Posted on 02/12/2008 7:13:05 PM PST by jazusamo
Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss — and a major loss.
Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis.
This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time — and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned rather than criticized.
Because the word "fascist" is often thrown around loosely these days, as a general term of abuse, it is good that "Liberal Fascism" begins by discussing the real Fascism, introduced into Italy after the First World War by Benito Mussolini.
The Fascists were completely against individualism in general and especially against individualism in a free market economy. Their agenda included minimum wage laws, government restrictions on profit-making, progressive taxation of capital, and "rigidly secular" schools.
Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call the shots as to how businesses would be run.
They were for "industrial policy," long before liberals coined that phrase in the United States.
Indeed, the whole Fascist economic agenda bears a remarkable resemblance to what liberals would later advocate.
Moreover, during the 1920s "progressives" in the United States and Britain recognized the kinship of their ideas with those of Mussolini, who was widely lionized by the left.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
-—excellent book—
If you're reading this, you are.
( /liberal-think)
Man I love this guy.
He is always spot on!
His column is like a trumpet of sanity in an increasing insane world.
Thanks, r.
He nailed it again.
I’ve argued with liberals that presume because businesses and corporations support primarily Republicans, that proves that Republicans are fascist. Business is calling the shots and pulling the puppet strings of the legislators they buy. While this happens to some extent, they could not see that the increasing control of business by government was a more apt description of fascism.
Reducing the life and death control that legislators have over business and corporations back to the government’s constitutionally proscribed limits would go a long way towards getting dirty money out of politics and free businesses from burdensome regulation.
I’m reading it right now, but the book has to go back to the library tomorrow as someone else has requested it. I decided to buy my own copy so I can highlight some things as I read it.
Interesting that Sowell includes Franco among his list of Fascist dictators (who were, presumably, “on the left”), considering that many American-style conservatives, who condemn Hitler and Mussolini, take a very different view of Franco.
It bears repeating-
Government Control
Communist...Fascist...Socialist...Democrat....Moderate...Republican...Conservative...Libertarian
Communist...Fascist...Socialist...Democrat....Moderate...Republican...Conservative...Libertarian
You forgot one...
Communist...Fascist...Socialist...Democrat....Moderate...Republican...Conservative...Libertarian...Anarchist.
The Obama File Dont leave home without it.
Hmm, I don't think that is entirely accurate. A lot of businesses support liberal socialism when they think it will benefit them in particular. For example, some very important corporations are getting behind government run health care because they see it as reducing their own costs in that area.
Mark
IIRC, Franco was an avowed Fascist... In fact, weren't the fascists on one side of the Spanish Civil War?
Mark
Mark
Funny how that “Howdy Doody” Moron, Bill Mahar says that Islamo-Facists is incorrect, and that Facist is just for Corporate Goons....yet this article describes what Liberals in America have for an agenda...Facism.
Never Never Never forget that NAZI was the acronym for NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY.
PING!!!
Remember that talk we had a while back?
BTTT
I'm not sure I agree with this the way things in the U.S. are currently trending. I believe both Democrat and Republican have moved left, as in:
Communist...Fascist...Democrat...Socialist...Republican...Moderate...Conservative...Libertarian...Anarchist.
Which amounts to teh same thing in practice. eitehr way, the government gets to determine whta to do with the means of production andthe property.
BTW, here in America, we have put the means of production into the hands of the people. More and more of us own stock, which makes us part owners of the companies that produce goods an services. Thu, we own the means of production.
Not much of it beloings to you or me, obviously, but together, the people own it.
What Fascists advocate and what liberals advocate bear a striking similarity. Fascists are leftists and the left knows it but isn’t honest enough to admit it.
Francisco Franco was our ally against Communism (and de facto against Hitler, often passing along to Berlin mistranslated “intercepted communications” and saving Jews by having Hitler send tehm down to Spain to work rahter than kill them.) That’s why he is viewed so differently.
When my parents went to Spain, they told me that some Spaniards told htem, “We have every political freedom you have except the right to elect the president.”
This is one of two FR topics about this book.
Discussing Fascism without referring to F A Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (Link to the Readers' Digest Condensed Version in PDF!) is just wrong.
I know that it’s not accurate. Try telling a liberal who is foaming at the mouth with BDS.
Had Franco thrown in with Hitler in 1940, when it seemed Hitler was winning the war, Germany would probably have won. Gibralter would have fallen, closing the straights. North Africa was near-run as it was; it's hard to see how the British could have saved Egypt based solely on the Suez. The Battle of the Atlantic would also have tilted in Germany's favor; the submarines would also have had the whole European coast as a safe harbor and base of attack with no North Sea-Greenland-Iceland-UK gauntlet to run.
