No Analogy

Brendan Nyhan thinks he's got Jonah Goldberg nailed as some kind of hypocrite, citing such past Goldbergisms as "the use and abuse of Nazi analogies has been a major peeve of mine for quite some time" and "Suffice it to say that the Nazis weren't simply generically bad, they were uniquely and monumentally evil, not just in their hearts but also in literally billions of intentional, well-planned, and bureaucratized decisions they made every day".

As I understand it, though, the difference here is that in Liberal Fascism Goldberg isn't drawing an analogy. He's saying that "the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood" just are the "modern heirs" to the American tradition of fascism "an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries." Contemporary American liberalism, in short, doesn't resemble Nazism. Rather, according to Goldberg it's a variety of fascism, albeit a "friendly" one.

Comments

But is he REALLY that stupid? I mean, I think that hypocracy is the more charitable explanation.

But then I'm not feeling very charitable these days to monsters like Goldberg. Most likely, he is that stupid, and a hypocrit, and much much worse.

Posted by LarryM | December 18, 2007 10:37 AM

Sure, as long as he says that uppity preschool teachers are the spawn of 'fascism' instead of 'Nazism', he's okay.

And did the Nazis make 'literally billions' of 'well-planned and bureaucratized decisions' every day? Even for Germans, that's pretty impressive.

Posted by gussie | December 18, 2007 10:38 AM

the wingnuts, Jonah included, went into utter flaming hysterics for months when an anonymous entry in a MoveOn contest compared Bush to Hitler - one anonymous person. and you're letting him get away with a 400+ page book that says "no they're not Nazis, they're just the modern heirs to the things the Nazis stood for" ?

Posted by cleek | December 18, 2007 10:39 AM

A smiley face with a Hitler mustache is on the god damned book cover and you're trying to tell me he's not conflating liberals and Nazi's???

Posted by DanF | December 18, 2007 10:41 AM

But is he REALLY that stupid?

Yes.

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

Posted by El Cid | December 18, 2007 10:42 AM

"the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood"

I think the folks at Whole Foods are going to be bummed to miss out on all the free advertising. First they're dumped from the subtitle, and now they don't even make the book jacket.

Poor, sad little food fascists.

Posted by SoCalJustice | December 18, 2007 10:45 AM

But of course, we can't take this at face value, since Brendan was Swarthmore educated, and is therefore a fascist.

Posted by Drew | December 18, 2007 10:48 AM

and the liberals of Hollywood" just are the "modern heirs" ... American liberalism, in short, doesn't resemble Nazism.

Oh, great, another post about heritability. Sailer will jump in at any moment.

Seriously, DanF has this right. When you put a Hitler icon on the cover of the book, all the parsing in the world doesn't help.

Posted by Brad L | December 18, 2007 10:51 AM

This book deserves mockery not analysis, Matt. Save your efforts for more worthy fare.

Posted by Ron | December 18, 2007 10:59 AM

Uh, sarcasm detectors anyone?

At least I pray & hope that MY is just sarcastically predicting the line of defense that pantload will imminently puke onto his keyboard.

Posted by Observer | December 18, 2007 11:00 AM

Umberto Eco's "Eternal Fascism:
Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt":

The official [Nazi] Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
...

The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
...
Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one.
...
Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare.
...
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
...
Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land."

http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

Posted by Nick | December 18, 2007 11:20 AM

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

Sinclair Lewis, author of 'It Can't Happen Here'.

Goldberg is astoundingly dishonest in his pursuit of a cheap slur.

Posted by Nick | December 18, 2007 11:24 AM

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

Yes, this is what Ron Paul just quoted on Fox & Friends.

Altogether an astounding thing to say about a candidate from your own party.

And 100%, dead, fucking, on the money.

These are delightful times. Sometimes it takes a nut to call it like it is, on t.v.

Posted by Bill | December 18, 2007 11:32 AM

One can only hope that the writers' strike ends so that Goldberg can go on the Daily Show and get his [considerable] ass handed to him in the same manner that the also odious Ramesh Ponuru was taken down by Johnny Stew.

