From The Whatabunchacrap Files
by digby
Isaac Chotiner at TNR reports:
Jonah Goldberg, author of the book Liberal Fascism, on C-Span this weekend:
One of the great failures of my book is that it has popularized the use of ‘fascism’ as an epithet. And one of the things I was hoping to do, and I failed miserably, is shut down the use of the word ‘fascist’ as an epithet. Instead it’s become bipartisan. And I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s all that helpful. It might help my books sales, but that’s not what I had hoped to do.
Yeah, wank harder Jonah.
He wrote that book to further a longstanding phony right wing trope — the stupid notion that because the word “socialism” was in the name of the Nazi party, they were obviously left, not right. I’ve heard that nonsense from Birchers and wingnuts for as long as I can remember. You can’t blame them for wanting to distance themselves from Hitler. He’s been quite unpopular ever since oh, 1938 or so by most people. (There were a few American Republicans who thought he was just dandy for quite a bit longer however — quite the embarrassment looking back at it.)
This silly argument about fascism being a leftist ideology was brought into modern discourse by Lil Jonah, who got exactly what he was looking for (besides big bucks):
Ron Radosh of The New York Sun wrote:
“Mr. Goldberg presents a strong and compelling case that the very idea of fascism emanated from the ranks of liberalism. … He has read widely and thoroughly, not only in the primary sources of fascism, but in the political and intellectual history written by the major historians of the subject. …Some will rightfully take issue with Mr. Goldberg when he describes the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton as fascist. On this, he strains and pushes his evidence too far to convince the reader that these paragons of liberalism can be called fascist in any sense of the term. Mr. Goldberg makes a stronger case when he accuses the New Left of classic fascist behavior, when its cadre took to the streets and through action discarded its early idealism for what Mr. Goldberg correctly calls ‘fascist thuggery.'”
Marvin Olasky of World Magazine wrote,
“Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is a flawed but useful attempt to redraw the political map. Goldberg shows how Woodrow Wilson began and Franklin Roosevelt amplified an almost-fascist concentration of power in Washington. FDR boasted of his ‘wholesome and proper’ buildup of power because he was leading ‘a people’s government.’ Goldberg shows how liberals came to believe that authoritarian government is fine as long as representatives of ‘the people’ — themselves — are in charge.”
He is simply full of gaseous nonsense when he says that he was trying to remove “fascism” as an epithet. He was clearly trying to shift the “epithet” from its proper use as a description of a right wing ideology to the fallacious notion that it sprang from the left. Anyone who’s read the book knows that it’s absurd on its face.
But then the banal “both sides do it” refrain is so reflexive among the chattering class these days that I’m not surprised to see it spring from his vacuous mouth. I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually believed it by now.
*For a list of refutations of the book’s silly thesis, click here.
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