ATvarious points in my life I’ve read fairly extensively about Communism and Nazism. As a good Cold Warrior, I wanted to know as much as possible about the Soviet threat, as well as communist infiltration of the West. World War II was of great interest, and I studied not only the battles and weaponry but the Nazi leadership, ideology, and history as well.
The twentieth century being in large part a great struggle between democracy and Orwellian totalitarianism, this seemed to me natural. Today I read about Jihadism, and try to understand our enemy and their infiltration of the West. I think my book reviews show this pretty clearly.
But fascism was something that I never read much about. Part of this, I think, was that Mussolini’s Italy was such a non-factor in World War II. Other fascist governments, such as Franco’s Spain or Peronist Argentina, were not expansionist and relatively minor violators of human rights (relative I stress compared to what Hitler or Stalin wrought). As such I never studied them or fascist ideology. I had some vague notion that fascism was militarism coupled with extreme nationalism, but that was about it.
A few years ago I read a comment by Jonah Goldberg on National Review’s The Corner blog that he was working on a book about fascism, and I thought “what a waste of time. We’re in a war against radical Islam and he’s investigating fascism? That can’t be relevant to anything.”
Was I ever wrong. The book that resulted from his years of research, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, is one of the most important books I’ve read about modern American liberalism, and its related twin, progressivism.
The book is now on many best seller lists, and Goldberg has a special Liberal Fascism Blog over at NRO where he answers readers questions and post news stories relevant to his thesis. Predictably, the book has thrown the left into a fit of rage, to the extent where Amazon had to delete several thousand “you suck” type “book reviews.” The Amazon site was even hacked a few times and the photo of the book cover changed.
Unlike with most, the cover to this book is important. The fascism that Goldberg sees creeping up on us is not of the “hard” sort of a Mussolini or Hitler. Rather, it is the “soft” type of a Hillary Clinton.
The cartoon description of fascism which most people hold consists of two parts; 1) Extreme nationalism and 2) Militarization. While these are or can be aspects of fascism neither are central to it, at least in the way that most people think.
Book Objective and Thesis
Goldberg goes to some length to explain that no, he is not saying that all liberals are fascists or that being in favor of universal health-care coverage means that you are a fascist. Rather, his objective is to replace the cartoon image of fascism with a more historically based one, and in so doing demonstrate that it is modern liberalism, not modern conservatism that has its roots in fascism. More precisely, modern liberalism grew out of the progressive movement of the early twentieth-century, and progressivism in turn has it’s roots in fascism and indeed in many cases was ideologically allied with it. Liberal fascism is different, Goldberg says, for what should be the obvious reason that modern liberals don’t want to eliminate voting and line opponents up against the wall to be shot. This does not mean, however, that the ideological underpinnings are different.
Rather than go on and risk getting it wrong I think I’ll just quote Goldberg himself:
In this book I have argued that modern liberalism is the offspring of twentieth-century progressivism, which in turn shares intellectual roots with European fascism. I have further argued that fascism was an international movement, or happening, expressing itself differently in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture. In Europe this communitarian impulse expressed itself in political movements that were nationalist, racist, militarist, and expansionist. In the united States the movement known elsewhere as fascism or Nazism took the form of progressivism - a softer form of totalitarianism that, while still nationalistic, and militarist in its crusading forms and outlook, was more in keeping with American culture. It was, in short, a kind of liberal fascism.
The term "liberal fascism" comes from a speech by H.G. Wells at Oxford University in 1932. He used it the term to describe what he called a need for a “phoenix rebirth of liberalism.” Although known today as the science fiction writer who produced such works as “War of the Worlds”, back then he was also known as a prominent progressive thinker. Today we see the term “fascism” as unreservedly evil, and the polar opposite of “liberal.” What may surprise readers today is that his joining of the two - liberal and fascist - surprised no one in the audience, and was in fact well received.