Posted by ed | December 18, 2007 11:33 AM

There is a precedent for this "analysis," though not one that Goldberg is likely to cite: The Dead Kennedys' 1979 non-hit "California Über Alles." Who could forget: "Zen fascists will control you/ 100% natural/ You will die for the master race/ And always wear a happy face." I feel like pogoing already.

Posted by David Galbraith | December 18, 2007 11:40 AM

I'm not sure why I'm bothering to point this out, but this comment by Jonah:

"the Nazis weren't simply generically bad, they were uniquely and monumentally evil."

isn't really true. I mean, every thing is unique in some sense, but in a more general sense, the Nazis weren't really doing anything that people haven't been doing throughout human history, before and after the Third Reich.

The Nazis were evil all right, but it's foolish and dangerous to regard them as an aberration.

Posted by Jason C. | December 18, 2007 11:43 AM

I never thought I'd see the day when one Republican candidate called another a fascist for wishing everyone a merry Christmas. That is so fucking money.

Posted by Chris | December 18, 2007 11:49 AM

Hey- if you want to sell books, you have to cause a bit of a row. And comparinf your adversaries to fascists certainly does that.

Posted by P | December 18, 2007 12:22 PM

Agree 100 percent with what Jason said. The world was shocked in the 40's that it was the Germans that succumbed to the Nazi delusion. They were the people of Goethe and of Mozart and of science and philosophy not passions and nativism. If it could happen there--gasp--"it can happen here" as Sinclair Lewis wrote. We have grown up identifying Nazis with Germany so much we forget.

Agree 100 percent with what Nick said. Once upon a time in America the conservatives were the people who said 'words have meanings' and 'ideas have consequences'. Now they expose themselves as shills and shallow thinkers. Goldberg had a book market in mind whose shelves already are groaning with volumes of Ann Coulter. Their days are numbered.

Posted by JohnMcC | December 18, 2007 12:38 PM

It's so cute that Matt is defending Lucianne Jr. here. They must have bunked together at Pundit Camp once.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 18, 2007 12:41 PM

DanF above has it exactly right: the Hitler mustache on the book cover pretty much makes the point that the book *is* an extended Hitler analogy. Sorry, Matt.

Posted by Egypt Steve | December 18, 2007 12:49 PM

Count me among those who think this post was poorly played sarcasm on Matt's part.

In the snippets of text I've seen, Jonah is defining "fascism" so broadly as to be meaningless-- he seems to be using the term to describe every non-communist political movement in the world that involved attempting to use the power of the state to make socioeconomic changes. Thus, he can claim to be making a more serious and nuanced argument than just comparing his opponents to Nazis.

But then he's using this pseudointellectual fig leaf as an excuse for a book that does little else but compare his political opponents to Nazis. Par for the course at NRO.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | December 18, 2007 1:17 PM

We've waited nearly 10 years for Jonah to come of age and write a book, and this is the result - 400 pages of name calling and contradictions (chapter 1 says fascism began under Mussolini, but subsequent pages reveal it began with the French and American revolutions).

Hope this doesn't make the Amazon top 1000. It would be a sad day for anyone who has a brain.

Posted by Dhalgren | December 18, 2007 1:37 PM

Why doesn't Pantload just say "little Eichmanns" and be done with it. What a disingenuous little simp he is.

And yes, he is that stupid, or at least he presumes his readers are, and he may be right about that.

Posted by Heywood J. | December 18, 2007 1:46 PM

I think by "billions of decisions" made every day by the Nazis Goldberg is referring to the firing of those Nazi neurons, each one of which can be considered a "decision" (in the same way that liberals can be considered "fascists"), and which did indeed number in the billions! So take that you Swarthmore-educated fact checkers!

Posted by The Frito Pundito | December 18, 2007 1:50 PM

My God, it's like a Young Republican's freshman term paper.

Posted by superdude | December 18, 2007 1:53 PM

Wow, 500 pages to call someone a poopy-head. He should have just published the cover 5 years ago and saved us the wait.

Posted by charles | December 18, 2007 1:54 PM

My God, it's like a Young Republican's freshman term paper.

