Unseriousness: A Guide for the Perplexed

Also shouldn't he, you know, write the book making the argument befor complaining that people aren't discussing it?

This seems more like a bleg of the variety "Please make arguments I can add to my unpublishable book to make it publishable," rather than "Let's be serious for a few months."

IIRC, Lucianne's spawn has a history of having readers do his research for him.

To clarify, "such detail" is code for "numerous footnotes e-mailed in by his readers" and "such care" is code for "I promise to wipe the Cheeto residue off the manuscript before sending it to the editor."

reading the corner so you do not have to...normally people put some separation before they turn on a dime like this:

He is the first blogger anywhere that I am aware of that has actually written something critical that is also thoughtful and informed about my forthcoming book (sorry Ezra, that definitely takes you into account). I'm not going to get into the details of my argument months before the book is out.

Why aren't people making serious arguments about a book I am not ready to talk about?

And yet, he is being discussed here...why? Everytime I'm lucky enough to forget the name..here it pops up again. Enough already.

I'm sure some people (probably on the Right) make the argument that the National Review is to the Right what, say, The American Prospect is to the Left. The New Republic seems to me too conservative to be the other side, though I'm sure others (again, probably on the right) would establish that dicohtomy as well.

But has any TAP or TNR writer-- and this is not a rhetorical question-- published a book with a title like Jonah's or Ramesh Ponnuru's (The Party of Death)? I mean, Beinart's book, for example, is sub-titled "Why Liberals-- and Only Liberals-- Can Win the War on Terror," not "Why Conservatives are Fundamentally Incapable of Defending Our Country." Of course, both those sub-titles say the same thing, but only one is deliberately trying to get a rise out of the other side-- and in a manner far more tame than either Goldberg's or Ponnuru's titles.

The real shame is TNR's continual attempt to play nice and engage these pinheads. There are smart conservatives out there (not many these days - but some). Liberals can be stupid, and frequently are, and nobody has a monopoly on the truth and good sense.

But NRO is stocked with brainless hacks. Jonah is slightly more reasonable sounding - usually - than most of the other hacks. But he's still a hack. He's a pathetic excuse for an intellectual. And it baffles me that TNR contributes stature to him and Ramesh by treating them seriously - elevating them - as opponents.

"such care" is code for "I promise to wipe the Cheeto residue off the manuscript before sending it to the editor."

As if! No, that's just one of many lies Jonah will tell about -- and in -- his mustachioed masterpiece.

I resent the implication that the title of my colleague Jonah Goldberg's new book should be seen as anything other than a deeply serious effort to stimulate a vigorous and productive intellectual debate.

As you well know, the argument has been made many times over the years that Big Government Liberalism is kinda like fascism, and is like, totally oppressive. But this argument has usually been made by anonymous usenet trolls with usernames like "H. Roark," who rarely flesh out this argument with the detailed research craved by serious scholars, such as random frat-house anecdotes, Battlestar Galactica references, and historical analogies full of big words borrowed liberally from Wikipedia and the works of Victor Davis Hanson.

Never before has this classic freeper message-board screed been made with such detail and care, padded out to book length with filler, published by a non-vanity press, and largely ghost-written by talented writers like Ramesh Ponnuru.

Your refusal to take Jonah's book seriously just shows how profoundly unserious and unwilling to engage in good-faith debate you cheese-eating surrender monkeys really are.

Matt, even if it were a serious commentary, that's no reason for us to take it seriousLY: http://www.danielmunz.com/blog/2007/03/liberal_fascism_so_what.html

And yet, he is being discussed here...why? Everytime I'm lucky enough to forget the name..here it pops up again. Enough already.

I agree. Without repeated mention from Mr. Yglesias, Mr. Goldberg would vanish completely from the public discourse, except for NRO, appearances on national television networks, and his column in the Los Angeles Times. Better to ignore him entirely than to pelt him with the contempt and derision he has earned a thousand times over.

Look, you can write a serious book with a serious title. Ponnuru could have written a serious book passionately arguing the pro-life side of the abortion debate. Goldberg could have written a serious book saying that even though liberals have some proposals that he and others might find to be superficially appealing, the dangers of increasing the size of government are sufficiently manifest that society cannot risk their adoption. Ponnuru's hypothetical book could be called "The Horrors of Abortion", and Goldberg's could be called "The Dangers of Big Government". I wouldn't agree with the argument in either book, but if you want to be taken seriously and make a conservative argument, it is certainly possible to do so.

