Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.533
EAN: 9780385511841
ISBN: 0385511841
Label: Doubleday
Manufacturer: Doubleday
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: 2008-01-08
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: 2008-01-08
Studio: Doubleday

“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.

Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a “friendlier,” more liberal form. The modern heirs of this “friendly fascist” tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

These assertions may sound strange to modern ears, but that is because we have forgotten what fascism is. In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg turns our preconceptions inside out and shows us the true meaning of Liberal Fascism.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Reading past the label.
Comment: Some reviewers claim this is a difficult book to read. Nonsense; it's simple, well written, and straightforward. Its premise, though, is one very difficult to accept. Alas, the truth always is!
P,S.: Kudos to the editor: the hitlerian Happy Face on the cover deserves a Reuben Editorial Cartoon Award!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Just one thing to say and I didn't say it!!
Comment: Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 - December 19, 1968) was a
> leading
> American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the
> Socialist Party of America.
>
> The Socialist Party candidate for President of the US ,
> Norman Thomas, said this in a 1944 speech:
>
> "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But,
> under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of the
> socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation,
> without knowing how it happened." He went on to say: "I no longer
> need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party.
>
> The Democrat Party has adopted our platform."
>

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Shallow
Comment: Assuming all political positions must be plotted along a horizontal left-right x axis hurts the argument of this book. Rather, consider a four-sided model composed of x and y axes, where the familiar left/liberal and right/conservative positions are flanked on the north and south by libertarian/individualist and authoritarian/collectivist positions.

We can then account for the fact that both left and right can be guilty of so-called 'fascist' authoritarian/collectivist thinking in their ranks. We usually call it "totalitarian" when it occurs on the left, and "fascist" when it occurs on the right, for good reasons. Fascism was philosophically rooted in vitalism, rule by the physically better or stronger, where totalitarianism was supposed to be rule by the smarter or 'more rational'. So the right/fascist and left/totalitarian labels apply well to the distinctly different-flavored versions of collectivism on each side. Mr. Goldberg's argument then comes off as a pointless exercise in playground name-changing.

Mr. Goldberg seems to be saying nothing more than 'I know you are, but what am I?' in response to frustration at being called 'fascist'. How does it contribute to public discourse in any substantive way to make a whole book around renaming the totalitarian tendencies amongst real leftists 'fascism' instead of the perfectly intelligible and useful 'totalitarian'?

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A review of the reviewers and the book itself!
Comment: Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R22VLFU9U31HU7 My video about the book Liberal Fascism.
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Customer Rating:
Summary: It's Just Facts
Comment: I recently purchased this book a while ago and started reading it. This is just historic truth, so if you don't like it, get over it.

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