguishes Goldberg from the Sean Hannitys and Michael Savages is a witty intelligence that deals in ideas as well as insults — no mean feat in the nasty world of the culture wars." Yes, that's right, Liberal Fascism is a step away from the nastiness of the culture wars. The reviewer, David Oshinsky, does concede that Goldberg's main thesis is false but that didn't seem to bother him.

I actually would be somewhat interested to hear what Sherri Berman, author of The Primacy of Politics thinks about the Goldberg Thesis, since her book does posit common roots of fascism and social democracy (which she prefers to and distinguishes from progressive liberalism) in the revisionist Marxist movement of the pre-WWI era.

Comments

I'm still hoping to read a review of your book by Dershowitz in TNR.

BTW, Heads in the Sand is available for pre-order on Amazon. It had better thank your blog commenters prominently at the front.

http://www.amazon.com/Heads-Sand-Republicans-Foreign-Democrats/dp/047008622X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199110474&sr=8-1

Posted by otto | December 31, 2007 9:16 AM

This proves that you are a liberal fatcyst too.

Posted by El Cid | December 31, 2007 9:27 AM

The whole book is just a short fuse for meaningless debates about terminology and an invitation for baseless, hyperbolic rhetoric.

Liberal Fascism, oh, please. We won't get anything done in this country until both sides of the aisle realize how fundamentally misguided it is to go about accusing the other side of being more like Hitler.

We're only a few years away from books like Republican Baby Recipes for Fried Baby and Left Wing Satan. Really, what good does this do?

Posted by Thomas | December 31, 2007 9:32 AM

I didn't think the review was particularly positive. It says that the author is witty, and that the last part of the book is a hilarious rant, but it also seems very critical of the book's thesis and of its biased failure to examine Republican administrations .

Posted by JM | December 31, 2007 9:40 AM

Look, I haven't read the book, but Goldberg is a total buffoon, and I'd be extremely surprised if the book comes across as anything written otherwise.

Yet it rated a FULL PAGE review in the NY Times! Most publishers would pay a huge amount in bribes to get that sort of visibility, and I doubt Goldberg did. I bet lots of prominent writers published more important books this week which didn't get even a mention.

Didn't the NYT make some neocon the new editor of its Sunday Book Review section a couple of years ago? And doesn't it seem like half the reviewers these days are neocons? And doesn't La Lucienne have lots of chits/blackmail power with most of the neocons? And didn't the NYT just hire Kristol to help "balance" its op-ed page?

I was a little surprised a couple of days ago to see that the NYT Company had lost about 75% of its market value over the last few years. Now we just have to hope for the remaining 25%...

Posted by RKU | December 31, 2007 10:16 AM

It's just standard collegial civility, of the 'my good friend the honorable gentleman from Wherever is pond scum and leaves a trail of despair wherever he has oozed' variety. It was inevitable that the review would contain some nice or nice-ish phrases, if only to justify the reviewer's failure to throw the book against the wall and sue their commissioning editor for infliction of mental anguish. That's how the system works, and that's why the Grey Lady is Grey.

That said, the reviewer says approximately nothing complementary about the book's content, just that it is sometimes a skillful and amusing rant. And you have misread the quote you use - the reviewer places Goldberg firmly within the Culture Wars, although he (somehow) claims Goldberg is witty with it.

P.S. I hadn't noticed before that Goldberg thinks that Woodrow Wilson's wartime repressions, which predated Mussolini, inaugurated fascism. One does rather wonder whether Goldberg is aware of the similar limitations on pre-war civil rights imposed in other combatant countries (well prior to Wilson's actions).

Posted by Warren Terra | December 31, 2007 10:22 AM

That review perfectly illustrates what is, perhaps, the defining sickness of modern America's political and cultural elite - a total inability to enforce any standards on members of that elite.

The only explanations for a "book" like LIBERAL FASCISM are...

1. The author is almost mentally retarded.

2. The author is using deliberate deceit to try and poison the political discourse.

With Goldberg, it's probably a little of both.

Yet, the NYTBR treats Goldberg like a very serious person who deserves credit for being "witty" and shouldn't at all be blamed for foisting Orwellian bullshit on the public.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | December 31, 2007 10:24 AM

Didn't the NYT make some neocon the new editor of its Sunday Book Review section a couple of years ago?

