Product Description

“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.

Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a “friendlier,” more liberal form. The modern heirs of this “friendly fascist” tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

These assertions may sound strange to modern ears, but that is because we have forgotten what fascism is. In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg turns our preconceptions inside out and shows us the true meaning of Liberal Fascism.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #293 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-08
• Released on: 2008-01-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this provocative and well-researched book, Goldberg probes modern liberalism's spooky origins in early 20th-century fascist politics. With chapter titles such as Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left and Brave New Village: Hillary Clinton and the Meaning of Liberal Fascism—Goldberg argues that fascism has always been a phenomenon of the left. This is Goldberg's first book, and he wisely curbs his wry National Review style. Goldberg's study of the conceptual overlap between fascism and ideas emanating from the environmental movement, Hollywood, the Democratic Party and what he calls other left-wing organs is shocking and hilarious. He lays low such lights of liberal history as Margaret Sanger, apparently a radical eugenicist, and JFK, whose cult of personality, according to Goldberg, reeks of fascist political theater. Much of this will be music to conservatives' ears, but other readers may be stopped cold by the parallels Goldberg draws between Nazi Germany and the New Deal. The book's tone suffers as it oscillates between revisionist historical analyses and the application of fascist themes to American popular culture; nonetheless, the controversial arc Goldberg draws from Mussolini to The Matrix is well-researched, seriously argued—and funny. (Jan. 8)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Michael Mann

National Review editor Jonah Goldberg says he is fed up with liberals calling him a fascist. Who can blame him? Hurling the calumny "fascist!" at American conservatives is not fair. But Goldberg's response is no better. He lobs the f-word back at liberals, though after each of his many attacks he is at pains to say that they are not "evil" fascists, they just share a family resemblance. It's family because American liberals are descendants of the early 20th-century Progressives, who in turn shared intellectual roots with fascists. He adds that both fascists and liberals seek to use the state to solve the problems of modern society.

Scholars would support Goldberg in certain respects. He is correct that many fascists, including Mussolini (but not Hitler) started as socialists -- though almost none started as liberals, who stood for representative government and mild reformism. Moreover, fascism's combination of nationalism, statism, discipline and a promise to "transcend" class conflict was initially popular in many countries. Though fascism was always less popular in democracies such as the United States, some American intellectuals did flirt with its ideas. Goldberg quotes progressives and liberals who did, but he does not quote the conservatives who also did. He is right to note that fascist party programs contained active social welfare policies to be implemented through a corporatist state, so there were indeed overlaps with Progressives and with New Dealers. But so, too, were there overlaps with the world's Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, as well as with the British Conservative Party from Harold Macmillan in the 1930s to Prime Minister Ted Heath in the 1970s, and even with the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations. Are they all to earn the f-word?

The only thing these links prove is that fascism contained elements that were in the mainstream of 20th-century politics. Following Goldberg's logic, I could rewrite this book and berate American liberals not for being closet fascists but for being closet conservatives or closet Christian Democrats. But that would puzzle Americans, not shock them. Shock, it seems, sells books.

What really distinguished fascists from other mainstream movements of the time were proud, "principled" -- as they saw it -- violence and authoritarianism. Fascists took their model of governance from their experience as soldiers and officers in World War I. They believed that disciplined violence, military comradeship and obedience to leaders could solve society's problems. Goldberg finds similarities between fascism's so-called "third way" -- neither capitalism nor socialism -- and liberals who use the same phrase today to signify an attempt to compromise between business and labor. But there is a fundamental difference. The fascist solution was not brokered compromise but forcibly knocking heads together. Italian fascists formed a paramilitary, not a political, party. The Nazis did have a separate party, but alongside two paramilitaries, the SA and the SS, whose first mission was to attack and, if necessary, to kill socialists, communists and liberals. In reality, the fascists knocked labor's head, not capital's. The Nazis practiced on the left for their later killing of Jews, gypsies and others. And all fascists proudly proclaimed the "leadership principle," hailing dictatorship and totalitarianism.