So we can expect the pantload to bitch and moan about the failing grades given to his book in reviews until, exasperated, some reviewer decides to give him a 'D+' instead of the 'F-' Lucianne's spawn so obviously earned, just so that he won't be subject to doughboy's whining?

Posted by R Johnston | December 18, 2007 2:05 PM

Well I mean, Barack Obama does look like a Nazi.

Posted by Robert Geilfuss | December 18, 2007 2:28 PM

Are you people retarded? "It's not an analogy, it's actually exactly the same thing" is obviously a joke defense.

Posted by Barbar | December 18, 2007 2:41 PM

"the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood"

add to that list -- Public School Teachers!!! He has a chapter on them in that book too (I believe).

Public School Teachers were also the villains in Pat Boone's recent book as well.

So goddamnedfucking weird.

Posted by David Robinson | December 18, 2007 2:52 PM

American tradition of fascism

You mean like Prescott Bush's kind of anti-semitic fascism?

Posted by actor212 | December 18, 2007 3:14 PM

I guess Jonah saw Ann Coulter making zillions from semi-literates in Wingnut nation and decided he might as well as his praises sung by Hannity, O'Reilly, (what went so wrong with my fellow 3rd generation descendants from auld Ireland's emigres?) and Limbaugh. I personally think, after hearing about Jeff's visit to the "Give War A Chance Rally" at U.Mass at Amherst we should all form to bring back a special one-man draft of Jeff Goldberg so he can serve his 15 months in Iraq with an infantry company patroling Bagdhad since he thinks war is so grand.

Posted by Rickster Sherpa | December 18, 2007 3:33 PM

After all the complaining about the silent treatment _The Party of Death: [blah blah] Democrats [blah blah]_ got, I think the only fair response is to read, review, and talk about this book widely to show that the Left does engage with the Right's foremost thinkers and writers of today.

It's the only way to make it up to Ramesh Ponnuru; his colleagues and intellectual equals should get the media attention he was denied.

I am seriously, SERIOUSLY p.o.'s that we won't have Jonah Goldberg on The Daily Show this month.

Posted by Brittain33 | December 18, 2007 4:23 PM

"not just in their hearts but also in literally billions of intentional, well-planned, and bureaucratized decisions they made every day"

The Bush Administration in a nut shell.

Posted by Nellcote | December 18, 2007 6:40 PM

David Galbraith, 11:40 AM, mentions the Dead Kennedys song, "California Uber Alles," about Governor Jerry Brown. In 1981, after the election of ex-Governor Ronald Reagan to the White House, Jello Biafra and his friends rewrote the song and gave it a new title, "We've Got a Bigger Problem Now."

The hypocricy of rich liberal ex-hippies was a favorite target of the California punk scene.

In many ways, of course, the original song turned out to be prophetic of the warmongering nanny state that New Liberal's "Third Way" ultimately became under Tony Blair (another goddamn nickname! The infantilization of politics through the use of schoolyard nicknames--Jimmy, Jerry--is another thing we can blame the 1970s for).

Posted by Jim McCaffery | December 18, 2007 6:46 PM

Look out Jonah, it's the hypocrisy Nazis!

Posted by aleks | December 18, 2007 9:21 PM

This book deserves mockery not analysis, Matt.

Posted by Ron | December 18, 2007 10:59 AM
***************

In this case you can't have one without the other.

Posted by aleks | December 18, 2007 9:24 PM

Am I totally off-base here, or is everybody else missing MY's point? Matt is neither excusing Jonah, nor being sarcastic; he is pointing out that Goldberg is not, in fact, making an analogy.

He is not saying that liberals have the same goals as fascists, or value the same things as fascists, or use the same methods as fascists; he is saying that they are part of the historical fascist movement.

While you might say that Putin, by closing down opposition media and manipulating elections, was "acting like a fascist", you wouldn't say that Franco was acting 'like a fascist'; you would say he was a fascist

Again, you might say that Robert Mugabe, by taking control of private businesses, is acting like a communist, but when Castro does the same thing, you wouldn't say he is acting "like a communist", because he [b]is[/b] a communist.