But you don't make as much money when you do that, because you don't get promoted by Fox News, you don't get published by Regnery or some other right wing publishing house, and you don't attract all the fire-breathing right wingers who want to hear full throated condemnations of liberalism.

Goldberg and Ponnuru are both trying to have it both ways-- to sell lots of books to reactionaries and also to be reviewed and critiqued as serious authors. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

I'm not quite sure why Goldberg is whining about the fact that Larison is the only serious reviewer of a book that hasn't even come out yet. If he wants serious reviews, then put the book out. If he wants to spend years generating publicity by dangling a provacative title and cover, and going on and on about how great the book is going to be, then he should expect derision.

He's right, I am a liberal fascist. I think punks like him should be rounded up and shot for purely aesthetic reasons, and I think that if you have a family member in the RIAA, FCC, or CIA, you should stab them in the face.

This is why I write songs instead of doing politics.

Not that many liberals offered serious, thoughtful counterpoints to Ann Coulter's claim that John Edwards is a faggot either. Really guys, quit being unserious and unthoughtful about Jonah and Anne's serious and thoughtful work.

Also, a winger book entitled 'Liberal Fascism' takes the F-word out of the context where it belongs (i.e., applied to right-wing authoritarians) and puts it into a 'You're a fascist' -- 'No, you're a fascist' type of argument. Too bad-- it was a useful and accurate word, once upon a time.

Hmmmmm. Unfortunately I kinda see Jonah's point on this. I fail to see why the cover art excludes the book from "serious" consideration (whatever meaning of "serious" you care to use). Liberalism can be sorta like careless fascism with a fake friendly face -- get it? Somebody needs to do a compendium of "serious" political books with whimsical cover art of something; Jonah's can't be the only one in existence. As a liberal I can't manage to get that exercised by the cover art. As for "from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton" I would've thought only an OVERLY serious person would assume this sort of phrase needed to be expressly called out as unserious, since it's clearly not supposed to be taken literally to mean that, you know, Hillary is like Mussolini, rather that she exists somewhere on that continuum. So I'm left concluding that a serious critique of liberalism and a provocative dust jacket aren't mutually exclusive things. It's just provocative people, get over it. It's not a grave threat to that academy and the free world. Apoplectically insisting how unserious it is starts to make you look, you know, kinda serious. Just thinking out loud.

Oh, and as far as I know "fascism", if the term is used loosely, can crop up on either the far left or the far right. A big element of fascism is forcible suppression of criticism and opposition; both political extremes will exhibit that tendency from time to time.

I agree with most of what was said in this thread. I was also laughing for two hours yesterday when I read the line about thoughtfulness and great care.

He's a hack who became known for being the son of a hack. Now he demands to be taken seriously for publishing a book with a hackish name.

He deserves all the ridicule in the world.

Why are we arguing about this or repeatedly mentioning this? Jonah Goldberg is well established as a light weight who gets plum writing gigs because of his political usefulness. It's not necessary to keep hammering him on this because he is unlikely to change -- people tend not to become more intelligent all of a sudden. What I am saying is that even if he did change his political stripes, it wouldn't make him any more worth reading.

He's also a graduate of Goucher College.

They should put it in their brochure.

"Our people produce unprecedented arguments made with unprecedented detail and care."

What I would like to see is Matthew Yglesias have a Jon Stewart-Crossfire like moment with Jonah Goldberg. That would be very appropriate and Jonah continues to perfectly set himself up for one.

Oh, and as far as I know "fascism", if the term is used loosely,

From the originator of fascism to Hillary Clinton isn't using a term loosely and that's not what Jonah is going to do, he's going to put together a bunch of garbage about how Hitler was a vegetarian so he was a liberal.

"He's also a graduate of Goucher College."

I now feel much better that they chose not to hire me a couple of years ago.

From the originator of fascism to Hillary Clinton isn't using a term loosely and that's not what Jonah is going to do, he's going to put together a bunch of garbage about how Hitler was a vegetarian so he was a liberal.

Really? I guess one cartoon portrayal deserves another.

From the originator of fascism to Hillary Clinton isn't using a term loosely

Also, I would think that's precisely what using a term loosely would look like. Assuming Jonah wants to EQUATE Hillary to Mussolini sounds like a straw man position to me.

I don't know what you think EQUATE means, I don't think you know what straw man means, but I've read enough semi-literate right-wing screeds on fascism to know with seven nine's of certainty the general shape and thrust of what's coming.

I don't know what you think EQUATE means, I don't think you know what straw man means, but I've read enough semi-literate right-wing screeds on fascism to know with seven nine's of certainty the general shape and thrust of what's coming.