Not just the book review section:

Noted neocon and New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus (right) has been given control of the paper's Week in Review section. Prepare for (justified) liberal outrage.

I think Sullivan's writing off the eight or ten remaining neocons too quickly. They appear to be well-loved by management at both WaPo and the NYT. (And that, I think, is because the Yglesiases of two generations ago treated the neocons as respectable interlocutors (for reasons good and ill). WaPo and the NYT have reason to think neocons are particularly respectable conservatives.)

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | December 31, 2007 10:30 AM

Dropped a sentence: ("Expect Goldberg to be running the NYT Book Review in fifteen years, for similar reasons.")

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | December 31, 2007 10:34 AM

Tim, "Week in Review" is not the book review section, it's the Sunday opinion/analysis section that contains letters, editorials, op-eds, and a bunch of vacuous "think"-pieces written by the likes of Adam Nagourney and Elizabeth Bumiller.

Posted by Philly | December 31, 2007 10:42 AM

Oh wait, I see you were making just that distinct! Sorry. My reading comprehension skills are fading with age.

Posted by Philly | December 31, 2007 10:46 AM

I'm not sure which would be more amusing -- an actual hard core review of the book looking for serious theses and valid arguments and appropriate evidence, or just an outline.

Like the parts of where fascism is defined as "making politics a religion" but then defined as "trying to get beyond politics"; where the poisoned tree not only lives but starts producing poisoned fruit; where a definition of fascism contradictory to "classical fascism" is not only noted but embraced as "central to my point".

It would take a middle schooler and perhaps 25 college-ruled loose-leaf pages to outline what he claimed in each section.

Posted by El Cid | December 31, 2007 10:50 AM

I just love how it seems like Goldberg treats 'fascism' as if it was a traditional ideology instead of a sacralized form of politics. I'd love to see a bibliography from the book and if any of the major historians of fascism appear there. I doubt he even bothered to take the culture of the day into account, a big no-no for writing on fascism.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | December 31, 2007 10:53 AM

MBunge is exactly right. The little jabs Olshinsky gets in are completely inadequate as a response to the Goldbergs and Coulters of the world. Either flame them or ignore them.

Posted by Matt Weiner | December 31, 2007 10:59 AM

Jordan Lawrence: Well, he did say that "The Holocaust could not have occurred in Italy, because Italians are not Germans."

Does that count?

Posted by El Cid | December 31, 2007 11:00 AM

I TA'd for David Oshinsky while doing my grad work at Rutgers, so I may be a little biased (he and I were probably the only two Red Sox fans on campus at the time), but I think MY misses the point a little here. It's pretty standard in writing critiques to point out the things you like about the book first before proceeding on to the problems, and Oshinsky spanks the content of the book pretty thoroughly - basically he says that it's cleverly written and fun to read but completely worthless intellectually. The ending of the review was puzzling and abruptly shifted tone in a way that was un-Oshinsky-like, though; I suspect it was clumsily edited to soften his ending a bit. Oshinsky himself was an interesting choice for the review, since he's an expert on McCarthyism, and has built a career on the study of people who use terror and bullshit to scare their way into power.

Posted by Swordsmith | December 31, 2007 11:13 AM

Not one of you jerk-offs have read the book. And I'm not claiming that one must read a book in its entirety to justify a negative conclusion; browsing through the 1st chapter in a bookstore can be sufficient. Yet none of you have done that much. And you pronounce it worthless with great certainty.

Which provides some indication of your level of seriousness, and intellectual honesty.

Posted by Brian | December 31, 2007 11:22 AM

Brian: you may relax with fully self-satisfied confidence that I don't give the slightest sh*t about who you think is "serious" or not.

Posted by El Cid | December 31, 2007 11:25 AM

"Oddly, Goldberg has less to say about issues more likely to bolster his case, like the enormous growth of executive power under Roosevelt and his ill-fated attempt to “pack” the United States Supreme Court."

wonder why that would be?

Posted by Max B. | December 31, 2007 11:27 AM

I note, Brian, that you reject the contents of my book, Brian Is One Stupid Motherfucker, without even reading it. Which provides some indication of your level of seriousness, and intellectual honest.