Modern American liberalism is totalitarian but in a “smiley face” way, not like that of the twentieth century Orwellian nightmares; Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. By “totalitarian” Goldberg means that it wishes to control every aspect of our lives; from the food we eat to the light bulbs we can buy to the very words that are deemed acceptable (try using “he” as a gender-neutral pronoun and see what happens).
When liberals promote these totalitarian goals they claim that they are not ideologically driven, but are rather “listening to the experts”, or seeking to overcome the left-right divide with a “Third Way”.
Goldberg is not saying that simply caring about the environment or physical fitness makes you a liberal fascist. What makes you a liberal fascist is insisting that everybody else care too, or forcing everyone else to eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle and using the power of the state to do it. The reason usually given is that it’s all “for your own good,” or “we all pay for it”.
From here out the headings are the titles of the book’s chapters.
Benito Mussolini: The Father of Fascism
The ultimate roots of fascism can be found in the Romantic nationalism of the eighteenth century, which culminated in the French Revolution. Jean Jacques Rousseau was the father of fascism and Maximilian Robespierre its executioner.
However, we all associate fascism with the Il Duce himself; Benito Mussolini. What may surprise people - it certainly surprised me - was his Fascist party’s political platform. Here is some of it:
Lowering the minimum voting age to eighteen, the minimum age for representatives to twenty-five, and universal suffrage, including for women.
“The abolition of the Senate and the creation of a national technical council on intellectual and manual labor, industry, commerce, and labor.”
End of the draft.
Repeal of titles of nobility.
“A foreign policy aimed at expanding Italy’s will and power in opposition to all foreign imperialism”
The prompt enactment of a state law sanctioning a legal workday of eight actual hours of work for all workers.
A minimum wage.
A creation of various government bodies run by workers representatives.
The creation of various government bodies run by workers’ representatives.
Reform of the old-age and pension system and the establishment of age limits for hazardous work.
Forcing landowners to cultivate their lands or have them expropriated and given to veterans and farmers’ cooperatives.
The obligation of the state to build “rigidly secular” schools for the raising of “the proletariat’s moral and cultural condition.”
“A large progressive tax on capital that would amount to a one-time partial expropriation of all riches.
“The seizure of all goods belonging to religious congregations and the abolition of all episcopal revinues.”
The “review” of all military contracts and the “sequestration” of 85% of all war profits.”
The nationalization of all arms and explosives industries.
Amazing. When you just see this he seems like a pretty good guy.
What’s important to understand is that these weren’t just words to Mussolini; he meant it. He didn’t just use this platform as a trick to get into power, because he implemented as much of it as he could once he was in power. None of this is to excuse him, it’s just a statement of fact.
Mussolini started as a socialist and became a populist. “Populism” is not really right-wing, it’s more a phenomenon of the left. Populism is a “power to the people” ideology, and is usually a force on the left.
Mussolini made a big deal about “getting beyond labels” and seeking a “third way” between left and right. He promoted himself as a pragmatist who “made the trains run on time.” To be sure, he governed as a dictator. But he was no Hitler or Stalin in his level of brutality. He won reelection in 1924 in what were reasonably fair elections, and his granting of womans suffrage gained him applause from no less a source than The New York Times.
Mussolini defined fascism as “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State.” Mussolini himself coined the word “totalitarianism” to describe his system, and it’s important to note that he meant it in a benevolent manner, as he saw his system as a humane one in which everyone was taken care of.
When Mussolini finally did write out his economic theories in the early 1930s, they looked more like standard socialism than anything else. His goal was to either nationalize industry or regulate it into submission. This was called “corporatism”, but it hardly meant that he was in league with big business. Far from it, he was their enemy.
Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left
As with Mussolini’s Fascists, Hitler’s Nazis tried to transcend left-right labeling and promoted themselves as representing a “Third Way.” This said, they campaigned as socialists, stealing issues from the communists because they were trying to appeal to the same worker base. The Nazis chose red as the background for their flag precisely because it was the color the communists used.