Posted by MikeN | December 18, 2007 10:52 PM

Wait, is all of that double-sarcasm or did you guys read that to mean that MY actually believes that everyone on the Goldberg/Hannity/Limbaugh/O'Reilly shitlist *is* a fascist? I'd call you idiots but I guess MY's writing is usually so error-filled that a reasonable plea of confusion can be made. Still though.

Posted by aleks | December 19, 2007 7:27 AM

"But is he REALLY that stupid?"

Yes.

Posted by Dr Zen | December 19, 2007 5:59 PM

Actually I don't have much of a problem calling "liberals" "fascists" even if it technically is historically inaccurate.

I prefer the term "statists" - but "fascist" will serve me well.

Wikipedia says as an intro:

"Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and social interests subordinate to the interests of the state or party. Fascists seek to forge a type of national unity, usually based on (but not limited to) ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, corporatism, populism, collectivism, and opposition to political and economic liberalism."

Looking at the neocons and Republicans and Zionists, I think we can pretty much see elements of ALL that. The Christian Zionists are a "mass movement", and everything on that list pretty much applies to almost any Republican except the "paleo-Conservatives" and Ron Paul.

In terms of liberals, they'd LIKE to be a "mass movement" - and pretty much everything on that list - with the sole exception of "ethnic, racial, and religious" - but definitely including "cultural" - seems to apply to most liberals I see posting here.

"individual and social interests subordinate to the interests of the state" - that pretty clearly sums up almost everybody's opinion of the American state as far as I can tell. Oh, well, I suppose one could say that liberals believe that "social interests" take precedence over "the interests of the state."

Until they get in power, of course. Then it becomes the opposite.

Wikipedia's intro to "liberalism" says:

"Liberalism refers to a broad array of related ideas and theories of government that consider individual liberty to be the most important political goal. Liberalism has its roots in the Western Age of Enlightenment."

Really?

So every time the Republicans get in and reduce "individual liberty", the next Democrat reverses that?

Is that really what you see in the last fifty years?

"Broadly speaking, liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity."

Those "rights" the liberals happen to approve of. Gun ownership isn't one of those. There the "rights" of gun owners are to subordinated to the interests of the state - in the name of "social interests", of course.

"Different forms of liberalism may propose very different policies, but they are generally united by their support for a number of principles, including extensive freedom of thought and speech, limitations on the power of governments, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market or mixed economy, and a transparent system of government."

Freedom of thought? Well, if you agree with them.

Freedom of speech? Well, unless you call Ivo Daalder an "idiot"...

Rule of law? Sorry, that's inherently statist.

Free exchange of ideas? Yeah, as long as any ideas not accepted can be ridiculed off the table.

A market or mixed economy? When was the last time a liberal argued for a free market as opposed to the regulated mixed economy and political bribery system we have now?

"All liberals – as well as some adherents of other political ideologies – support some variant of the form of government known as liberal democracy, with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law."

Okay, here you can probably correctly claim that fascists don't favor "open and fair elections."

Then again, explain Daley in Chicago...

Equal rights by law? We've covered that. Bill Clinton was not prosecuted for perjury. If you have money and political power, you don't have "equal rights", you have "better rights".

As I read this, "liberals" are defined by some vague notion of "freedom". In other words, Bill Clinton inherits and runs the same set of statist rules that George H.W. Bush, a "conservative" - and a fascist in my view - inherited from Ronald Reagan - but he's a "liberal".

One wonders why definition of "freedom" is acceptable to a "liberal" these days.

Bottom line: when the actual policies and effects of policies of "liberals" are indistinguishable from the policies and effects of policies of "fascists", I'll continue to consider the lot "statists" and "fascists".

What we see here is some "conservative" bozo claiming that "liberals are fascists" in order to put down liberals, and some "liberal" bozo claiming "fascists are fascists" in order to put down the first guy - and incidentally establish himself on the "right" side of the line.

When Democrats and Republicans are both part of the "War Party" - and the voters continue to claim that one side is "liberal" - I really can't be bothered to distinguish.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 20, 2007 12:57 AM