Conservative Liberal Fascism

One of the odder elements of the Liberal Fascism argument is that having defined both "liberal" and "fascist" in very odd ways, at the end of his book Jonah Goldberg gets around to dealing with the recent rise in the United States of a more statist strand of conservatism which he then construes as a brand of liberal fascism. Michael Gerson is, as you can see in today's column, basically the Julius Streicher of this new movement:

Thompson's argument reflects an anti-government extremism, which I am sure his defenders would call a belief in limited government. In this case, Thompson is limiting government to a half-full thimble. Its duties apparently do not extend to the treatment of sick people in extreme poverty, which should be "the role of us as individuals and as Christians." One wonders, in his view, if responding to the 2004 tsunami should also have been a private responsibility. Religious groups are essential to fighting AIDS, but they cannot act on a sufficient scale.

On a Goldberg-free note, the specific position Gerson is defending here -- conservatives should support government action to combat extreme public health emergencies in the third world -- probably isn't super-controversial, but the logic of his argument certainly is quite different from the strand of thinking that's dominated the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan. But like most other reform-minded conservatives out there, I've never seen Gerson quite confront the point that you can't have a more activist state unless you make taxes higher.

Comments

But like most other reform-minded conservatives out there, I've never seen Gerson quite confront the point that you can't have a more activist state unless you make taxes higher.

And you cannot have a sound economy until you base your currency on shiny rocks people find in the ground!

Posted by Ron Paul | January 18, 2008 1:59 PM

Well, aside from the personal amusement of just poking fun at an ignorant moron, why bother even citing Goldberg's nonsense?

It's like when the Bush Administration people periodically announces that they've decided to replace the personnel or policies of the "sovereign nation of Iraq"---they're just speaking gibberish.

Offhand, I'd bet that we would discover more ideological consistency and logic in Huckabee's chief national security advisor, Chuck Norris.

Posted by RKU | January 18, 2008 2:02 PM

Re: Goldberg.

What he doesn't realize, and a lot of others don't, is that all Goldberg has done is rename "statism" "fascism" and then, for fun, icing on the cake really, link some of the other stuff "real" fascism is known for, violence, a violent, anti-bourgeious aesthetic, etc. to various democrats--and then he doesn't understand why people get mad. I love how all of us liberal fascists are hating on the rule of law, the constitution, and pour scorn on liberal types who believe in elections and free-speech.

Also, I love how the fascist Social Democrats were defenders of the fascist German Republic against the forces of fascist Nazis and fascist Communists.

Posted by David | January 18, 2008 2:04 PM

For those looking for my web site I recommend you Google "Ron Paul" NOT racist.

Posted by Ron Paul | January 18, 2008 2:07 PM

"Well, aside from the personal amusement of just poking fun at an ignorant moron, why bother even citing Goldberg's nonsense?"

Umm, because his book is a bestseller, tars liberals as fascists against all reason, and his meme is being pushed hard by all right-wing organs (from NRO to Hannity etc.). But, yeah, we should just not talk about it because it will go away then and Goldberg is "just" a moron.

Posted by David | January 18, 2008 2:07 PM

What I like about Goldberg's book is that his book is basically one gigantic concession that liberal policies work. He admits that every president from FDR through Carter was a liberal fascist. That means that liberal fascism can take credit for being a highly successful way to guarantee massive, widesread prosperity and domestic freedom, as demonstrated by the unprecedented, hugely positive changes that took place in America between 1945 and 1980.

So who needs conservatism? Krugman himself couldn't have made conservatism look as irrelevant as Jonah Goldberg does in his book. I even asked Goldberg specifically about this at his talk, and he had no intelligible response whatsoever.

Posted by Dr. Victor Davis Handjob | January 18, 2008 2:18 PM

But like most other reform-minded conservatives out there, I've never seen Gerson quite confront the point that you can't have a more activist state unless you make taxes higher.

Matthew Yglesias, reform-minded conservative!