What made National Socialism - Nazism - different than other left-wing movements was it’s adherence to what we today would call identity politics. With the Nazis it was Aryan supremacy, today it is the ethnic identity of minority groups. This is today something associated with the political left. Again, Goldberg stresses that this does not make modern-day identity groups neo-Nazis. What it does say is that the roots of progressive identity politics go back to the Nazis.
Just because the Nazis were anti-Semites does not make them right-wing, as antisemitism is hardly a phenomenon reserved for the right. Stalin and Karl Marx were a vicious anti-Semites, while Mussolini protected the Jews as long as he could against Hitlers desire to get at them.
Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of Liberal Fascism
Mussolini wasn’t the world’s first fascist dictator; that honor goes to Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States 1912-1920. If this sounds over-the-top, consider that Wilson arrested or jailed more political dissidents than did Mussolini during his first ten years in power. Wilson’s ministry of propaganda was better than Mussolini’s. Wilson sent more goons to beat up and harass opponents than did Mussolini (again, during the latter’s rule in the 1920s. Mussolini got worse in the 1930s).
The “goons” who carried out Wilson’s orders called themselves progressives. Their agenda consisted of eugenics (racial purity and weeding out the unfit), social Darwinism, and imperialism (real imperialism, not the cartoon sort ascribed to President Bush today). They worshiped the State and political power, didn’t like organized religion, and looked down on individualism. They thought the U.S. Constitution was outdated and in need of change because it’s system of checks and balances impeded quick action.
In short, Woodrow Wilson and the progressive movement of the time had all the bad attributes and more that the left assigns to President Bush and the neocons today.
Theodore Roosevelt also exhibited fascist traits. Much of his appeal was based on a cult of personality. Roosevelt’s America would be more like the militarist and welfare state of Prussia than anything else.
Although his campaign slogan in 1916 was “he kept us out of war”, when Wilson pushed Congress to declare war on the Central Powers in 1917 almost all progressives supported him. President Wilson then proceeded to set up what can only be described as a fascist police state. His ministry of propaganda, the Committee on Public Information, or CPI, was positively Orwellian in nature. The mission of the CPI was not simply to explain the rationale for war, but to “inflame the American public into “one white-hot mass” under the banner of “100 percent Americanism.”” The CPI had offices around the country, and turned out an impressive number of pamphlets, posters, buttons and the like in eleven languages not including English. It hired a hundred thousand “four minute men” who went around the country giving four minute speeches promoting Wilson and the war effort.
In addition to the “four minute men”, tens of thousands more were hired to knock on doors and ask residents to sign loyalty oaths, or pledges not to use a certain luxury good that was needed for the war effort. This effort extended down to children, who were asked to sign a pledge called “A Little American’s Promise.”
Worse than any of this was Wilson’s Sedition Act, which banned “uttering, printing, writing, or publishing any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States Government or the military.” What this translated into was that any criticism of the war effort was forbidden. As an example of how it was enforced, the Postmaster General was given the authority to refuse to deliver any publication he deemed seditious, and there was no appeal to his decision. At least seventy-five periodicals were effectively banned by his refusal to deliver them.
Wilson’s Justice Department created the American Protective League to enforce the Sedition Act. APL officers had the authority to read their neighbor’s mail and tap their neighbors phones, all without a warrant. It had a “vigilante patrol” whose mission was put a stop to “seditious street oratory” and to physically assault draft dodgers. The Palmer Raids, named after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, were part of all this.
It is estimated that some 175,000 Americans were arrested for some violation of the Sedition Act or failing to demonstrate appropriate patriotism. Many, though how many is not known exactly, went to jail.
In the end, of course, Wilson left office peacefully, so he was not a Mussolini or Hitler. But his administration was fascist nonetheless.
Franklin Roosevelt’s Fascist New Deal
A lighter version of Wilsonian fascism occurred during the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the time of the Great Depression.