Franco's role is understood by all serious WWII historians but is too casually overlooked in the popular press. Sometimes they serve who only stand and wait.
Not according to the leftists... According to the leftists, "the evil rich" or the "evil corporations" own the means of production, not "the people." Of course, what they mean is that "the WRONG people" own the means of production. The people who SHOULD own them, and profit from them are usually themselves. Never mind that they don't know anything about the businesses, running a business, etc... They're just of the opinion that the only reason that they're not successful is because they were never given the opportunity.
I swear that I feel like I'm watching Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" live these days. I really wish that there was a "Galt's Gulch" that I could retire to.
Mark
When my parents went to Spain, they told me that some Spaniards told htem, “We have every political freedom you have except the right to elect the president.”
I am aware of Franco's good points (though as for anti-Communism, Hitler and Mussolini were anti-Communist as well). I am also aware that, unlike Nazis, Fascists, and Communists, Franco had no imperial ambitions. And yes, Franco saved many, many Jewish lives.
What I am saying is that it makes no sense for conservatives to condemn "big government," "collectivism," or "socialism," and to insist that Nazism and Fascism are the same as Communism because they are collectivist, big government systems, if they are going to treat Franco so differently. Was or was not Falangist Spain a "big government?" Was or was not its official ideology "national syndicalism?" If national socialism is "the same as Communism," then why isn't national syndicalism?
This is the point I'm trying to make.
Aye good catch
You can include Mike Bloomberg on that list.
Do Anarchists turn out in equal numbers for things like the Republican and Democrat conventions?
Seems to me like they protest Republican gatherings more and they’re often seen with the Marxist ANSWER crowd that are supportive of Democrat policies.
Time for a change.
Oh no! It's snowing again!However, the snow did nothing to stop these students from trudging past the W.E.B. Dubois Library on their way to class this morning.
Library namesake W.E.B. Dubois has been written about lately by syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell, and not in a flattering way.
Says Sowell:W.E.B. DuBois was so taken with the Nazi movement that he put swastikas on the cover of a magazine he edited, despite complaints from Jewish readers.
Even after Hitler achieved dictatorial power in Germany in 1933, DuBois declared that the Nazi dictatorship was "absolutely necessary in order to get the state in order."
As late as 1937 he said in a speech in Harlem that "there is today, in some respects, more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past." Yikes, the UMass library named after a Nazi sympathizer?
Of course Hitler isn't the worst mass murder, that would be Chairman Mao of socialist China (estimated death toll 60 million) whom Dubois also admired.
For years a picture of Dubois proudly posing with Mao hung in the library lobby, where it attracted numerous complaints from Chinese exchange students who were shocked and offended that a picture of the most brutal dictator of modern times was so honored.
When the lobby was recently remodeled, someone apparently "forgot" to re-hang the offending portrait.
In his youth DuBois was one of the founders of the NAACP, for which he should be praised. However the rest of his career was a terrible embarrassment, in which he displayed spectacularly bad judgement in supporting virtually every blood-thirsty dictator he ever heard of provided they (as both Hitler and Mao did) claimed to be socialists.
When I was at UMass, the library had no name. Everyone referred to it simply as "The UMass Library."
Then in the 1980's, the peak years when campus leftists ran wild on campus, the move was made to name the library after DuBois to honor his radical leftist views.
Since then the Cold War has ended, socialism is totally discredited in mainstream circles and former socialist heroes like Mao are now regarded as the evil butchers they really were.
Therefore, the naming of the library after the foolhardy DuBois has become an embarrassment to the university, sort of like the honorary degree UMass gave to African despot Robert Mugabe around the same time (again at the urging of campus leftists).
The time is now long overdue to quietly erase the DuBois name from the building and go back to simply calling it "The Library."Perhaps the UMass Republican Club will lead the renaming effort.
By the way, Local Buzz has an article on yesterday's Decency Rally which you can read by clicking here.
If you missed the Channel 3 report on the rally, just click here.
Meanwhile, as the snow comes floating down upon us, we can at least follow the advice of this sign outside a Northampton shop.
What do UMass students do when they're not rallying for or against something or studying in a library named after a Nazi sympathizer?
They bounce off the walls. They're good at it too. Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is like thinking the bull will not charge at you because you are a vegetarian.
So true. lol
Thanks for the post.
Thanks for the info. I've also heard about Castro's admiration of Franco. I've actually read that he ordered a period of mourning when Franco died.
I don't know if Franco was a "brute." If he were, I wouldn't excuse him by saying he'd saved Spain. After all, Castro's apologists excuse his atrocities because he "saved Cuba!"
Another fascinating case is Greece's Ioannes Metataxas. He was much more fascist-like in his governance, yet was adamantly pro-British and anti-Fascist/Nazi in his foreign policy, for which he is remembered as a hero.
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