I love grammar . . .

Posted by Jim Henley | January 18, 2008 2:25 PM

Gerson writes: One wonders, in his view, if responding to the 2004 tsunami should also have been a private responsibility. Religious groups are essential to fighting AIDS, but they cannot act on a sufficient scale.

I don't know about AIDS, but as was pointed out in the Corner, private sources gave about twice as much to tsunami relief as did the US government. So Gerson has it precisely backwards: it is government that cannot act on a sufficient scale, not private groups.

Posted by Al | January 18, 2008 2:42 PM

Also, I love how the fascist Social Democrats were defenders of the fascist German Republic against the forces of fascist Nazis and fascist Communists. - David

Oh, I think it's better than that. The fascist Nazis defended the fascist German Reich against fascist Americans under the fascist FDR. The fascist Nazi Final Solution then led the fascists who founded the UN to vote into existence the State of Israel, a fascist state founded by fascist socialist Zionists.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 18, 2008 3:02 PM

Matt, you seem to have the same relationship with Johah as Sullivan has with Hillary. Where in the world does Atlantic find people like you two?

For your own sake, find another obsession.

Posted by ken | January 18, 2008 3:06 PM

brooksfoe-

Don't forget, according to Glen Beck, FDR was a 'very evil man'.

Posted by Rickm | January 18, 2008 3:09 PM

I think Jonah has still not been forcefully enough accused of equating Zionism with Nazism. It's one of the inescapable conclusions of his thesis, and I think it might seriously discomfit whatever remaining backers he has.

Posted by brooksfoe | January 18, 2008 3:23 PM

brooksfoe:

True, enough. Hitler was defeated by a fascist coalition and a fascist zionism was able to reach its goal because of this. I would only add that I for one am glad that the fascist Allies saved Europe from fascism--making the world safe for fascism.

Posted by David | January 18, 2008 3:35 PM

At my URL is my "Commissar Goldberg". I think that many underestimate him

The gist:

At my URL is "Commissar Goldberg", my own take on Goldberg. Main points:

1. By seeming like a nice professor talking NPR-talk, Goldberg makes himself more plausible than Coulter, Malkin, et al.

2. Refuting his points is not hard, but somewhat futile, because his core supporters are fanatics and his target audience is thoughtless moderates who don't pay attention.

3. His main significance is bringing his farfetched views to respectability, whether or not many are convinced. Certain extreme statements are no longer outrageous, and some people will half-believe them.

4. His game is only possible because the movement Republicans have intimidated the media into guaranteeing them positions, on the model of Soviet commissars planted in universities, etc.

5. These Republican media plants cannot be fired because they were hired to be Republican mouthpieces, and they have an intimidating effect on everyone else in media, because they show that media management is willing to accept almost anything from the right, but not the left.

6. If what I say is true, Goldberg will succeed in making his false and slanderous ideas respectable, because almost no one will dare confront him the way he deserves. Irony and mild disagreement on points of detail are not good enough, because Goldberg is a flat-earther and hatemonger who needs to be expelled from the debate. But he won't be.

7. Goldberg has been backtracking and mushing up his message, but he doesn't need to sell the whole thing. He just needs to confuse the issue -- above all he needs to divert attention from his own party's chauvinist, authoritarian, militarist, cult-of-personality approach to fascism. (Everything but the roving gangs of thugs.)

On the Progressives: some of what people are saying is true, but the Progressives were more often Republicans than Democrats (e.g. Theodore Roosevelt). And Wilson during WWI was highly authoritarian, and by that token a definite model for Bush's unitary executive and restrictions of civil liberties. The Democratic Party is more than 200 years old and in its present form dates back to the Civil Rights era of 40 years ago or so, when the great majority of the racist authoritarian Democrats switched to the Republican Party

Posted by John Emerson | January 18, 2008 3:55 PM

That's a solid post, John.