At the beginning of this review we noted H.G. Wells use of the term “Liberal Fascism” to describe his brand of socialism. Wells was an ardent admirer of FDR. The reason, of course, was that Wells saw Roosevelt as a liberal fascist.
As with Mussolini and Hitler, Roosevelt was obsessed with “the forgotten man”. It wasn’t a cynical act for any of them. All were genuinely concerned with the economic well being of the lower-middle classes. And indeed the economy prospered under Hitler. Again none of this is to excuse Hitler or Mussolini, it is just a statement of fact. Further, neither is it to insinuate that Roosevelt was no different than the two dictators. For all his flaws, Roosevelt, like Wilson, did respect the vote and the democratic process.
Many European fascists saw Roosevelt as a kindred spirit. Both Mussolini and Hitler saw their programmes as similar to Roosevelt’s New Deal. Mussolini gave a good review of Roosevelt’s book Looking Forward. The German press praised FDR and his New Deal.
A core tenant of fascism is the desire to militarize society whether there is an external war to fight or not. The whole point, in fact, of fascism is to mobilize. What is important to understand, though, is that it is society that is being mobilized, not the military. The military is usually involved, but it’s participation is not really central to fascism. It is the cartoon version of fascism discussed above that only sees the military aspect of fascism.
The progressives supported American entry into World War I not because they wanted to defeat Germany, but because they saw it as an opportunity to advance their domestic policy goals at home. They wanted to militarize society. It was William James who came up with the term “moral equivalent of war” to justify mobilization for one cause or another.
The New Deal was all about the militarization of society. The premier New Deal project, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) had actually been started during World War I. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was modeled on Wilson’s War Industries Board. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which constructed many city, state, and national parks, was the most explicitly fascist of all the programs. It’s members wore uniforms and was rationalized as a program to “beef up the physical and moral fiber of an embryonic new army” (Goldberg’s words).
Worse than the CCC was the NRA mentioned above. it was led by General Hugh “Iron Pants” Johnson, and man who questioned the patriotism of his critics in a manner that would have made Joe McCarthy blush. He continually referred to the NRA and it’s mission in military terms, saying for example that “This is war - lethal and more menacing than any other crisis in our history.” In fact, Johnson was an ardent admirer of Mussolini’s fascist government.
The symbol of the NRA was the Blue Eagle. Usually depicted in textbooks as an innocent symbol that businesses put in their window to show that they went along with NRA guidelines(“We do our Part” was the motto under the eagle), it was really the method by which Roosevelt and Johnson bullied businesses into joining. The NRA stuck it’s tentacles into every aspect of daily life, or at least tried to. The Blue Eagle was used for propaganda in a way that Goldberg says is difficult to exaggerate, and indeed the whole thing was really more an exercise in state religion than economics. Heaven help any business that refused to sign up, because people were admonished by the government not to buy anything from businesses that didn’t have the Blue Eagle in their window.
The bullying wasn’t just verbal or economic; it often got quite physical. Johnson sent his goons to smash businesses that wouldn’t sign up, and “G-Men” were used to spy on opponents. Goldberg says that “FDR used the post office to punish his enemies and lied repeatedly to maneuver the United States into war, and undermined Congress’s war-making powers at several turns.” The rationale was that as long as it was for the right cause the constitution didn’t matter.
Goldberg is careful to note that despite the fascism in Wilson and Roosevelt’s programs, at the end of the day they were not dictators. Neither sought to end elections, and neither cheated (at least not more than their opponents) to win. Theirs was a “nice” fascism.
The 1960s: Fascism Takes to the Streets
The New Left that arose during the 1960s and “took to the streets” had many characteristics of traditional fascism. It prided itself on it’s call to unity, but “unity” is at best a morally neutral concept. The Mafia is “unified”. Many of the calls to “direct action” were made without any concrete goals in mind, action itself being the objective.
The student groups that took over universities and ousted the faculty were using out and out fascist tactics.