Thanks for clearing up how you form your opinions.

In my opinion, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.

The Party of Death WAS a serious, very calmly written book. The title was not invented by Ponnuru but was based on a remark by pro-choice philosopher Ronald Dworkin. Those who claim the book was shrill probably haven't read it. It is true that the book was marketed in a way that didn't really reflect its contents, and Ponnuru probably does bear some of the blame for that. (I assume, but maybe not - I know an author who didn't even know what the blurbs on his book said until after the book came out.)

Thanks for clearing up how you form your opinions.

By making it clear that you demonstrate no knowledge of what "equate" means? There are dictionaries and encyclopedias online nowadays, Mr. Bill; why don't you go read up on fascism, then get back to us when you actually understand the term, and how it does not "equate," even "loosely," with Senator Clinton or other similarly liberal people, m'kay?

Oh, and you're welcome in advance for clearing up how I form my opinions; i.e., slightly differently from the pulling stuff out of one's ass approach you apparently favor. (Whoops, that was rude, wasn't it? You should probably be smugly judgmental about that, too, Mr. Bill. You don't seem to have much else to go on.)

There's a kind of pseudo-erudition that can be amusing. But Malted Milk is a pikey little fart tittilated by ideas like a two year old finger-fucking Playdoh. If this is an intellectual- my cat is the Czarina of Belarus.

Jonah Goldberg is well established as a light weight who gets plum writing gigs because of his political usefulness

Someone speculated that Jonah's problem is that he isn't very smart but managed to get a great, high-profile job in which he doesn't have to do very much work. Therefore, he assumes that everyone who's as successful as he in the punditocracy doesn't do that much work, either, and that those who aren't high-profile pundits must be less informed and less intelligent than he is. Coulter seems to understand where she falls in the hierarchy and realizes she's just a performance artist (even if her fans don't). Jonah not only believes he's an intellectual but is convinced that he's better informed than those who actually Are intellectuals.

By making it clear that you demonstrate no knowledge of what "equate" means? There are dictionaries and encyclopedias online nowadays, Mr. Bill; why don't you go read up on fascism, then get back to us when you actually understand the term, and how it does not "equate," even "loosely," with Senator Clinton or other similarly liberal people, m'kay?

I thought equate meant to treat as equivalent, but I'll defer to you on that. The phrase "from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton" was, I took it, being interpreted by many as suggesting that Hillary = Mussolini, which is what I bothered taking issue with. Assuming Jonah meant just that seemed man-of-straw to me. (Come to think of it, so is insisting someone doesn't know what "equate" means...) Can't say it any plainer. I agree, therefore, that the term fascism doesn't EQUATE with Hillary, though maybe I'm more prepared to entertain LOOSE connections between political ideologies than you are.

"A big element of fascism is forcible suppression of criticism and opposition"

No, that's not using the term very precisely. Saying that a big part of fascism is repression is like saying that a big part of democracy is going to war now and then. It's true that fascist regimes repress their political opponents through force, but a lot of other kinds of regimes do that; it's not at all a distinguishing feature of fascism. And regimes were doing that for millenia before fascism was invented. Authoritarianism is basically the standard position of almost every ruling class that ever was. There's very little that's ideological about this general tendency. If Goldberg thinks that the paternalistic tendencies of Hillary Clinton and some other left-liberals is a specific legacy of some 20th century Continental reactionaries, he's on really weak ground.

I see Bill has decided that Concern Troll wasn't adaptive enough, and has made the switch to Just Plain Old Troll.

There already are numerous books and articles in many languages on the origins of fascism--cultural, intellectual, social, political, and psychological--and on its rise, decline and fall as a political movement. There's so much of this literature that mastering even a part of it is a daunting task for any individual. (I spent several years of my life at it). There is also a compendious literature on American liberalism. Now, just about everyone who has ever studied either subject has failed to draw any significant connection between the two (except for a handful of right-wing lunatics). In fact, it would be hard to imagine two more antithetical political tendencies. Now along comes this right-wing hack publicist, Jonah Goldberg, who promises to single-handedly effect an intellectual revolution, overturning the conclusions of several generations of scholars. I'm not holding my breath.

This goes to the question of why Jonah is so much more irritating than most of the other right-wing twits out there. It's the pretension, coupled with the paucity of achievement and the adolescent intellect. The same goes for Ponnoru. Most people who read his screed concluded pretty quickly that it amounted to a tiresome rehash of the same old anti-abortion arguments that we've all heard a million times before. I sure regret the hour I spent speed-reading it in Barnes and Noble. Ramesh is just another right-wing hack, pretending to be St. Augustine. Fuck him and his "serious" book.

