One striking thing about the praise for Liberal Fascism page is that several of the praisers appear to be touting the book purely for its analytical scoop that it's a mistake to simply speak of fascism and socialism as "opposites." This thesis has the virtue of being true, so that one can cite it in order to praise Goldberg's book without making an ass of oneself. At the same time, however, it's both completely banal and also not the main point of his book.
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Faint Praise
15 Jan 2008 05:27 pm
Comments (41)
What kind of partnership did the "National" Socialists form with the "Social Democrat" liberals and the "Communist" liberals?
That thesis is also at least as old as Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, that is, fifty years.
Tom Wolfe wrote
In the greatest hoax of modern history, Russia's ruling “socialist workers party,” the Communists, established themselves as the polar opposites of their two socialist clones, the National Socialist German Workers Party (quicknamed "the Nazis") and Italy's Marxist-inspired Fascisti, by branding both as "the fascists."
I had no idea Wolfe was that historically illiterate. What an embarrassment these people are.
Hitler was a socialist, JUST like the democrats today. The ONLY difference is that Hitler was open about his racism, the Democrats hide their's.
Don't forget that mustache, Tmack. You won't find many liberals with that mustache. So that's another difference - your theory is smashed to bits.
Hitler was a nationalist, JUST like the republicans today. The ONLY difference is that Hitler had competent staff.
Now that Jonah Lucianne has dismissed your critique as unserious and vengeful, you have to perhaps respond in kind.
The problem with discussing "Liberal Fascism" is that Americans, or at least the reviewers, are unfamiliar with the concept of Statism or Corporatism. In fact, the US is nowhere near as Free Market as we claim to be, particularly on the Republican side, because for some incredible reason (I can't imagine why) corporate welfare is always described as Free Market.
The problem with discussing "Liberal Fascism" is that Americans, or at least the reviewers, are unfamiliar with the concept of Statism or Corporatism.
EXACTLY. Although it's hardly the only problem.
But the argument that Republicans are Free Market! Democrats are not Free Market! Hitler was not Free Market! Hitler is a Democrat! is just childishly ignorant of the history of European politics, where both the right and left are statist and corporatist. Even worse, it completely obfuscates the statist and corporatist elements of the modern Republican party -- starting, though hardly ending, with the military-industrial complex.
Fascism isn't just statism or corporatism, it's statism linked to a particular set of beliefs, tactics, and goals. Those do not appear in their pure form in either political party, but insofar as they do they are more common on teh Republican side.
As someone pursuing a Ph.D. in history, it is beyond enraging to see Jonah Goldberg referred to as a "historian" by Tom Wolfe, of all people.
Usually historians know something about, you know, history. It's like calling your neighborhood barber a medical doctor because he bandaged a cut on your neck.
Unbe-fucking-lievable.
Damn, Jonah got scooped by Wikipedia:
While originally referring to an 'all-embracing, total state,' the label [totalitarianism] has been applied to a wide variety of regimes and orders of rule in a critical sense. Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine (1943) used the term in connection with the collectivist societies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) and The Poverty of Historicism (1961) developed an influential critique of totalitarianism: in both works, he contrasted the "open society" of liberal democracy with totalitarianism, and argued that the latter is grounded in the belief that history moves toward an immutable future, in accord with knowable laws. During the Cold War period, the term gained renewed currency, especially following the publication of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Arendt argued that Nazi and Stalinist regimes were completely new forms of government, and not merely updated versions of the old tyrannies. According to Arendt, the source of the mass appeal of totalitarian regimes was their ideology which provided a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present, and future. For Nazism, all history is the history of racial struggle; and, for Marxism, all history is the history of class struggle. Once that premise was accepted by the public, all actions of the regime could be justified by appeal to the Law of History or Nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
RE "It's like calling your neighborhood barber a medical doctor because he bandaged a cut on your neck."
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Actually, it's more like saying the barber should handle surgeries because he already owns sharp instruments.
Which would allow Republicans to both demonstrate their reverence for tradition and to put forth their health care plan.
mq-
You are exactly right.
I'm a double major in European History and Economics, and you would not believe how often I have to use your points in discussions. Especially with the College Republican crowd.
The lack of a comment facility at the LibFasc blog appears to result in Jonah's adoring army landing here, via memeorandum and elsewhere. Oh well.
mq: the obvious thought experiment is to imagine a fascist USA and the position of liberals within it. It Can't Happen Here can be a blueprint, unless Jonah's zombie army care to agree upon another one.