Posted by Walt | December 31, 2007 11:29 AM

"Not one of you jerk-offs have read the book. And I'm not claiming that one must read a book in its entirety to justify a negative conclusion; browsing through the 1st chapter in a bookstore can be sufficient. Yet none of you have done that much. And you pronounce it worthless with great certainty."

Sorry, but I feel no shame or remorse in slagging a book--written by a well known intellectual midget, posterboy for nepotism, and kneejerk supporter of McCarthy, torture, uncontsrained illegal surveillance, indefinite detainment without charge, and the bare assertion of national security as an absolute shield to any oversight or judicial action--that maintains that Democrats are the precursors and heirs to Hitler and Mussolini.

As for the NYT review, it is indeed more negative than I inferred from Matt's post and essentially states that the book's substance is a sack of shit. However, it does so very politely and with fulsome praise of the author's wit--somehow the reviewer forgot to discuss that smiley Hitler mustache, which was no doubt really meant as a jab at that well known left wing fascist Charlie Chaplin.

Posted by Marlowe | December 31, 2007 11:51 AM

"Oshinsky spanks the content of the book pretty thoroughly - basically he says that it's cleverly written and fun to read but completely worthless intellectually."

First, it's the "basically" that's the problem. If someone gives you a box full of shit, you don't compliment them on the pretty ribbon around the box.

Secondly, how can something be "cleverly written" AND "completely worthless intellectually"? If the author is really that stupid, he can't be a clever writer. If he writes well, then he's smart enough to be held responsible for it. It's a little like how some people are dodging the issue of putting Barry Bonds in the Baseball Hall of Fame. They say "Well, Bonds was a Hall of Fame player before he ever used steroids, so he should still get in". But if he really was that great, doesn't that make his sin against baseball a thousand times worse?

Mike

Posted by MBunge | December 31, 2007 11:53 AM

But if he really was that great, doesn't that make his sin against baseball a thousand times worse?

I think that the argument made by the pro-Bonds people is that "sins" shouldn't matter at all.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | December 31, 2007 11:56 AM

Brian: Anybody who writes a sentence like "The White Man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism" is a stupid motherfucker who deserves to have his teeth kicked in.

Why do I get the feeling that we all would have been spared all this if only Bill Clinton had given in to Lucianne Goldberg's amorous advances toward him?

Posted by calipygian | December 31, 2007 11:57 AM

"I think that the argument made by the pro-Bonds people is that "sins" shouldn't matter at all."

Nah. I've seen many sports people comparing Bonds to Mark McGwire and saying that, unlike McGwire, Bonds was good enough before he started juicing to justify Bonds getting into the Hall.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | December 31, 2007 12:04 PM

calipygian: "Anybody who writes a sentence like "The White Man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism" is a stupid motherfucker who deserves to have his teeth kicked in."

ROFL!!!!

You prove the opposition's point yet again!

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 31, 2007 12:05 PM

If White Man = Liberal Fascism + Jew

is it also true that

Jew = White Man - Liberal Fascism?

Or that

White Man - Jew = Liberal Fascism?

Or am I using "of" wrong? Is 'Jew' a subset of Liberal Fascism?

Posted by El Cid | December 31, 2007 12:16 PM

El Cid: Actually, that's kind of my point. Fascism was, in addition to many other things, ultra-nationalist and so took on different characteristics in different countries. But since only Italy and Germany saw a 'successful' rise of a fascist government, that's what we have to work with. The hardest thing to get about fascism is that it wasn't a sum of its parts. It took a particular kind of nationalism directed in a particular way, which is why fascism never really took hold in France, since patriotism was generally defined as support of the republic, not a revolt against it. So while other nations might exhibit fascistic elements that does not make them fascist nations. I remember a lot of people calling the Bush administration a fascist one and shaking my head at it. Sure, elements were there, but I think it's pretty easy to see that the Bush administration is in many way not Fascist Italy. Just because you mix some Hegelian notions of 'free will' with a cult of the leader you don't instantly come up with fascism.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | December 31, 2007 12:20 PM

Brian:

If you are unaware of the takedown of Jonah's book at www.sadlyno.com or haven't read ongoing analysis here: http://toohotfortnr.blogspot.com/ I would suggest you go read them. If you are aware, then, what the others said.