It is hard to find American counterparts, especially among liberals. Father Coughlin and Huey Long (discussed by Goldberg) were tempted by a proto-fascist authoritarian populism in the 1930s. Some white Southerners (not discussed) embraced violence and authoritarianism, as did the Weathermen and the Black Panthers (discussed) and rightist militias (not discussed). Neocons (not discussed) today endorse militarism. Liberals have rarely supported violence, militarism or authoritarianism, because they are doves and wimps -- or at least that is what both conservatives and socialists usually say. To assert that the Social Security Act or Medicare shows a leaning toward totalitarianism is ridiculous. The United States, along with the rest of the Anglo-Saxon and Northwestern European world, has been protected from significant fascist influences by the shared commitment of liberals, conservatives and social democrats to democracy. Fascism is not an American, British, Dutch, Scandinavian, Canadian, Australian or New Zealand vice. It only spread significantly in one-half of Europe, with some lesser influence in China, Japan, South America and South Africa. Today it is alive in very few places.

A few of Goldberg's assaults make some minimal sense; others are baffling. He culminates with an attack on Hillary Clinton. He quotes from a 1993 college commencement address of hers: "We need a new politics of meaning. We need a new ethos of individual responsibility and caring. We need a new definition of civil society which answers the unanswerable questions posed by both the market forces and the governmental ones, as to how we can have a society that fills us up again and makes us feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves." Such vacuous politician-speak could come from any centrist, whether Republican or Democrat. But Goldberg bizarrely says it embodies "the most thoroughly totalitarian conception of politics offered by a leading American political figure in the last half century." Is he serious? He then quotes briefly from her book It Takes A Village. "The village," she wrote, "can no longer be defined as a place on the map, or a list of people or organizations, but its essence remains the same: it is the network of values and relationships that support and affect our lives." One may question whether that is a profound definition or a banal one, but does it deserve Goldberg's comment that here "the concept of civil society is grotesquely deformed"? Whatever Sen. Clinton's weaknesses, she is neither a totalitarian nor an enemy of civil society.

In an apparent attempt at balance, Goldberg indulges in very mild and brief criticism of conservatives who are tempted by compassionate (i.e., social) conservatism, though here he uniquely refrains from using the f-word. In the book's final pages, he reveals his neo-liberalism (though he does not use the term). Since neo-liberalism, with its insistence on unfettered global trade and minimal government regulation of economic and social life, merely restates 19th-century laissez-faire, it is in fact the only contemporary political philosophy that significantly pre-dates both socialism and fascism. Unlike modern liberalism or modern conservatism, it shares not even a remote family resemblance with them. That is the only sense I can make of his overall argument.

But a final word of advice. If you want to denigrate the Democrats' health care plans or Al Gore's environmental activism, try the word "socialism." That is tried and tested American abuse. "Fascism" will merely baffle Americans -- and rightly so.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review

“Well-researched, seriously argued and funny.” —Publishers Weekly

“Brilliant, insightful, and important." —The New York Sun

"Jonah Goldberg is the first historian to detail the havoc this spin of all spins has played upon Western thought for the past seventy-five years, very much including the present moment." —Tom Wolfe

Customer Reviews

This is a great book!
This book is a great book that documents the factual history of fascism, socialism and the progressive movement. It should be required reading for high school history. I find it remarkable that many take issue with the historical facts that the author has meticulously researched and referenced throughout the book. Anybody that is interested in World War II and the politics of the time that lead to fascist Italy and Germany.

Liberal Fascism
The author's reasoning is immediately sensable and well researched. The difficulty, as poiinted out by Jonah Goldberg, is that the term "fascist" is used for the enemy or adversary from many points of view. This allows the Liberal to skate, almost unnoticed.