While Nazism is evil, it does not follow that every Nazi was motivated by evil intent. Many Germans joined the Nazi party because they liked Hitler’s economic populism, or thought that their country had been treated shabbily by the victors after World War I. But although one might say that Hitler’s program had it’s “good” parts, it obviously crossed the line into evil. As such, whatever the “good” parts of the New Left of the 1960s, much of it was outright fascist thuggery. '60s leaders such as Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn and others were continually calling for more violence and more destruction, and would have set up an Orwellian totalitarian state if they could have.
The left does not understand that love of country does not by itself lead to fascism. Patriotism is not fascism. During the 1960s the left got the idea that displays of patriotism were fascist and that criticizing one’s country was patriotic. Outright anti-Americanism became fashionable among the elite during this time.
From Kennedy’s Myth to Johnson’s Dream: Liberal Fascism and the Cult of the State
John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson did more than anyone else to establish the federal government as a sort of “state religion.” Liberals have used the myth of Kennedy (“Camelot” and all that) to promote this idea, especially the idea that if he had lived we would never have gotten bogged down in Vietnam. The purpose of this was to expand federal power into all aspects of life.
Kennedy, like FDR, turned everything into a “crisis”, the better which to whip up popular sentiment so he could get his programs passed. This crisis mongering is classic fascist behavior (though again this alone does not make him a fascist). Kennedy even created “crisis teams” to deal with issues and short-circuit the bureaucracy. Biographer Ted Sorensen counted sixteen “crises” in Kennedy’s first 8 months in office alone.
“The Kennedy presidency represented…the final evolution of progressivism into a full-blown religion and national cult of the state.” It was a rule by elites (“supermen”) who had the special answers to our problems (“gnosticism”), all presided over by a “great man in the mold of Wilson and the Roosevelts” (cult of personality).
Remember, the progressives did not push their liberal totalitarianism because of the world wars or the Great Depression, they were glad that they occurred in that they gave them the opportunity to implement their existing ideas.
It was in the 1920s that American progressives redefined the term “liberal”. Previously, the term had meant something along the lines of “individual and economic liberty without state control.” It was “freedom from a dictatorial state”. Led by John Dewey, they changed this to “freedom from want, from poverty, lack of education” etc. This meant that now the state had to get involved, and the idea of the activist state was born.
Liberal Racism: The Eugenic Ghost in the Fascist Machine
Modern-day liberals claim that they have always occupied the high ground on matters of race. Would that they knew their own history. It was the progressives, fathers of modern liberalism, who were the strongest backers of eugenics, one of the most racist and scary programs of the twentieth century.
If you’re not familiar, eugenics is the idea that “human stock” can be improved through controlled breeding, much like we treat cattle or crops. While this might not seem too harmful on the surface, in actuality it led to practices such as state-enforced sterilization of the mentally retarded, those with Down’s Syndrome and the like. It also led to much racism, as many white progressives wanted to “control the lesser races.”
What is amazing is that the progressive infatuation with eugenics has been almost completely erased from history. We are supposed to believe that on matters of race, liberals have always been the good guys and conservatives the bad guys. In reality, close to the opposite was the truth. The fact is that it was the left that promoted eugenics, and conservatives who opposed it.
Progressives supported eugenics because it was one of the means by which they wanted to achieve their “utopia”, or at least a better society. They saw it as all quite scientific. This may seem odd today, but remember that since progressives saw nations as bodies, and problems within them as a disease. Excise the disease and you cure the body.
Progressives admired Hitler’s eugenics program. This, too, has been conveniently forgotten. But the reality is that until the truth about how far Hitler intended to go sank in, his ideas looked pretty good to progressives. As with all else, Goldberg stresses that this does not put progressives in league with Hitler, or make them Nazis. No progressive favored mass extermination. But it is a fact that many progressives of the 1930s admired Hitler’s program.