"Hitler was a nationalist, JUST like the republicans today. The ONLY difference is that Hitler had competent staff."
Except for whoever thought invading Russia would be a good idea.
If I weren't American, and I read all of this -- this "debate" over American liberalism equaling Nazism -- I'd probably actually start to believe that the US had lost its collective mind. Ironically, almost anywhere else on the planet American "liberalism" is the equivalent of most center Right conservatism. I'm not sure what that makes the rest of the world in Rube Goldberg's little mind, probably child molesters or something.
All you need to know about Jonah Goldberg -
"The white man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism"
"The Holocaust could not have happened in Italy because Italians are not Germans"
Only a moron could arrange English words in that order.
Liberals are just "fascist lite" - they're too cowardly to be out-and-out fascists.
And their excuses are weak. Where Hitler touted the Aryan superman, liberals tout...Matt Yglesias?
Instead of touting the state as the solution to everything (although they do when it serves their argumentative purpose - even Hitler never went that far - he believed that the state should serve the Leader), they tout abstracts like "civil rights" and "equality of opportunity" - which mean whatever they want those words to mean.
Except that they're willing to use state coercion to make sure whatever opinion they have is forced on everyone else - just like Hitler. Except that unlike Hitler, they refer to laws they like as "regulations" or "social welfare" or some other lame crap that hides the fact that it's simply more coercion.
At least with Hitler, you knew where you stood - in deep shit. With liberals, you never know when they're going to stab you in the back or just do something so monumentally stupid that you get nailed to the cross for no reason at all.
As Dracula berated the vampires in "Blade:Trinity": "Look how far you've fallen! You're shadows of your former selves!"
Even chimpanzees are shaking their heads...
Re: In other words, Goldberg's buddies want to put the "Socialism" back into National Socialism.
Interesting idea --but hasn't it been done before?
The National Socialist party was no more socialist than Russia's Liberal Democratic party is democratic (or liberal). What kind of idiot thinks that the frigging Nazis were too honest to employ lying propaganda? They tacked Socialist onto their party name as boob bait for the German working class which thought well of (real) socialism. Of course the Nazis did confiscate some property-- when it belonged to Jews or other enemies of state. But they then turned around and handed it over to their own cronies so I donlt think that counts as true nationalization.
And yes, socialism can be fascist: when that happens it's generally called Communism.
I'd probably actually start to believe that the US had lost its collective mind.
That happened in 1994, when Gingrich became Speaker of the House. It's been up and down since then.
"At least with Hitler,"
"And their excuses are weak. Where Hitler touted the Aryan superman, liberals tout.."
"Except that unlike Hitler"
etc.
I love to see a rousing defense of Hitler in the guise of attacking liberals (whom Hitler had equal contempt for with our friend here)...for being like..Hitler. Hard to satirize ideas that are completely self-satirizing.
Is Liberal fascism Obama's autobiography?
Koshemobs-
Yes.
Smarter trolls please.
Or at least, funnier trolls please.
Don't you guys get it? If Hillary = Hitler (or, as I and approx. 100,000 other clever web users like to call her, "Hitlery"! LOL!), then Jonah, K-Lo, et al. aren't just a bunch of malcontent, Hostess Cupcake gobbling shut-ins -- they're, like, Resistance fighters or something. Which, hello, means more pussy for Jonah!
Now stop your cock-blocking.
I'm still upset that nobody mentions that Saddam's crack military divisions were composed of Republican's, in his Republican Guard. It just goes to show you how the conservative media cabal controls thought in our so called free country.
Possibly MY meant to write of Liberal Fascism's scope, rather than its "scoop."
Still, I'd say that "scoop" is still in the running, suggesting as it does -- although not quite idiomatically -- the mechanical ladling out of a smooth, internally homogenous substance, soft, yet not entirely liquid...
Real criticism of this book should stop immediately. It's utterly pointless and will be met only with lame and offensive nonsense. Go read the Liberal Fascism blog for a taste. There Goldberg is currently claiming the pre-WWII right is different from the modern right because the latter happened after Hayek and had free-market ideals rather than the desire to collude with government for power or some such shit; yet he's completely oblivious that the thesis of his book relies on the unbreakable link of everyone who has ever had a non-free market idea or fact attributed to them, and the weakness of which was one of the 'non-serious' criticisms that Matt pointed out in the first place. Whatever.
In the end, it's all low-middlebrow arrogance, with the politicization of common sense, intuition and any kind of bullshit detection, plus massive, massive doses psychological masochism. These people have constructed a world in which nothing works and they win repeatedly.