"The Party of Death WAS a serious, very calmly written book."

Not quite. I agree that it had some serious, calmly written parts, in which Ponnuru made a bunch of ridiculous, unsupportable, assume-your-conclusion, but not vituperative or disrespectful arguments regarding when personhood supposedly begins.

However, it also made an extended argument about how everyone who supports abortion rights is somehow callous or insufficiently respectful of human life, which is not only a complete strawman but is incredibly disrespectful of his opposition. And further, by tethering it to the term "party of death", Ponnuru implied that a political party represented this group of people who showed such callous disregard for human life, even as he denied that this was REALLY his meaning.

He knew exactly what he was doing. As I said, it is possible to write a serious defense of the pro-life position. But "The Party of Death" was not that serious defense, because Ponnuru could not resist tethering his calmly presented, though completely uninformed and un-thought out, argument about abortion to a libelous screed about supporters of legalized abortion and their motives.

"Someone speculated that Jonah's problem is that he isn't very smart but managed to get a great, high-profile job in which he doesn't have to do very much work. Therefore, he assumes that everyone who's as successful as he in the punditocracy doesn't do that much work, either, and that those who aren't high-profile pundits must be less informed and less intelligent than he is.
Posted by: Constantine on March 23, 2007 06:56 PM"

Sounds like Bush's philosophy on success to me.

ovoid's got it exactly: Goldberg is an affront to actual scholarship. This kind of material requires an enormous amount of library time if one expects to be taken seriously. Jonah's not even serious enough to realize what a project like this requires.

Yeah. In other words, his book didn't meet sales projections. Call a waaaahmbulance.

I see Bill has decided that Concern Troll wasn't adaptive enough, and has made the switch to Just Plain Old Troll.

"dj moonbat," I've been posting the odd comment on this blog for the better part of a year, and only when something I said which disagrees with you comes to your attention do I "make the switch" to "a troll." I'll remember not to take your opinions seriously in the future, because that's, like, textbook oblivious.

No, that's not using the term very precisely. Saying that a big part of fascism is repression is like saying that a big part of democracy is going to war now and then. It's true that fascist regimes repress their political opponents through force, but a lot of other kinds of regimes do that; it's not at all a distinguishing feature of fascism. And regimes were doing that for millenia before fascism was invented. Authoritarianism is basically the standard position of almost every ruling class that ever was. There's very little that's ideological about this general tendency. If Goldberg thinks that the paternalistic tendencies of Hillary Clinton and some other left-liberals is a specific legacy of some 20th century Continental reactionaries, he's on really weak ground.

I made no comment as to whether Jonah stands a chance of linking modern liberals to fascism, directly or indirectly. But the comment that a big part of fascism involves the forcible suppression of opposition remains true however precise or imprecise you want to be about the term. And the point that it isn't an ideological tendency is neither here nor there, because fascism as I see it is more about method than ideology. Any ideology will do. Historically it has featured racism and nationalism, scapegoating being a very convenient way to hold sway. One scapegoat's as good as another. We don't know whether Goldberg is talking about a "legacy" in the inherited ideological sense, do we. Fascism, considered as a weed that crops up here and there, needn't necessarily have a direct lineage, though his subtitle does suggest he thinks it does. He would need to clarify that....

"maybe I'm more prepared to entertain LOOSE connections between political ideologies than you are."

90 minutes later:

"And the point that it isn't an ideological tendency is neither here nor there, because fascism as I see it is more about method than ideology. Any ideology will do."

Fascism: "any ideology will do"?

Oh, and as far as I know "fascism", if the term is used loosely, can crop up on either the far left or the far right.

Well, you don't know what fascism means, the word you're looking for is totalitarism/authoritarianism. Fascism is characterized by certain distinctive features (traditionalism, corporatism, rejection of modernism, elitism) that are incompatible with both left and liberal views of society.
If you ignore these aspects of fascism, the term looses any explanatory power.

Fascism: "any ideology will do"?

Fascism has lots of other isms rolled up into it (militarism, nationalism, authoritarianism, collectivism) all of which exist as "ideological" means of centralizing control in a dictator. But the point of fascism being dictatorship I think it's more helpful to think of "fascism" as a means rather than an end. So a fascist country could use whatever isms necessary to consolidate power, hence the overly glib expression "any ideology will do."