Posted by david | December 31, 2007 12:29 PM

"It took a particular kind of nationalism directed in a particular way, which is why fascism never really took hold in France, since patriotism was generally defined as support of the republic, not a revolt against it."

Hey, stupid. In what countries, exactly, is patriotism generally defined as a "revolt" against the established order? "My country, right or wrong" and " Country X, love it or leave it" are pretty much the general definitions of patriotism everywhere. Do even you understand the point you're trying to make?

Mike

Posted by MBunge | December 31, 2007 12:37 PM

Jordan Lawrwnce--I'll likely lose an argument on the pureness of various national fascist movements, but, at a minimum, didn't fascism do pretty well in Spain, as well?

Posted by Marlowe | December 31, 2007 12:38 PM

MBunge: Um, yes I do. Nationalism isn't defined by absolute adherence to the state, but to the nation. They're two different things. Kurdistan is a pretty good example since the Kurds don't really support either the Turkish state or the Iraqi state yet they consider themselves a nation. Patriotism, love for one's people, is part and parcel with that. It would be patriotic for a group of Kurds to lead attacks against Turks in what is considered Kurdish territory. It was considered patriotic to move against the Wiemar government since to do so was a sign of one's patriotism and desire to bring about a true German state. We call dissidents in Iran patriots for standing against the Iranian government, don't we?

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | December 31, 2007 12:47 PM

Well, I'm no specialist, but on a purely academic level, I think there's generally been a pretty strong ideological case made that e.g. many aspects of Roosevelt's New Deal were indeed "Fascist", i.e. borrowed heavily from some of Mussolini's corporatist policies.

But words mean what people think they mean, and in common American political usage the term "Fascism" basically means "really bad", "undemocratic", and "dictatorial," being essentially the antonym for freedom/justice/liberty/democracy.

So the title "Liberal Fascism" is really just "Bad, Bad Liberalism"...which is hardly surprising considering the source.

Posted by RKU | December 31, 2007 12:56 PM

Marlowe: Spain's one of those sticky issues when it comes to fascism. Stanley Payne, a pretty smart historian of fascism, has written a couple of books on Spain during that period and generally considers the Franco government a non-fascist one, albeit closely allied with Nazi Germany though. This is why defining fascism is so ridiculously difficult; no founding fathers or texts, no specifically written ideology and an ideology so tied to the sacredness of the nation that exporting it directly to other countries was pretty much a no-go.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | December 31, 2007 12:57 PM

"Um, yes I do. Nationalism isn't defined by absolute adherence to the state, but to the nation. They're two different things."

Yes, much like nationalism and patriotism are two different things. Your explanation for why facism never caught on in France was the nature of French patriotism. Yet, French patriotism is no different than German patriotism. If France had the equivalent of the Weimar Republic, there would have been just as many Frenchmen as Germans who opposed that government (Have you ever heard of the French underground that opposed Vichy France?).

By the way, "we" don't call Iranians opposed to Iran's government patriots. Other Iranians might call them patriots, but outsiders properly refer to them as dissidents.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | December 31, 2007 1:21 PM

When Mussolini used the term "corporatist", he didn't mean "corporations" like private for profit companies. He meant incorporating various sectors of society into discrete groupings, much as the body has tissues, organs, and a hierarchy of control.

No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State. Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to which unity within the State (which amalgamates classes into a single economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which sees in history nothing but the class struggle. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.

Grouped according to their several interests, individuals form classes; they form trade-unions when organized according to their several economic activities; but first and foremost they form the State, which is no mere matter of numbers, the suns of the individuals forming the majority. Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number; but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most ethical, the most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the conscience and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one, and ending to express itself in the conscience and the will of the mass, of the whole group ethnically molded by natural and historical conditions into a nation, advancing, as one conscience and one will, along the self same line of development and spiritual formation. Not a race, nor a geographically defined region, but a people, historically perpetuating itself; a multitude unified by an idea and imbued with the will to live, the will to power, self-consciousness, personality.

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm

I don't know who the World Future Fund is, and I'm simply assuming at speed that their e-text is accurate, given the link from Wikipedia.

This went along with Mussolini's reversal of Marxist class conflict theory, in which Mussolini used the styles of socialism to argue that true conflict existed not within nations but between "proletarian" and "bourgeois" nations -- thus using socialist class conflict rhetoric to impose multi-class unity.