Smarter trolls? We're talking last-ditch Republicans here!
Nevertheless, Koshemobs's moranic comment is an interesting data point, because it shows you how a really, really stupid catchphrase can go viral in the fever swamps and begin to mutate with great rapidly.
Je repete: The sole and only purpose of Jonah's noxious though well-paying little screed is to get those two words into circulation. There's no point treating the book like a book; it's simply a tranmission vector for a vile phrase.
Look for the connection to der dolchstosslegende to appear very, very shortly.
At the same time, however, it's both completely banal and also not the main point of his book.
Indeed, it's central to my thesis.
Which proves my point.
It's so nice to always have Richard Steven Hack around to quote nerd TV, sound like a fucking lunatic, and solve our computer problems... CHEAP!
It's interesting that Goldberg's book was praised by David Pryce-Jones, author of The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs. I'm pretty sure that David Pryce-Jones doesn't know Arabic at all above a pidgin level needed to buy a carpet.
And Goldberg of course wrote his book on facism without being able to read German, Italian, or Spanish. (Is there a single non-English source cited in the book?)
Let's call this the new scholarship: writing about subjects that you have absolutely no qualification for.
If someone in China wrote a book about the Federalist Papers, they would probably be expected to know English.
I'm sure anyone in China who wrote a book on the Federalist Papers would not only know English, they'd know more English than Jonah Goldberg!
My point was the liberals would be despised by Hitler for (one of) the same reasons they're despised by me - for being lame.
If you're going to be a coercive totalitarian, at least have the balls to admit it.
People keep saying "liberalism" is about "individual freedom". I've never seen it in this country, don't know about Europe's history in that regard. All I see in this country is a bunch of Democrats arguing for more laws and more enforcement of laws and more taxes to pay for more state control of just about everything other than the military - until they get in power, and then they bomb other people, too - always for "humanitarian reasons".
I've heard some supposed liberals make intelligent remarks, and I've heard some supposed conservative make intelligent remarks in my time.
What I haven't seen is any good results from either side on just about any issue in my lifetime. So either they're all lying, or the system is completely unworkable - or both.
I believe it is the latter - both. And I happen to know why.
Which makes the whole issue fairly irrelevant to me. I just posted that bit above to bitch and moan.
Richard Steven Hack: I think you should read more history or political philosophy, spend less time with computers.
If you "don't know about Europe's history in that regard," i.e, the history of liberalism and conservatism in modern Europe (which, believe it or not, is not irrelevant to the American experience) why pronounce with such confidence? Just to bitch and moan? It gets old, man.
Moreover, if you can't see a degree of difference between, say, Adolf Hitler and Herbert Asquith, there really isn't much left to say.
Whatever else small-f fascism and Third International Socialism have in common they're both ideologies for aggrieved nationalists wanting to strike back at the dominant powers. Last time I noticed the aggrieved nationalists in this country were in the GOP; not so much in the Democratic Party. Not that I'm expecting self-examination from ol' Jonah.
Say what you will about Hitler, at least he solved computer problems cheaply!
Yes, Europe's liberal vs conservative history is not relevant to the US TODAY - because damn few of the liberals that I see pontificating TODAY can tell you the detailed history of European liberalism either.
I'm going on the basis of the so-called "liberal" policy prescriptions I read everyday on every so-called "liberal" blog and advocated by every so-called "liberal" candidate going back to the 19th Century.
And those policy descriptions are invariably for more coercion, more state, and more brain dead solutions that can't possibly solve the problems they are supposed to address.
If you morons can't tell the similarity between Hitler and your average liberal, there isn't much to say - except that you've proven my point, which is explicitly that you're all statists who intend to impose your vision of the ways things should be on everybody by force.
If you vote for the state, you're part of the problem. It's that simple. That's the historical anarchist side of me. (On the Transhuman side, if you're a chimp, you're part of the problem.)
You're further gone than I suspected, Hack. By your own admission, you have no frigging clue what you're talking about -- you're just bitching and moaning.
So, European liberalism, after which we modeled things like social security, medicare, and so forth -- and European conservatism, which, in its Metternich form, is pretty much Cheneyism -- these are irrelevant to our experience? Is all of History irrelevant then?
Maybe you should try more reading on the subject before you oh-so-self-confidently pontificate, and less "transhumanist" self-gratification.
Comments closed January 29, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
In other words, Goldberg's buddies want to put the "Socialism" back into National Socialism.
Interesting idea --but hasn't it been done before?
Posted by Don Williams | January 15, 2008 5:45 PM