Well, you don't know what fascism means, the word you're looking for is totalitarism/authoritarianism. Fascism is characterized by certain distinctive features (traditionalism, corporatism, rejection of modernism, elitism) that are incompatible with both left and liberal views of society.

What, as though totalitarianism and authoritarianism aren't also characterized by those distinctive features? I have never argued that fascism is "compatible with the left" - that's for Goldberg to somehow accomplish. BUT AS THE TERM GETS BANDIED TODAY, one can arguably point to "fascist" tendencies on the left and right. So perhaps the term has lost much of its explanatory power, and is often used in place of totalitarian when it shouldn't be for semantic reasons. Again, something for Goldberg to sort out.

An apropos quote from Wikipedia:

"There is considerable stigma attached to the name and to the concept, and it is not uncommon for people to label their political opponents (or authority figures in general) pejoratively as 'fascists'."

Along with there being some disagreement about what exactly the term encompasses, and whether it must originate from the right.

Since fascism necessarily includes a strong elitist and traditionalist component, yes -- it is always a right-wing "ism."

One might as well ask whether Communism must always originate from the left.

Since fascism necessarily includes a strong elitist and traditionalist component, yes -- it is always a right-wing "ism."

This is of course the conventional view, but its finality is not universally agreed upon. One problem is that it's a basically defunct ideology but the descriptive term itself lives on and has wide currency. People now speak of "fascist tendencies" -- absent a full-fledged system somewhere, the erstwhile methodologies of fascism are bound to become somewhat unmoored from their original context. Obviously Jonah is suggesting something unconventional by linking fascism to the left; others have described fascism as radical centrist or populist, so we'll see how he fares.

Oh, and let's not pretend we can't have elitists on the left. Good grief.

I am somewhat of a fascist when it comes to people who use the word 'fascism' to describe an American political group. Frankly, anyone who throws around this word to smear an ideological opponent should be removed, in due haste, from the realm of credible thinkers.

The standard consensus is that fascism is the right-wing totalitarianism whereas Stalinism occupies the same position on the left. I think one scholar argued (Im too lazy to look it up) that Fascism is 'neither left nor right', but that it embodies elements of both traditions (by 'left' I mean bolshevism). This is 'serious, thoughtful' political debate, one which 'serious thoughtful' people can participate in. It should be undertaken to better understand the mechanics of a political ideology, not to engage in "Liberals were responsible for Hitler" stupidity.

Jonahs book is not an effort in this debate. He presumes, as his title no doubt reveals, that there is a strait line between Hitler and Hillary. Let me be frank: Im an anti-hillary libertarian. But to call her Hitler is just stupid, and to insist that the Democratic party takes inspiration from the fascist movements of the 30s is an outright attack on the human mind.

This is of course the conventional view, but its finality is not universally agreed upon.

Whatever, troll.

Whatever, troll.

Wait I get it, "troll" is like a political scapegoat for you. How relevant.

"Jonahs book is not an effort in this debate. He presumes, as his title no doubt reveals, that there is a strait line between Hitler and Hillary. Let me be frank: Im an anti-hillary libertarian. But to call her Hitler is just stupid, and to insist that the Democratic party takes inspiration from the fascist movements of the 30s is an outright attack on the human mind."

Neat work considering you haven't read it. I'll look for the part where he calls Hillary Hitler, because that would be unserious indeed.

Oh, and let's not pretend we can't have elitists on the left. Good grief.

Poor Bill. Do the big, mean liberal elitists on the Internets not take your "ideas" seriously?

It's not tough to see why you're so eager to stand up for poor, misunderstood Jonah.

Well, you don't know what fascism means, the word you're looking for is totalitarism/authoritarianism. Fascism is characterized by certain distinctive features (traditionalism, corporatism, rejection of modernism, elitism) that are incompatible with both left and liberal views of society.

Modernism is an inescapable part of true fascism. Look at the history of the Italian futurist movement, hell look at the entire aesthetic of Italian fascism. Where it starts getting murky is where National Socialism fits into fascist philosophy, Hitler's ideology was a dog's breakfast of every popular idea he could try and glom onto an over-arching dogma of anti-semitism and anti-communism (which were inseperable to him).

Where it starts getting murky is where National Socialism fits into fascist philosophy...

Yeah, it's interesting: the one movement that REALLY gives fascism a dirty name isn't really a good case study at all.

Other problematic cases are the "Bureaucratic Authoritarian" states that sprung up in Latin America.