In the now notorious case of Beck v Bell, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes supported forced sterilization with his infamous justification that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The lone dissenter on the bench was Pierce Butler, usually described as an “arch conservative.” Goldberg points out that it was the reasoning in Beck v Bellthat “endures in the often unspoken rationale for abortion.”
To be sure, just because so many if not most progressives fifty to a hundred years ago were racists doesn’t mean that their liberal heirs are too. But it does mean that modern liberalism was built on it, something that liberals are loath to acknowledge.
Margaret Sanger, whose American Birth Control League became Planned Parenthood, was a terrible racist who wanted to use eugenics and abortion to reduce the black population and anyone else she deemed "unfit." She said this directly in her 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization; “More children from the fit; less from the unfit - that is the chief issue of birth control… We want fewer and better children…and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us.” The very stated purpose of her “Negro Project” was to use birth control to reduce the black population.
The mindset that promoted eugenics is that same one that supports abortion. Though the holocaust discredited eugenics, the idea behind it did not really disappear. “Family planning” is simply the term used today for what amounts to something very similar. Indeed, in a way Planned Parenthood is more eugenic that the old eugenicists, as abortion ends more black lives than heart disease, cancer, accidents, AIDS, and violent crime combined.
Liberal Fascist Economics
It is perhaps in the area of economics that fascism is the most misunderstood. In the left’s cartoon version, fascism occurs when right-wing politicians conspire with big business to oppress “the little guy,” or that European fascists were tools of big business. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, as Goldberg demonstrates, “in the left’s eternal vigilance to fend off fascism, they have in fact created it, albeit with a friendly face.”
The fact is that the more free the market, the less fascist, and the more regulated and close to the political center, the more fascist. The far left, at outright government ownership, is socialist. Remember; it was Hitler and Mussolini who promoted themselves by claiming that they were neither left nor right but represented a “Third way.”
Both Mussolini and Hitler were supported by small donations, and not, for the most part, by money from big corporations. Both denounced big business and the wealthy time and again, Hitler most notably in Mein Kampf. Their political platforms stressed regulating business and taxing the wealthy to benefit the working middle class.
Fascism is when the state says to business “You may stay in business and own your factories. In the spirit of cooperation and unity, we will even guarantee you profits and a lack of serious competition. In exchange, we expect you to agree with - and help implement, - our political agenda.” This was not only the deal that Hitler and Mussolini made with big business in their respective countries, but it was pretty much the one that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed during the First World War and Great Depression as well. None of this can be called “right wing.”
Indeed, as part of his New Deal FDR asked big business to write the very laws under which they would be regulated, and they happily obliged. In doing so they managed things so as to eliminate as much competition as possible through the simple expedient of making the laws so stringent that only the biggest of corporations could implement them. Thus, smaller competitors were regulated out of business.
Even more shocking, New Deal progressives studied Mussolini’s corporatism, admiringly, in order to find things that they could apply here. The feelings were reciprocated across the Atlantic, with both Italian fascists and German Nazis praising Roosevelt and the New Deal.
“Fascism is the cult of unity, within all spheres and between all spheres.” Therefore, as long as they followed the political goals of the regime they could keep their businesses.
it is forgotten today, but the Nazis were what we today would call “health freaks.” Among their many campaigns were ones to reduce alcohol consumption by replacing beer with fruit drinks, fight smoking (before anyone else they saw the link between smoking and cancer) and promote organic foods.
In Nazi Germany, businesses proved their bona fides by being “good corporate citizens”, not too different than what we have in the United States today. To be sure, what constituted being loyal differed considerably, but the philosophy is the same. In Germany it was firing Jews, in the United States today it is promoting “diversity” or “environmentalism.”
Brave New Village: Hillary Clinton and the Meaning of Liberal Fascism
Goldberg uses Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book It Takes a Village to Raise a Child as the example par excellence of modern-day fascist thinking. It’s very title, indeed, is about as fascist as you can get. If the motto of the Mussolini’s fascism was "everything in the State, nothing outside the the State, then the implicit motto of It Takes a Village to Raise a Child is “everything in the village, nothing outside the village.” The message is clear; your children belong to “everyone” which in the modern world means the state.