Posted by Dr. Victor Davis Handjob | January 18, 2008 4:05 PM

Im n ur Fashizim, Ekspozin the Libruls!

Posted by libarbarian | January 18, 2008 4:38 PM

Goldberg is correct insomuch as he attacks the revenge/ressentiment wing of the Democrat Party. Nice guys like Obama aren't fascists, just termigant nasties like Hillary and her band of shrews...!

Gerson is hilarious. Africa is a battleground against radical what? Diamond smugglers?

Posted by daveinboca | January 18, 2008 5:02 PM

daveinboca-

That's right, fascism has nothing to do with actions/ideology/policies, just who you 'are'.

Anyone who calls Hillary Clinton a fascist is completely ignorant of the meaning of the term.

Posted by Rickm | January 18, 2008 5:11 PM

Well, what if you eliminated the waste and corruption that presently exists, say 400 billion into a quagmire, or FEMA trailer madness, then could you have a more activist government without raising taxes?

Perhaps if Halliburton wasn't getting overinflated contracts for no work, or Blackwater, then maybe some money could be found to go to dying AIDS patients in Africa?

Posted by justathought | January 18, 2008 5:53 PM

"I've never seen Gerson quite confront the point that you can't have a more activist state unless you make taxes higher."

Easy - cut the Pentagon's budget. Most importantly, no more wars of choice.

Posted by Ian | January 18, 2008 7:43 PM

Of course, from our current administration's policies, it's pretty clear that helping out poor people in trouble for the sake of improving our reputation or gaining allies simply doesn't occur to them.

Posted by pbg | January 18, 2008 7:59 PM

I didn't read the happyface nazi book - do I have to? - but I saw him plugging it on the Daily Show, and in between the screaming it seemed like his definition of fascism is the idea that "we're all in this together." I say seemed like because he kept slipping out of Jon's increasingly desperate attempts to get him to define it. It's extremely funny.

Posted by Phoebe | January 18, 2008 9:18 PM

If you look at the beginning of facism it was not as much about killing jews as it became latter. It was about a society where everyone worked for the common good. They did this through a planned econmoy where chose what the coroporation did. And some redistrubution of wealth. When mussolini would talk about the hatred of librals he was talking about people that would now be called minacrhist libertarians. Now if you look at FDR had implemented a planned economy that was very similar to the facist states. But the idea of a planned econmoy was unconstitional according to the supreme court which lead to FDR trying to pack the court. I am not saying FDR was evil in fact there are alot of good things that he did. But keep in mind before the NIRA was struck down by the supreme court we did have a planned economy that was being set up that looked quit simliar to that of facisit italy.

Posted by chris kevlin | January 18, 2008 9:57 PM

Could someone swat Mr. Kevlin? I'm tired.

Posted by John Emerson | January 18, 2008 10:20 PM

Please, please, please write more nasty articles about the NEW book. Your glorious and wonderful quotes, together with those of other like minded nitwits have served to push the book to NUMBER ONE today at Amazon. GREAT JOB!!!!! thanks.

Posted by Pants Load | January 18, 2008 11:02 PM

I am not saying that i think that modern liberals are facist. That is far from the truth. Facism ended up growing into extremely far right. But just because facism has a certian meaning since the far right took it over. But it started as an idea that was extreme based on the left. A lot of of those idea's FDR used. so the liberals in american where orignaly based on some facist idea. both modern liberalism and facism have gone in greatly different directions to where modern liberalism and facism do not look anything alike anymore. It is interesting though.

Posted by chris kevlin | January 18, 2008 11:23 PM

The term "fascism" in the 21st century has connotations of mass murder and death camps. However, in the 1930s it meant the planned economy and corporativism exemplified by the economic plans of Benito Mussolini in Italy. And, comparisons have been made between the economic systems of Fascist Italy and the New Deal programs. Communists, classical liberals, conservatives, and Herbert Hoover used the term fascism in that manner at that time. Likewise, modern-day paleoconservatives argue that the New Deal was a major milestone in the rise of America's managerial state.