The Left being anti-predatory capitalism can never be "fascist". David Broder is more of a fascist than Pol Pot. And Hitler Fascism as noted above was a uniquely weird variant of *Fascism. Its' soupcon of the occult and the august made it more a Religion or a Cult than a Political Philosophy. That's why there were many Krishnamurti types that revered it.

Bill's attempts to persuade us that he inhabits a world where "From Hitler to Bush" would clearly be acknowledged as an acceptable part of a serious book title are unavailing. He's clearly trolling.

Fascism was explicitly considered -- by Fascists themselves -- to be the antithesis of liberalism. An antidote to it, even. Fascists hated liberalism for reasons parallel to those of the resentment-driven conservatives of today. Take a look at Carl Schmitt's (the "Nazi crown jurist") earlier work, particularly The Concept of the Political. Decisionism -- politics as the distinction between friend and enemy -- is quite amenable to modern conservatism, despite the recent protestations over the whole Alan Wolfe thing at the Corner.

Goldberg could make the case that Schmitt's post war intellectual exchanges with "liberals" somehow indicate an affinity for fascism. But this would implicate Raymond Aron, the great French liberal -- and a staunch anti-communist in many ways evocative of JFK. He was a frequent correspondent with Schmitt. Aron was also the pass through for none other the Leo Strauss' by-proxy intellectual engagement with Schmitt.

I don't have the firmest grasp of the Telos crowd and what animated their renewed interest in Schmitt in the later part of the 20th century. But there's nothing intrinsically philo-fascist about exploring Schmitt's work, as his critique of liberalism is quite frankly brilliant. He explored the vulnerabilities of liberalism in a way very few other modern thinkers have dared. That liberals (and illiberal leftists) explored his critique should elide the fact that it was A CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM.

A pretty bad version of this book was already written by Mark Lilla.

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=1288

That liberals (and illiberal leftists) explored his critique should elide the fact that it was A CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM.

Huh? Do you mean to say that liberals and other leftist have explored Schmitt, but that they did so as a critique, not as apologia?

Daniel Larison in that blog post Jonah's so grateful for points out the genesis of the conservative notion that liberals are like fascists:

I've just started my masterwork: "Hitler Anti-Semitic Fascism - Jonah Goldberg Philo-Semitic Fascism: The Inevitable Trope"

Matt, as you know, Jonah has a lot of valid historical material to work with. Obviously, he wants his book to sell more than the Sherri Berman book you cite, so he's giving it an attention-getting title and cover. I'm not Jonah's biggest fan, but I expect his book has a chance to be better than most of his daily journalism: it could be polemical but eye-opening.

The comments above suggest a widespread severe ignorance about 20th Century history that Jonah's book could help rectify. Human beings love a winner, and from 1922 through 1942, Fascism was highly influential because, along with Communism, it looked like a winner. After Stalingrad, however, it looked like a loser, so a lot of people in the West started rewriting history to cover up the influence Fascism had had on them.

For example, Fascism was leftist in origin. Mussolini was a leftist heretic -- he converted from international socialism to national socialism because he found the solidarity across class lines in the trenches of WWI such fun (to each his own). Neither he nor Hitler were pro-capitaist -- they just realized the economic idiocy of Marxism, and thus were mostly content to let businessmen run their businesses, as long the Party held the ultimate power.

In contrast to the comment above that Fascism is always culturally traditionalist, Mussolini was the most aggressively anti-traditionalist, pro-modern art leader of the 20th Century, being closely associated with the Futurist painters like Marinetti.

The first two years of FDR's New Deal, up through the Supreme Court throwing out the National Recovery Administration in 1935, were closely modeled on Mussolini's economic policy.

Much of the high brow French intellectualizing that has dominated the academy for decades has its roots in Occupied France and Belgium of the early 1940s. The French-speaking world was so stunned by its defeat by Germany that it opened itself up to German ideas during the years of Nazi domination. For example, Heidegger, who had joined the Nazi Party, became the single most dominant influence on post-war French philosophizing.

Animal rights and environmentalism were favorites causes of Hitler, and remain favorite causes of leftists in Germanic Europe today. The invention of the favorite car of Sixties people, the Volkswagen Beetle, was sponsored by Hitler. Attacks on cigarette smoking as causing cancer were initiated by the Nazis.

These are easy links to pull off the top of my head. If Jonah wants to put in the work -- and considering how long the book has been delayed, he may be doing just that -- he could uncover far more.

