Have you read it?

Have you read it?

What, “Liberal Fascism”? I have, and I wish there was a way of getting those hours of my life back.

Neither of those reviews seemed to say very much about the book!

Having met people who lived through the Fascist period in Italy on both sides of the ideological divide, I find the easy use of the word “fascist” often inappropriate. Almost exclusively it now means a right-wing racist organisation and the main emphasis is their undoubted racism. People who were “happy” in the Fascist period felt protected and looked after and eulogised as something special and an elementary welfare system was in operation which functioned with a certain degree of accessibility and transparency – provided you held a Fascist Party membership. This was often done in a background of little or no education – anybody with a fith year primary school education was given positions of responsibility both in the army as well as civilian life because they could read and write! Massive projects such as building of new towns (still thriving communities now), draining of marshes to convert to agricultural use as well as to prevent the spread of malaria, also added to the mystique.
Those who were “unhappy” weren’t against these projects but they did have loftier ideals – they were internationalists being socialists/communists, they were better educated and last but not least, the large Jewish communities which had been present in Italy since medieval times if not earlier and who had been in the thick of most instances of progress in Italian life since that time. The exclusively “nationalistic” tone of Fascism still reverberates nowadays and was a winner then because it made great play on the idea that each and every Italian was special – look at Michelangelo, Dante, Da Vinci etc. Mussolini’s famous speech of “a people of artists, engineers, intellectuals etc” is still present and etched in marble in large letters in the EUR district of Rome.
Through the emphasis on the racism inherent in fascism, I do feel that the implications of some aspects are often overlooked and as a consequence some of the theses of Goldberg’s book acquire some credibility. The belief in progress for progresse’s sake is a good example – unfaltering and uncritical belief in science and technology – wonderfully illustrated in Futurist art and literature. As a consequence it becomes difficult to even discuss Cromwell, Galileo and Darwin or even investigate certain areas of thought at polite dinner parties with unfaltering suuport for these three gigantic figures often being done on unquestioning unscientific grounds (the very antithesis of a scientific approach). Mussolini’s policy of “autarchy” also sounds suspiciously like the Green policy of local sourcing – this has allowed right-wing libertarians to accuse the Greens of being well..”Fascist”. And the list goes on.
I think this argument will run and run and I apologise for being so long-winded.

Are we to take it that Cohen now considers himself to be a moderate conservative? Having heard Goldberg on Start the Week a couple of weeks ago, I have serious problems with that label being applied to him – and the fact that Cohen thinks Goldberg’s a moderate speaks volumes about Cohen’s own hurtling towards the neoconservative far right. Unfortunately, Goldberg struck me as superficially extremely plausible despite being wrong, and Gareth Peirce (on the same programme) was so feeble in opposition it made me wonder how she manages to be so effective at her job.

Neiwert’s fundamental analysis is spot-on – there have been many groups of actual self-identified fascists in American politics, groups that any serious non-partisan political scientist would identify as fascist, and none of them have had anything to do with liberalism even in the broadest sense.

Much can be said against moderate conservatives, but it has to be admitted that their wariness of grand designs and their willingness to place limits on the over-mighty state give them a clean record others cannot share

This is a good point . That is me , hero , thinker poet and guardian of freedom . I am none the wiser about his case though and were I not assurred otherwise I would gues that the writer had not in fact read the book.

( Looks like I`ll have to buy it ..)

I see Martin Bright is at the Speccie now Cohen is on the Orwell road to Conservatism obviously .If I wait long enough I will get to hear Sunny Hundal begging my forgiveness and asking to borrow a nice blue rosette .

Worth noting that Jonah Goldberg described himself as a classical liberal on the Daily Show, and that might be the direction that Nick Cohen is heading in too. There is quite a difference between that and conservatism (moderate or not). It only really makes sense to describe big state liberalism as fascism if you also accept the fascistic elements of neo-conservatives and other “national greatness” conservatisms.

Nick Cohen is certainly on the political right and should be open about it.

Some people use the term “Fascist” as a term of abuse for political ideology they see as authoritarian or wrong. Its pretty weak analysis though.

Nino, a lot of Italian Jews initially supported Mussolini, and Italian fascism wasn’t particularly anti-semitic until Hitler took de facto control of the regime.

Goldberg also gets a kicking here. I love this bit:

Interviewer: That brings up something else I wanted to ask you — if I’m reading this right, one of the things you’re saying about the student radicals in the 1960s is that they were essentially fascist even if they might have called themselves Marxist.

Goldberg: Yeah.

But isn’t it easy to distinguish, since Mussolini repudiated the central doctrine of Marxism?

Well, I mean, I bet you if you gave me an hour I could find places where he once again says nice things about Marxism in 1933 or 1937.

But he repudiated historical materialism, dialectical materialism.

Yeah. But I think the problem is you get into one of these sort of overly doctrinal, “let’s go to the text” approaches where words get confused for things.

——
Poor Goldberg: ‘let’s go to the text’ is so hard for him. As for Cohen, can’t we just agree he’s jumped the shark/nuked the fridge, and leave him to rot?