Discontent with the economic downturn in the U.S. had stimulated widespread interest in the fascist programs of Italy and Germany.[39] Benito Mussolini praised the New Deal as following his own economic program, saying in the New York Times, "Your plan for coordination of industry follows precisely our lines of cooperation."[40] Roosevelt's personal letters reveal that he was impressed by what Mussolini was doing and said that he kept in close touch with that "admirable gentlemen."[41] Ronald Reagan, who had at the time been a strong supporter of the New Deal, later reversed positions and claimed in 1976, "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal." Journalist John T. Flynn, a former socialist, in his 1944 book As We Go Marching, said that "the New Dealers...began to flirt with the alluring pastime of reconstructing the capitalist system...and in the process of this new career they began to fashion doctrines that turned out to be the principles of fascism."

Former President Herbert Hoover argued that some (but not all) New Deal programs were "fascist," and that there was a presidential dictatorship. [Memoirs 3:420]

"Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933 .... These ideas were first suggested by Gerald Swope (of the General Electric Company)....[and] the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body, urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was pure fascism; that it was a remaking of Mussolini's "corporate state" and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part proved true."

In 1934, Roosevelt defended himself against his critics, and attacked them in his "fireside chat" radio audiences. Some people, he said:

will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it 'Fascism,' sometimes 'Communism,' sometimes 'Regimentation,' sometimes 'Socialism.' But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical. . . . Plausible self-seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of individual liberty. Answer this question out of the facts of your own life. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action and choice?[42]

In September 1934, Roosevelt defended a more powerful national government as he believed was necessary to control the economy, by quoting conservative Republican Elihu Root:

The tremendous power of organization [Root had said] has combined great aggregations of capital in enormous industrial establishments . . . so great in the mass that each individual concerned in them is quite helpless by himself. . . . The old reliance upon the free action of individual wills appears quite inadequate. . . . The intervention of that organized control we call government seems necessary. . . . Men may differ as to the particular form of governmental activity with respect to industry or business, but nearly all are agreed that private enterprise in times such as these cannot be left without assistance and without reasonable safeguards lest it destroy not only itself but also our process of civilization.[43]

Other scholars reject linking the New Deal to fascism as overly simplistic. As a leading historian of fascism explains, "What Fascist corporatism and the New Deal had in common was a certain amount of state intervention in the economy. Beyond that, the only figure who seemed to look on Fascist corporatism as a kind of model was Hugh Johnson, head of the National Recovery Administration."[44] Johnson strenuously denied any association with Mussolini, saying the NRA "is being organized almost as you would organize a business. I want to avoid any Mussolini appearance—the President calls this Act industrial self-government."[45] Donald Richberg eventually replaced General Hugh Johnson as head of NRA and speaking before a Senate committee said "A nationally planned economy is the only salvation of our present situation and the only hope for the future."

Posted by kevlin | January 18, 2008 11:35 PM

For example, a man named Jack Magid was jailed for violating the "Tailor's Code" by pressing a suit for 35 rather than NRA required 40 cents. Roosevelt supporter-turned-critic John T. Flynn, in The Roosevelt Myth (1944), wrote:

“ The NRA was discovering it could not enforce its rules. Black markets grew up. Only the most violent police methods could procure enforcement. In Sidney Hillman’s garment industry the code authority employed enforcement police. They roamed through the garment district like storm troopers. They could enter a man’s factory, send him out, line up his employees, subject them to minute interrogation, take over his books on the instant. Night work was forbidden. Flying squadrons of these private coat-and-suit police went through the district at night, battering down doors with axes looking for men who were committing the crime of sewing together a pair of pants at night. But without these harsh methods many code authorities said there could be no compliance because the public was not back of it.

That was in the united states through new deal progams thank goodness for the supreme court

Posted by kevlin | January 18, 2008 11:50 PM