Product Description

Today the word 'fascist' is usually an insult aimed at those on the right, from neocons to big business. But what does it really mean? What if the true heirs to fascism were actually those who thought of themselves as being terribly nice and progressive - the liberals? Jonah Goldberg's excoriating, opinion-driving, US bestseller explains why. Here he destroys long-held myths to reveal why the most insidious attemps to control our lives originate from the left, whether it's smoking bans or security cameras. Journeying through history and across culture, he uses surprising examples ranging from Woodrow Wilson's police state to the Clinton personality cult, the military chic of 60s' student radicals to Hollywood's totalitarian aesthetics, to show that it is modern progressivism - and not conservatism - that shares the same intellectual roots as fascism. This angry, funny, smart and contentious book looks behind the friendly face of the well-meaning liberal, and turns our preconceptions inside out.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19639 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Review
'Liberal Fascism is not a clean blow to the jaw, but a multiple rocket launcher of a book...a bracing and stylish examination of political history'
--Nick Cohen, The Observer

About the Author
Jonah Goldberg is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and contributing editor to National Review. A USA Today contributor and former columnist for The Times in London, he has also written for the New Yorker, Commentary, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He lives in Washington, DC.

Customer Reviews

Terrific look at the realities of facism - not today's misrememberances
This is a terrific book that I almost missed. Frankly, I was going to pass on it because I had viewed Jonah Goldberg as a bit of a wise acre and didn't realize he had a book like this in him. And the title and the cover art, while attention getting, contribute to the idea that this is going to be a lightweight attack piece. I guess the title and cover art got a lot of attention and helped the book sell well, but I only read it because a friend told me I shouldn't miss it. I am glad my friend brought it to my attention because it is a valuable book and will provide great information to anyone who is willing to actually read it rather than surmise what it says one way or the other.

If you have doubts or objections to what you think the book might be saying, I encourage you to start with the Afterword in which he anticipates many of the likely criticisms of the book and also shows where he believes conservatism can run off the rails. This is not the one sided or wild-eyed attack piece some have claimed it to be. Goldberg shows us what an imprecise and slippery epithet fascism has become. He then takes us back to the father of fascism, Mussolini, and shows how it grew out of the Progressive movements alive in American and Europe and uses the writings of intellectuals of that movement to show the linkage and their praise of Pre-Hitler Mussolini.

Goldberg then demonstrates how Hitler was a man of the Left and how the accusations of his being "right wing" have to be understood as accusations against a nationalist socialist movement from the USSR's internationalist (read Moscow dominated) communist-socialist movement. The author is CLEAR and says many times that he is not saying that the left wing in general and especially that the left of today is NOT guilty of the holocaust nor is he saying that their policies would lead to such a monstrous outcome.

We next move to Woodrow Wilson through to Franklin Roosevelt and the ways in which they introduced fascist policies within America and in our foreign policy. The kind of public suppression of individual liberty and thought under Wilson is swept under the rug today and I hope the events Goldberg describes in this book get brought back into popular awareness. We would be horrified at someone being shot for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance, but in that time it was seen as a justifiable and heroic act!

Franklin Roosevelt's true history is getting broader play today and the all but universal praise he received in my youth is justly being reconsidered. This book does a fine job in setting those policies in a clear context of the worldwide progressive and fascist movements. Remember, you cannot use your present suppositions about what fascism means to judge this use of the term. It was a term that was used with praise prior to World War II and the holocaust.

Chapter 5 takes us through the 1960s and the cultural revolution that revived many of the fascist notions and spread them into the radical youth who are now striving for power in our political (and economic) institutions today. Chapters 7 reviews how eugenics was originally stated and how its echoes remain in present left-progressive policies (without their advocating the kind of eugenics policies that seemed so useful to intellectual advocating social and racial hygiene a century ago). Chapter 8 tours the economic bargains the participants in various progressive economies were willing to strike with fascism. Goldberg shows clearly why big companies are no longer capitalist and why they work for state protection from competition, for tax breaks and subsidies, and end up supporting progressive-left state policies.