The capitalist research and study groups founded by upper class figures such as the Rockefellers, and whose plans were adopted by FDR, hardly were copying Mussolini, although at the time the U.S. upper classes did like the way he cracked down on unions & socialists.

Posted by El Cid | December 31, 2007 1:40 PM

MBunge: Alright, nail in coffin time. Wasn't there an entire Mel Gibson movie about a guy, a 'patriot', if you will, revolting against the established order? Wait, I think there were two movies like that.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | December 31, 2007 1:52 PM

Apparently, because Fascism was competing with Socialism for working class support, the fascists early on adopted some of the rhetoric of the socialists. Then of course, once they were in power, they repudiated that rhetoric with thier actions. So to really say what Fascism is, you have examine what life under fascist rule really look like. My list of fascist traits is this:

Cult of personality

Worship of authority in gerneral

Harsh law and orderism

Curtailment of civil liberties

Anti-democratic

Strictly enforced conformity to social standards set by the party

Extreme nationalism

Imperialism

Militarism and worship of the military

zenophobia

Scapegoating and violent repression of minorities

Anti-intellectualism

Extensive use of propoganda

Creation of nationalistic and ethnic mythologies aimed at angering and rounsing the lower classes to serve political ends

That list resemble communist rule in various places, fascist rule, and current republicans with the exception of the use of violence. What it doesn't resemble is current liberals.

Posted by cw | December 31, 2007 2:40 PM

The Times has never reviewed a book by Norman Finkelstein. They threw a conniption fit over Jimmy Carter's mild critique of Israel "Peace, Not Apartheid" and Walt-Mearshimer's excellent "The Israel Lobby" Big surprise they'd give Malted Milk-face a pat on the back. The funny thing is that all of Michael "Weiner" Savage's tomes has more insight and intellectual integrity than "Liberal Fascism"

Posted by Trevor | December 31, 2007 2:40 PM

I'm waiting for Matt Groening to review Pantload's piece of tripe book. Man, that would be awesome.

Posted by ed | December 31, 2007 2:49 PM

I recognize that you are a fairly young individual, but I didn't realize that you were also poorly educated, as evidenced by your inability to comprehend what Oshinsky actually wrote. He most assuredly did NOT refute Goldberg's main thesis regarding prime responsibility for fascisim.

Posted by Andy | December 31, 2007 2:55 PM

"Alright, nail in coffin time. Wasn't there an entire Mel Gibson movie about a guy, a 'patriot', if you will, revolting against the established order? Wait, I think there were two movies like that."

What the bleep are you going on about? My point was your comments about fascism in France were quite obviously bull, indicating you didn't understand what you are writing about.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | December 31, 2007 2:58 PM

Don't miss Goldberg's response to this post.

Posted by J— | December 31, 2007 3:11 PM

MBunge: You know, I only have my master's in history, and my thesis on the intellectual origins of fascism wasn't that magnificent of a piece, and perhaps there's some magical text out there that I haven't read yet concerning fascism in France, so I'll concede that perhaps I don't have a clue of what I'm talking about. It's entirely possible Zeev Sternhell's work on fascism in France is all so horribly wrong, that George Mosse spent his career looking at fascism and its origins the wrong way, that Paxton, Payne and Gentile haven't studied enough. Perhaps Georges Sorel wasn't at all influential on fascism's origins, nor Le Bon. And perhaps Eric Hobsbawm, Anthony Smith, Ernest Gellner, and Benedict Anderson are a bunch of fools who couldn't comprehend the history of nationalism, particularly between the years 1870 and 1945. That's all possible. But the fact remains that fascism got its intellectual start in France, had a strong movement and yet never even got close to threatening the government due, for the most part, to the French conception of nationalism and patriotism that meant support of the republic versus the undermining it. And the fact remains that patriotism in Germany and Italy meant something different and had meant something different ever since their respective unifications since a large number of people felt that political unification did not bring about spiritual unification and kept pushing their cultures and societies toward this perfect form of national unity, even if it meant destroying the current government.
Now, if you could point me to this magical text that tells me all of this is wrong when it comes to France then please do so.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | December 31, 2007 3:32 PM

What could be funnier (or more pitiful) than a guy who beats his chest about his supposed thesis and raises concerns about whether Goldberg cites appropriate fascism historians thinking he's put the nail in the coffin of the argument by referencing a movie brought to us by the intellects behind Independence Day and Godzilla.