All this does not, he stresses, mean that Hillary is evil. Far from it, for hers is “nice fascism”, all meant for good. That she means it for well, however, does not make it less fascist.
“Civil society” has traditionally meant free and open “independent associations of citizens who pursue their own interests and ambitions free from state interference or coercion” and “the way various groups, individuals, and families work for their own purposes, the result of which is to make the society healthily democratic.” It consists of churches, labor unions, all those clubs and organizations that people form for their own purposes and as long as they are not outright criminal are outside the control of the state.
Hillary has a different view of civil society. To her it is a “term social scientists use to describe the way we work together for common purposes.” This is factually incorrect and startlingly totalitarian. There are no truly free associations or clubs in Hillary’s world, for everything in her “village” is managed or controlled by the state to achieve “common purposes.”
Hillary’s “politics of meaning” is therefore a totalitarian philosophy. Again, this is “nice totalitarianism”, but totalitarianism nonetheless. Also important to note is that she claims that she is promoting a “Third Way” approach.
Hillary and her cohort Marian Wright Edelman justify everything by saying that it’s “for the children.” And it’s not just that she wants to make their current situation better; to her the children are in a state of crisis. Indeed, to her childhood itself was a crisis. There is no better to erase the wall between government and the private sphere than to declare a crisis.
Using “the children” as a propaganda tool to advance their goals was a brilliant political stroke. For Hillary it was just an opening to a broader political agenda. To her, families are not private units. Indeed, she has said that “As adults we have to start thinking and believing that there isn’t really any such thing as someone else’s child…For that reason, we cannot permit discussions of children and families to be subverted by political or ideological debate.” It is indeed a favorite trick of the left to declare that one of their political goals is not in fact political, as anyone who has debated a liberal on the issue of “diversity” or “multiculturalism” has discovered.
Liberalism’s entire “cult of the child” is similar, Goldberg says, to fascist thought. Children are controlled by their passions and feelings. Fascism is driven by will (see Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will). Our youth culture is driven by narcissism, so was fascism.
The New Age: We’re All Fascists Now
When I was in high school in the 1970s I read both George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Both impressed me, but the former more than the latter, because I saw 1984 as a metaphor for the Cold War, which I saw as more relevant. Over the years I’ve reread each work once or twice, and recently have come to believe that while Orwell’s work was more relevant for the twentieth century, Brave New World is the better warning for what we face today.
It was therefore flattering yet unsurprising to read that Goldberg has reached the exact same conclusion. The totalitarianism of a Hillary Clinton or Al Gore is not that of Hitler or Stalin, but it deprives us of our freedom nonetheless. Today’s totalitarianism, or Liberal Fascist State, is one in which everyone is at least nominally happy. All of our needs are met, and indeed no Gestapo or KGB will be coming to break down our doors.
Environmental Fascism
Environmentalism, Goldberg says, is fascistic partially because of it’s “crisis mechanism.” Al Gore and others preach the gospel of global warming and insist that the world will come to an end if we do not take immediate action. Anyone who demurs is denounced and called a 'denier" or worse. He and others like him will brook no debate. Worse, they insist on all sorts of measures that would create a sort of “economic dictatorship” of just the type that progressives have always wanted.
Environmentalism in general, and the “global warming” movement in particular, are totalitarian. Everything is or can be said to be an environmental issue. The new worry is our “carbon footprint”, and every human activity is said to emit carbon, and therefore is to be regulated.
Environmentalism is also quite totalitarian because everything falls under it’s aegis. Nothing is private, or out of the reach of environmentalism, because they see every activity as influencing the environment, and thus worthy of regulation. From the food you eat, to the material your sofa is made of, to the light bulbs in your house, they want to regulate it all.