Chapter 9 is a useful and clear headed analysis of the kinds of policies Hillary Clinton and her progressive compatriots advocate and how they have changed the techniques of persuasion in order to sell the old progressive nostrums in the name of "the children". We see clearly our own acceptance of these old fascist notions and how the old-time religion of individual liberty and limited government is weakening under the administrations of BOTH the Democrats and Republicans, especially George W. Bush.

This is a very useful book and I hope it is widely read and discussed seriously. We don't need any shouting down, spitting, or claims about what the books says or proves that it doesn't say for itself. In any case, Goldberg has my sincerest praise for his accomplishment. Superbly done. Thanks, Jonah.

Seminal work
Mr. Goldberg makes an excellent case exposing the progressive roots of both classical fascism and Nazism (aka National Socialism) and their connection to contemporary and later "liberal" and left wing ideology. In particular, he draws on the American progressive movement of the early twentieth century. Much is startling (though historically well attested and no historian has disproved Goldberg's facts) and shows that mid century fascism is not some "far right" perversion, but well in keeping with the ideals of the left at the time. One wonders why, since most of this information is quite easily assessible, and the obvious socialist leanings of the Nazis and fascists generally, it has remained obscure for so long. (Conservatives would say the leftist runnings of universities)

Goldberg does focus largely on a great deal of American characters who may be more well known to his US readers than those on this side of the pond. This may be problematic to some British readers. It would be interesting to trace the British connection to all this.

However, the book is full of invaluable information. Goldberg divides up the 20th century into 3 American 'fascist' (by which he means authoritarian/statist) periods. The first (and nastiest) was under Woodrow Wilson, the racist Aryanist Democrat president (he happily segregated the White House after years of blacks made inroads there, for example) who Goldberg considers the father of the modern Left/Liberal/progressive thinking. Next is FDR, whose New Deal (admired by the Left to this day) is strikingly similar to Nazi economics. Finally he looks at the youth movement of the 60s which founded the modern obsession (shared by fascist states) with environmentalism, identity politics, health living etc. The similarity between the 'new left' and National Socialism has been observed by many people even on the left itself.

Finally Goldberg has some fun critiquing Hollywood's 'Liberal' films for fascist themes (and not the obvious ones) and having a laugh at modern health food fads, anti-smoking campaigns (pioneered by the Nazis) and leaves us in no doubt as to what side of the political divide Hitler would fit on if alive today.

Although many academics have been brought forward to try to disprove Goldberg's facts, none has been able to do so.

Highly recommended.

Do yourself a favor: take the time and actually read Liberal Fascism
Jonah Goldberg has written a scholarly work. He is very careful with the evidence---which clearly shows that Fascism is primarily a socialist phenomenon. Goldberg is, after all, well aware that his critics will exploit even minor inconsequential errors. The only substantial difference between Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin is that the Nazi's vision was restricted to those possessing imaginary Aryan racial characteristics. The latter gentleman at least paid lip service to the notion of international and racially inclusive socialism. There is also no such thing as a fascist libertarian. They were inherently hostile toward the individual freedoms of capitalism. Every last single one of them advocated a command economy where designated elites gave orders to the hoi polloi on how to carry out the economic aspects of their lives. The author points out the adulation of Benito Mussolini by numerous American left-wingers who adored the infamous Italian leader. Even British socialist H.G. Wells had kind words for the Nazis and thought them to be the positive wave of the future.

The perverse doctrines of genetic superiority underpinned much of the infatuation of the West's elites with Nazi ideology. How many people realize, for instance, that the majority of academically credentialed liberals in the early 20th Century were outright racists? But please don't take my word on anything. Read the book and double check Goldberg's assertions. And if you do so---you will never again perceive Fascism as merely a right-wing phenomenon premised entirely on ancient traditionalist fantasies. You might even endure a personal existential and psychological meltdown.