Scott

Posted by Scott Thomas | December 31, 2007 4:48 PM

Jo'berg apparently has no such thing as a "thesis" that fascism is "of the left," nor does he appear to define either in any way where it would make a difference if it were or were not.

It is striking but only amusingly so that he believes that he has put forward such a "thesis," or appears to be familiar with what that would mean if he had.

Posted by El Cid | December 31, 2007 4:56 PM

Scott Thomas: Yeah, you got me there. My intellectual vanity got the better of me. I'm going to go cry now and sit in a corner clutching my diploma for losing a message board argument.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | December 31, 2007 6:14 PM

Most of the -isms of the last two or three centuries were in actual opposition to aristocracy, a system with roots a millennium before in the Germanic overthrow of the Roman Empire. Thus, by nature, the various ideologies -- fascism, communism, divine right monarchism, nationalism, Zionism, international socialism, national socialism, etc., tended to be egalitarian because everything was more egalitarian than feudalism. This was true even when simultaneously autocratic as in the rise of French nationalism under Louis XIV and Napoleon.

So, practically every ideology of modern history is linked with modern liberalism via their mutual professed egalitarianism. We're all egalitarians now, at least in the sense that the last person to endorse feudalism was Bertie Wooster, who was always complimenting Jeeves for showing "the proper feudal attitude."

Posted by Steve Sailer | December 31, 2007 7:00 PM

"We're all egalitarians now"

Not us radical Transhumans. We're better than chimps - and they're going to find that out.

Seriously, I'm not sure one can take the various isms "egalitarianism" seriously except in the broad sense you indicate - as being against feudalism and aristocracy. And since most of these isms ended up with somebody in power living an essentially "feudal" and "aristocratic" existence - as opposed to the toiling masses - I'm not sure I take even that seriously.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 31, 2007 9:33 PM

Jordan - no need for all the whining. I actually thought your movie reference was far more enjoyable to read than your wikipedia-aided posing.

Posted by Scott | January 1, 2008 1:22 AM

"So the title "Liberal Fascism" is really just "Bad, Bad Liberalism"...which is hardly surprising considering the source."

Um, no. The title comes from a HG Wells talk, in which Wells says that the Wellsian utopia would be achieved via "Liberal Fascism", which he was all in favor of. He didn't think his preferred state would come about via democratic action, so he favored non-democratic means to install benevolent (by his lights) experts to rule the masses.

Posted by Ernst Blofeld | January 1, 2008 3:32 AM

Scott: Wikipedia-aided posing? That was a quarter of my bibliography. I actually read all of that, including Sorel's ridiculous rantings in "Reflections on Violence". I'll still give you that I let my intellectual vanity get the better of me, but I wouldn't claim to have read something I hadn't. I just thought the movie references were better illustrative of my point about how patriotism differs from where you are standing. Particularly for fascism, patriotism could mean undermining a liberal republic or wholesale support of the state, depending on who was in charge at the time and what the majority of the people believed. I just didn't take well to being called stupid when it comes to understanding nationalism and patriotism since I've read so much on the subject. That was a tough chapter to write but I sorted it out. It's just hard to get people to understand how different patriotism and nationalism were during that era from 1870 to 1945. Nationalism, patriotism and jingoism were pretty interchangeable terms for that period, certainly in Italy and Germany. I really recommend that anyone interested in the subject read Mosse's "The Nationalization of the Masses" which was his first major attempt to define what fascism was and how it came about in German culture. Fascism is still a fascinating subject, especially since we've gotten such a distance away from it that we can take a more objective look at it and not immediately have that knee-jerk reaction to it.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | January 1, 2008 6:33 AM

Jordan: Fair enough. Happy New Year.

Posted by Scott Thomas | January 1, 2008 8:40 AM

Although there are many who are convinced it is inevitable that the human form be superseded by some technologically enhanced life, it hasn't happened yet, so the weird and undue degree of haughtiness being expressed by one of the fans of this prediction seems quite unwarranted.

Happy New Year, Fellow Soon To Be Robots!!!

Posted by El Cid | January 1, 2008 10:50 AM

Matt -- we still want your review of Goldberg's book.