Oh no, what will he uncover next? Hitler had one testicle left— his LEFT one! Steve Sailer, you are an utter moron and utterly deserving of Jonah "Transmuting Lead into" Goldberg's company. Your axis of Leftist fascism still has me tittering. "Attacks on cigarette smoking as causing cancer were initiated by the Nazis." You mean thoroughly justifiable attacks? Or are you denying that tobacco products are dangerous carcinogens? Just because an odious historical figure advocates something straightforward, like the harmfulness of smoking, does not make other anti-smoking advocates adherents of the odious advocate. We can all agree that trains running on time is a good thing; this does not make us descendants of Mussolini.
"Neither he nor Hitler were pro-capitaist -- they just realized the economic idiocy of Marxism, and thus were mostly content to let businessmen run their businesses, as long the Party held the ultimate power."
"Letting businessmen run their businesses" is a characteristic of a capitalist regime. Both Mussolini and Hitler saw communists as a great threat; in fact, Hitler's anti-communism led to his downfall; if he had honored his bargain with Stalin, Hitler very well could have defeated the allies. Stalinist USSR won WWII and usurious western Capitalist "democracy" benefited. Soviet Russia was decimated by Hitler's war machine— bombed out Britain looked comparatively fortunate after the war. Churchill was a communism-crazed crackpot neo-con progenitor who was as concerned about Stalin as he was Hitler. This is all history. Just reminding you!
So stop looking for threads linking left-wing origins with fascist regimes. The origins of fascism lie in the exploitation of simpleminded chauvinistic tendencies in a frightened, economically-depressed populace by a demagogic leader, usually with choice scapegoats and a rhythmic, jingoistic chorus of press and business leadership. Your newspeak fails to convince Sailer. You have sailed into a Goldberg and sink in your own fallacious murk. Read history and be honest with yourself. Save the agendas for K street.

Animal rights and environmentalism were favorites causes of Hitler, and remain favorite causes of leftists in Germanic Europe today. The invention of the favorite car of Sixties people, the Volkswagen Beetle, was sponsored by Hitler. Attacks on cigarette smoking as causing cancer were initiated by the Nazis.

Jesus, Sailer. Maybe you could have made room to mention Hitler's association with racism.

I read somewhere that Hitler was somewhat preoccupied with the idea of human biodiversity, Steve.

Earl Browder, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the USA, wrote in 1934:

"Roosevelt's program is the same...as Hitler's program." (Quoted in David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear, p. 222)

Ergo, Jonah Goldberg is a Communist! Sailer too!

Ramesh Ponnuru:

From the bits of the book I’ve read in draft form, I can already see that some of the criticisms are misinformed—and not by the title and subtitle so much as by the critics' own presuppositions of what “fascism” means, which Jonah effectively challenges.

Guess it all hinges on whether Jonah can persuade anyone what fascism signifies these days.

I'm amused by the level of defensiveness on this thread. A right wing polemic writes a book discussing what he feels are some similarities between modern liberalism and fascism and everyone assumes he must be equating their side to racist puppy-eating stormtroopers. (Wait, turns out Hitler was pro-puppy.) Anyone is free to ignore a polemic, or not take it "seriously," (and apparently every poster here has a PhD in seriousness, and a second in fascism), and that's just fine, but the intensity of ire is striking. The fact is there's cross-pollinization to be found between pretty much every ideology and every other, which is why we can observe that Mussolini, the uber-rightwinger, started out on the left, etc.

So one can either scream bloody murder that Jonah Goldberg is trying to pass off the idea that "Hillary = Hitler" as serious, or one can investigate an obviously polemical work for any new contribution or insight, once it is published. I'm comfortable doing the latter, as it would interest me to hear how someone of the opposite political persuasion thinks liberalism has strayed in such a manner. If I reconsider some of my own assumptions so much the better. Doesn't make me a fascist after all.

"Animal rights and environmentalism were favorites causes of Hitler, and remain favorite causes of leftists in Germanic Europe today."

And Hitler didn't like the darkies, just like you Sailer.

Steve Sailor makes excellent points about the environmentalism and anti-tobacco campaigns. Let us also not forget that Hitler was a failed artist, and that liberals are always trying to fund things like the NEA. Herman Goering was fat, and so is Michael Moore. Many members of the S.A. were gay, and we all know that liberals love the gay (fascist) agenda. Mussolini exaggerated his war exploits, just like john kerry. Finally, the fascists wore blackshirts, and we all know that goth kids vote 90% for the democrats.

Bill's attempts to persuade us that he inhabits a world where "From Hitler to Bush" would clearly be acknowledged as an acceptable part of a serious book title are unavailing. He's clearly trolling.