There are many parallels with modern environmentalism and Nazism. Part of the Nazi program was centered on what we today would call “environmentalism.” Nazi thinkers were worried about the whales, nature preserves, and “sustainable forestry”. They were very concerned about eating habits, and there was a virtual “cult of the organic” among Nazi leaders. Hitler was a vegetarianism and Himmler pushed for animal rights legislation.
Interestingly, the Nazis used the same rationale that modern environmentalists use; “the common good supersedes the private good.” A Hitler Youth manual instructed that “food is not a private matter!” and that “you have the duty to be healthy!” Today we hear smoking and trans-fats bans justified with the “we’ll all pay” line.
The Tempting of Conservatism
Although fascism is a leftist ideology, and most fascist traits today can be found on the left, the right is not immune. Goldberg identifies three areas in modern conservatism where strains of fascism can be found.
The first is “nostalgia” to the extent that it romanticizes the past into something it was not. This leads to trouble when conservatives try and translate “traditional values” into national programs. Goldberg only devotes one short paragraph to this, and I’m not entirely sure what he means. Based on years of reading his writing at National Review, I know he’s not saying that conservatives should not champion their values in response to the “kultursmog”, or that anti-abortion laws are fascist.
The second area where Goldberg says conservatism gets into trouble is when in desperation it turns into “me too” conservatism. Here conservatives start to copy progressives, and it turns into a “liberal fascism light.”
Lastly, conservatives are not immune to the temptation of identity politics. Sometimes conservatives are tempted to mirror-image liberal identity politics to give them a taste of their own medicine, such as a white conservative referring to himself as a “Euro-American” or some such. It is all very fine to hold conservative Christian values, for example, and of course to base one’s voting or governance on such values. Proposing a Department of Judeo-Christian Culture, however, would be going too far.
Goldberg identifies Patrick J. Buchanan as the one conservative who has these characteristics. William F Buckley Jr, “officially” drummed Buchanan out of the conservative movement in 1991 by accusing him (and a few others) of Anti-Semitism in his book (and NRO article of the same title) In Search of Anti-Semitism. Ever though, Buchanan still hovers around the edges of the movement, and appears as a guest on certain conservative radio talk-shows.
Really more of a populist and neo-progressive than a conservative, Buchanan identifies himself as a “paleoconservative.” Nevertheless, he has at various times come out against free market trading, the flat tax, in favor of capping executive pay, in support of higher unemployment benefits, and backs a “third way” type of governance. On foreign policy he is famously isolationist and generally opposes Israeli policies. The thesis of his latest book, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, that World War II was an unnecessary war, is downright bizarre.
For what it’s worth, I wrote off Buchanan some time ago. First it was his isolationist foreign policy. Then, however, I became less and less comfortable with his talk about immigrants and the need to preserve our culture. I’m as anti-illegal immigration as the next conservative, and I want English as the official language of our country, but Buchanan takes it all too far. And if WFB says he’s an anti-Semite, that’s good enough for me.
My Take
The danger is that immediately upon reading the book you tend to be hyper sensitive to anything in the news that appears in the slightest fascist. It is tempting to see something fascist in all movements you don’t like. I’ll try and resist the temptation in the weeks and months ahead.
This warning acknowledged, I would be remiss if I pretended that there was nothing in the news that did not smack of fascism. The anti-smoking movement has morphed from something laudable into fanaticism. It’s all very well to promote healthy living, but we’ve crossed the line when legislators want to ban “trans fats.” And can’t we live our lives the way we want without some sort of enforced “national service” plan?
All in all this is one of the most important books I have read in the past several years, and comes highly recommended, whether you end up agreeing with all of his conclusions or not. Goldberg has defined and explained a political ideology of which I only had a vague notion. He has also explained much about the history of the progressive movement that I had not known about. Get this book and read it.
) ensured that this did not happen. As a result, the Republic turned to the Soviets for help and this stengthened the PCE in Spain. The choice of Franco over a PCE-dominated Republic is an easy one to make IMHO.
) . . .