Posted by otto | January 1, 2008 11:13 AM

Jordan Lawrence must be an analytic philosopher. Analytic philosophers know that if you make your decisions precise enough and make enough of them, you can confuse an issue so badly that it can be discussed forever without resolution. Using his method you could easily show that the Nazis are dostnctly different than Fascists, and that the only Fascist was Mussolini -- except that, in significant ways, Mussolini wasn't a fascist at all.

Bush and Giuliani aren't Fascists because there's no such thing as a Fascist.

Posted by John Emerson | January 1, 2008 11:51 AM

"distinctions". We regret the error.

Posted by John Emerson | January 1, 2008 1:55 PM

John Emerson: Actually, I prefer my philosophy of the continental variety. Historians try to pull the general from the specific but you can only do it to a certain degree. Fascism is the term used to refer to the regimes and movements during the interwar years that were distinctly different than simple authoritarianism or communism. Even if those movements don't match up one-to-one, we still use the term fascism as a placeholder. The problem is, you can't so narrowly define fascism that you exclude real fascists. So since meaning is typically defined by how a word is used, fascism does exist and does refer to real people and real movements. It doesn't matter what we call it really. We could call fascism the 'purple monkey dishwasher' movement for all we care, so long as we're actually referring to something. But the term's been so abused that it's hard to make the general public understand the distinction between real fascists like Mussolini or Hitler and whoever we think is just being mean to us. Everyone is a fascist to someone. Hence Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies and all the attendant parts. We're so ingrained with the idea that fascism represents pure evil that any argument based on calling someone a fascist is one that tries to tug on your emotions, not your reason. That's why I'm not willing to call someone like Bush a fascist since I actually want to prove my point, not use quick emotional tactics. For fascism and the destruction it caused, up to the Holocaust itself, to mean anything we can't dilute the word like that.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | January 1, 2008 3:22 PM

Scott Thomas: Happy New Year to you as well.

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | January 1, 2008 3:24 PM

Jordan Lawrence:

Well, I certainly agree with you that in today's America, the term "fascist" just means "really bad/oppressive/dictatorial", without any particular ideological details.

Since you clearly have specialized academic knowledge of the history of fascism in Europe and Italy, perhaps you can answer a question I'd recently raised on a different thread. What's your approximate estimate of the total number of Italian civilians that Mussolini had had killed/murdered by (say) 1936? And roughly how many political prisoners did he have incarcerated at that point?

I'd put out a total body-count of 1,000 as a pure guess, but I could easily seem being off by an order-of-magnitude or more.

Posted by RKU | January 1, 2008 3:47 PM

RKU: Actually, that I don't know. I've specialized in the intellectual history of fascism and proto-fascism so the only one I specifically know was incarcerated was Antonio Gramsci. I probably should find out but after reading so much about the Holocaust and then the following East German expulsion/ghettoization in Poland, I tend to get queasy at statistics like that. Some of the stories you read are just sickening. Italy itself wasn't so bad, but still. I've stayed above that, hiding in the history of ideas versus more statistical history. Sorry I couldn't be of more help

Posted by Jordan Lawrence | January 1, 2008 4:17 PM

Even the scantest amount of historical research would reveal that Goldberg's definition of fascism--i.e., state-cotrolled perfection of society--is bogus. Fascism was not just any sort of "social engineering." It was a fantasy of organic oneness, heroism, and group belonging. It manipulated popular xenophobia and atavistic emotions through political theater and nationalistic fantasies of racial and cultural purity (think milky white, blue-eyed German mothers and children or, in the case of Franco's Spain, the pious Catholic family). It generates a false feeling of political oneness through the demonization of an "other" (historically, the Jews). Fascism involved the celebration of a muscular, heroic style of rule--of the powerful, aggressive state ("Deutschland über alles" and all that). It held in contempt "weak" diplomats, politicians, and negotiators--the type of people who wanted to work through consensus building.

Hmmm... Now let's look at contemporary American politics. Which is the party that appeals to popular xenophobia in debates about immigration and bilingualism? Which party condones the suspension of civil liberties for the sake of national security? Uses the rhetoric of "family values" as a code for racial and cultural purity? Makes nationalistic appeals to the "American way of life"? Accuse political foes of being un-American, even treasonous?

Posted by Matt | January 2, 2008 5:07 PM