I'll assume "from Hitler to Bush" was a Freudian slip.

Goldberg is a loon and too stupid to write anything worthwhile, but there is an argument there. The Minnesota Farmer Labor Party, which was basically populist and social democratic, split left-right around 1936-1940, with the right wing isolationist and implicated with Germany, and the left wing supporting the Spanish Republic against Franco when Roosevelt was neutral. (The Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson planned to run against Roosevelt from the left, but died of leukemia in 1935 or so).

Oddly enough, nothing bad came of this, though Buttrocket from Powerline will tell you different. Minnesota is a prosperous clean-government state with a good government-supported infrastructure and relatively few social problems, and the foundation was laid by the Farmer-Labor Party (now merged with the Democrats) during its years in power.

Jeez, you liberals just don't get it. Consider: Hillary once did some kind of new agey exercise where she channeled Eleanor Roosevelt or something (I think I read that somewhere), and a lot of Nazis went in for all that mystical mumbo jumbo too.

Attacks on cigarette smoking as causing cancer were initiated by the Nazis.

Actually, attacks on smoking were initiated by Spanish conquistadors and King James of England.

Thus proving that the origins of liberalism can be found in european monarchism and, ironically enough, both protestantism AND catholicism!

This is really typical Jonah - he's setting himself up for so much public ridicule when the book actually does come out (in 2013?) that he'll get to play the "because I'm conservative, and here's a reductio ad patchouli" argument.

I'd suggest a better strategy would be to make it the Great American Novel in progress, and eventually expire before going to press. After all, liberals must be adding new facets to links to fascists all the time, so he as a lot of ongoing Serious Research to do.

I should have just ended my post after "Hitler had one testicle left— his LEFT one!" Sailer and Goldberg aren't even worth engaging. I'm going to go joust with a windmill— BRB.

DJ Moonbat:

That "should" was missing an "n't". Sorry about that.

That liberals (and illiberal leftists) explored his critique shouldn't elide the fact that it was A CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM.

Just curious: Was the Critique of Liberalism a critique of "liberalism" in the contemporary American use of the word, or in the old use of the word as referring to free market economic policies?

Is it fascist to say that one can laugh at outrageously-premised, three-years-overdue, not-yet-finished books?

Fred --

While Schmitt's particular critique was initially targeted at the liberal aspects of Weimar (from political institutions to cultural tics), it was quickly directed at both British and American society.

It's difficult to characterize the nature of "liberalism" targeted by Schmitt, but it wasn't reductivist "classical liberalism" (of the sort currently attributed to Hayek or Mises). It dealt more with the concept of liberalism as a set of mediating institutions between personal preferences and the public good -- the idea that society works best when we view those we disagree with as fellow humans/citizens, entitled to respect, rather than objects of enmity. The concept that the state should be tolerant, in short.

Though I think Lilla's book, cited above, reaches way too far, the guy's got a talent for philosophical biography.

Somebody needs to do a compendium of "serious" political books with whimsical cover art of something; Jonah's can't be the only one in existence.

If Liberal Fascism isn't the only political book with a whimsical cover in existence, that'd be because Liberal Fascism can't yet be said to be in existence. At present it's all form and no content: everybody knows what the cover looks like but no one has read a word of the text.

As to whether or not Liberal Fascism is "a 'serious' political book"---there will be time enough to argue about that once Liberal Fascism has seriously been published. Until that happens no one knows or has any way of finding out.

I thought the book was about Walmart.

Posted by: Neal Murray on March 23, 2007 10:00 PM

I think one scholar argued (Im too lazy to look it up) that Fascism is 'neither left nor right', but that it embodies elements of both traditions (by 'left' I mean bolshevism).

Zeev Sternhell. It's the very disingenous James H. Gregor who does a lot of the heavy lifting on Mussolini to keep Mussolini on the left after 1920. Sternhell is convincing, Gregor not so much. I will be closely reading Jonah to see just how much he steals from both.

This is 'serious, thoughtful' political debate, one which 'serious thoughtful' people can participate in. It should be undertaken to better understand the mechanics of a political ideology, not to engage in "Liberals were responsible for Hitler" stupidity.

Quite right, and this is what we will ridicule Jonah for into next week. I simply don't think he has the ability to resist this kind of clowning or the intellect to understand why he should.

I agree that merely increasing the number of democratic member states is unlikely help with the enforcement problem plaguing the United Nations. The number democratic member-states is already high, yet enforcement is feeble at best: Adding more democratic states (or more rules!) is unlikely to improve this situation.

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