Liberal Fascism
Looking at Liberalism from a different perspective, Jonah Goldberg has written Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (New York: Doubleday, c. 2007). Goldberg's title (and treatment) are almost deliberately incendiary, designed to anger American liberals who have routinely insisted that "fascism" is a conservative trait! Here they ape "Stalin [who] stumbled on a brilliant tactic of simply labeling all inconvenient ideas and movements fascist" (p. 10). With Stalin they deny, for example, that Hitler was a man of the Left, whereas he was a doctrinaire socialist--though of a national, not an international, variety.
So, for clarity, Goldberg provides this definition of fascism: "Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by fore or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the `problem' and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism" (p. 23). Consequently, he points out remarkable correlations and draws intriguing conclusions that make his treatise quite thought-provoking. Historically, the argument he endeavors to prove is this: "Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today's liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism" (p. 2).
Before the Holocaust, "when it never occurred to anyone that fascism had anything to do with anti-Semitism" (p. 26), many American liberals, including members of FDR's "brain trust" such as Rexford Tugwell, openly admired fascist efficiency. To New Dealers (pragmatists to a man) success validated the truth and goodness of ideas. Thus Tugwell praised Italian Fascism as "'the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious'" (p. 13). What Tugwell--and earlier Progressives including Woodrow Wilson--craved is what Goldberg calls "the totalitarian temptation--that with the right amount of tinkering we can realize the utopian cream of `creating a better world'" (p. 15). That longing still marks the rhetoric of "hope" (Barak Obama) and the "politics of meaning" (Hillary Clinton). The desire to create a perfect world, to make sure that everyone's cared for, to require everyone to live right, informed "the Nazi antismoking and public health drives [that] foreshadowed today's crusades against junk food, trans fats, and the like. A Hitler Youth manual proclaimed, `Nutrition is not a private matter!'" (p. 19). "'You have the duty to be healthy!'" (p. 389).
Nor was drinking left up to individual choice! American Progressives' crusade to banish alcoholic beverages (triumphant in the 18th amendment) garnered praise from Nazi publicists for its linking "moral and physical health." And many Prohibitionists applauded "the election of Hitler, a famous teetotaler. And while the racist undercurrent of Prohibition was always there--alcohol fueled the licentiousness of the mongrel races--in Germany the concern was more that alcohol and even more the despised cigarette would lead to the degeneracy of Germany's Aryan purity. Tobacco was credited with every evil imaginable, including fostering homosexuality" (p. 268). Hitler hated tobacco, holding that cigarette addiction illustrated the "'wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor" (p. 388). "The Nazi war on alcoholism and the Hitlerite emphasis on organic foods slowly pushed the beverage industry away from beer and booze and toward natural fruit juices. Children were a special priority. In 1933 the Nazis banned alcohol advertising that was aimed at children" (p. 299).
Goldberg further finds fascinating parallels between the Environmentalism of today's liberals and "the Nazi cult of the organic." Along with Hither, many leading Nazis, "Himmler, Rudolph Hess, Martin Bormann and--maybe--Goebbels were vegetarians or health food fetishists" (p. 385). There was a back-to-the-earth agenda to much of the Nazi program, a celebration of the "natural" rather than the "artificial." Eminent Nazis proclaimed a commitment to "animal rights," and sought to enshrine them in legislation; Himmler even branded hunting as "'really pure murder'" (p. 386). He envisioned his SS troops eating strictly organic food "and was dedicated to making the transition for all of Germany after the war. Organic food was seamlessly linked to the larger Nazi conception of the organic nation living in harmony with a pre- or non-Christian ecosystem" (p. 389).
To rightly explain these totalizing aspects of Fascism, Goldberg gives careful attention to Benito Mussolini. "He was one of Europe's leading radical socialists in arguably the most radical socialist party outside of Russia. Under his stewardship, the journal Avanti! became close to gospel for a whole generation of socialist intellectuals, including Antonio Gramsci" (p. 36). Gramsci, importantly, is a major influence in leftist circles; he urged his followers to launch a long, slow march through cultural institutions (universities, media, churches) rather than rely upon revolutions to bring about a socialist utopia. Mussolini was clearly indebted to the "syndicalism" of Georges Sorel, and "without syndicalism fascism was impossible" (p. 36). Interestingly enough, "Sorel was deeply influenced by the Pragmatism of William James, who pioneered the notion that all one needs is the `will to believe'" (p. 37). Still more: Sorel replicated much of Rousseau and Robespierre and the radical ideas of the French Revolution, which "was the first totalitarian revolution, the mother of modern totalitarianism, and the spiritual model for the Italian Fascist, German Nazi, and Russian Communist revolutions" (p. 38).
Across the Atlantic, Mussolini's American contemporary, Woodrow Wilson, and the Progressives who supported him, were "at the forefront of the push for a truly totalitarian state," Goldberg argues (p. 80). "Wilson's view of politics could be summarized by the word `statolatry,' or state worship (the same sin with which the Vatican charged Mussolini). Wilson believed that the state was a natural, organic, and spiritual expression of the people themselves" (p. 86). Thus, as Rousseau had said, government continually changes to reflect the will of the people, and the Constitution must be considered a living document capable of endless expansion and alteration. In 1912 Wilson declared that "'all that progressives ask or desire is permission--in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word--to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle'" (p. 88). Furthermore, just as the species, not the individual really matters to Darwin so too, Wilson insisted, "the essence of Progressivism was that the individual `marry his interests to the state'" (p. 96).
Within two decades, the Progressivism of Wilson moved seamlessly into the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the year FDR was elected, 1932, H.G. Wells "delivered a major speech at Oxford University to Britain's Young Liberals organization, in which he called for a `"Phoenix Rebirth"' of Liberalism' under the banner of "Liberal Fascism'" (p. 134). Wells had given up hoping the Fabian Socialism he'd earlier supported would work. So he envisioned a new approach to attain the transformation of society, rather resembling what was emergent in Germany and Italy. Wells highly admired FDR, frequently met him in the White House, and called him "'the most effective transmitting instrument possible for the coming of the new world order" (p. 135). In Goldberg's judgment, "it seems impossible to deny that the New Deal was objectively fascistic" (p. 158). It encapsulated "an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don't matter" (p. 158). Thus, when Frances Perkins suggested that many New Deal proposals were unconstitutional, FDR blithely brushed away her concerns, ready to pack the Supreme Court or do whatever necessary to implement his plans. "In 1942 he flatly told Congress that if it didn't do what he wanted, he'd do it anyway. He questioned the patriotism of anybody who opposed his economic programs, never mind the war itself" (p. 158).
Consequently: "The apotheosis of liberal aspirations under FDR took place not during the New Deal but during World War II. Roosevelt in his 1944 State of the Union address proposed what he called a `second Bill of Rights.' But this was really an argument for a new Bill of Rights, turning the original on its head. `Necessitous men are not free men,' he declared. Therefore the state must provide a `new basis of security and prosperity.' Among the new rights on offer were `as useful and remunerative job,' `a decent home,' `adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health,' `adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment,' and `a good education.' This second Bill of Rights remains the spiritual lodestar of liberal aspirations to this day" (p. 223).
The world had barely recovered from WWII before fascism took "to the streets" in the 1960s. Remarkably resembling German youths in the 1920s, student radicals in the 1960s determined to overthrow existing authorities, beginning with the universities and their curricula. "The first task of any fascist reformation is to discredit the authority of the past, and this was the top priority of the New Left" (p. 172). Significantly, "In 1966, at a conference at Johns Hopkins University, the French literary critic Jacques Derrida introduced the word `deconstruction'--a term coined by Nazi ideologues--into the American intellectual bloodstream" (p. 173). The rest, as they say, is history! And anyone who witnessed (as I did) deconstruction's role in subverting the integrity of modern universities can attest to the power of Derrida and his views, for "Deconstruction is a direct and unapologetic offshoot of Heidegger's brand of existentialism, which not only was receptive to Nazism but helped foster it" (p. 174).
Goldberg provides extensive documentation showing the fascistic aspects of the New Left in America. Simply to understand the influence of Saul Alinksy's Rules for Radicals (influencing both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton!) is to see the parallel between America's New Left and European Fascism. To consider the heroes of the "movement" as it was called in the `60s is to understand much of its nature. In the nation's most prestigious universities, student "radicals" plastered their walls with "posters of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung, and Ho Chi Minh" (p. 193). They celebrated the Black Panthers, overlooking the violence and corruption that pervaded its structures. And despite his demonstrably murderous record, Che Guevara remains a cult figure for multitudes of young devotees.
What's evident in all these individuals is what Goldberg labels the "cult of the state." The gigantic growth of government characterized the 20th century, and "for some liberals, the state is in fact a substitute for God and a form of political religion as imagined by Rousseau and Robespierre, the fathers of liberal fascism" (p. 201). And that political religion has powerfully shaped modern American liberalism.