I too would appreciate it if Cohen just came out and stated whether he now considers himself left, right, middle, up, down, or whatever!

Perhaps it is inevitable that when you spend so many years criticising elements of the left you will eventually end up batting for the other side, so to speak.

And I say that as someone quite sympathetic to the ‘decent’/Harry’s Place kinda outlook.

As flawed as the arguments that Nazism/Fascism was a left-wing phenomenon, because they all ignore the historical fact that Fascism always portrayed itself as a third way to socialism and conservatism. That’s the original usage of the term “Third Way” and it is why we continue to have far-right political groups to this day calling themselves the “Third Way.”

Goldberg’s replies to the questions in the Salon interview are so weak that I wonder if he is being serious.

I could go on and Goldberg does go on. By the end, I began to weary not of his argument, but of his habit of protesting too much. Repeatedly he insists that he does not want to allege that, for instance, Hillary Clinton’s admittedly sinister desire for the state to take the place of the family makes her a totalitarian, merely that her ideas come from the totalitarian movement.

I have done a little looking around – and all I can find is a repeat of Cohen’s article or a snopes – does anyone have a direct link to where Clinton said what Cohen is claiming?

If he is referring to the Snopes I found – here – then this should be reported back to the Guardian editor as misrepresentation should it not?

As you cannot copy and paste from Snopes read “We just can’t trust the American people to make those kind of choices…Government needs to make those choices for people”.

It was a conversation she had in 1993 with Dennis Hestert Re: Healthcare reform under Bill Clinton.

But I could be wrong.

A Guardian reporter believing viral election emails? Please don’t say it’s so!

“But he repudiated historical materialism, dialectical materialism.”

Uhh, not a good point to pick on, as I am pretty sure those 60′s student radicals were not very enamoured with historical materialism either, although I am not sure if they had junked it altogether. I mean, historical materialism strikes me as pretty old school so far as Marxist doctrines go.

Will,

I assume that – in his usual way, as sloppy as a canteen curry – Nick’s referring to Goldberg’s quote-mining of It Takes A Village. Example here…

In her book, It Takes A Village, she reveals that babies of all classes are born in a state of crisis so profound that immediate state intervention is required.

They need immediate aid from the ‘helping professions’ since even wealthy parents feel stress and ‘we know that babies sense the stress’. If ever there was a utopian goal for government, the elimination of parental stress must be it.”

Ironically, much of the book – which is probably loathsome, I’d find it hard to believe otherwise – was ghost-written.

Ben

Anybody who takes Jonah Goldberg seriously about anything , let alone fascism is a moron in my opinion. The Doughty Pantload (a nickname he has on American liberal sites) is a chip off his Nixon loving mums block.

Thanks, Ben.

I see that the author used the terms ‘Utopian’, ‘Village’, and ‘Immediate’ – I would have thought that an indication of ideal rather than reality – but some look at things differently than most.

Here’s a comment I’ve attempted to leave on Nick’s blog repeatedly but which (for some reason) failed to find its way through moderation:

As ever, your grasp of the facts seems to be a bit lapse, Nick:

Avant-garde Nazi philosophers – Heidegger, Paul de Man, Carl Schmitt – are venerated by nominal leftists in the postmodern universities, who love their contempt for traditional morality and standards of truth.

Which universities are you referring to here, exactly? For the most part philosophy departments tend to be Analytical. This is something your continuous mischaracterisation of Britain’s intellectual life has never failed to overlook, as well as being something which I deem rather crippling to your critique. Could you cite some universities in particular, please?

Nazism was the first example of modern identity politics. All that mattered was whether you were German, Slav or Jew.

This is ahistorical nonsense. To suggest that Nazism was the initiation of identity politics requires blindness to all the other varieties of nationalism which existed prior to it (and there were quite a few!)

The Nazis did have a left-wing who were basically racist, anti-inter-nationalist socialists but they were purged during the Night of Long Knives, when the SA were replaced with the SS

As for Goldberg being a “moderate”, I do believe that Standpoint has warped your perspective more than slightly. In America Goldberg is on the right wing, being an Establishment Republican of the firmly neo-con variety. When it comes to his apologism for war criminals Bush is one of the less remarkable figures. He praised Pinochet on the day of publication for Liberal Fascism, for instance.

And as for the Black Panthers having anything save a hostile relationship to multi-culturalism…

“He praised Pinochet on the day of publication for Liberal Fascism, for instance.”

He’s also a big big fan of Enoch Powell…

http://daveweeden.me.uk/2005/July/wouldresearch.html

All we need to seal this shit up is it being leaked that he’s a member of “I <3 Black Shirts” and a “Fan of Oswald Mosley” on facebook…

Oh yeah, and did I mention that he depicts the Klu Klux Klan as some sort of strange, sad but ultimately mostly harmless film fanclub? Not as the lynch-happy cult/mob who triggered the formation of the Anti-Defamation League with their lynching of an innocent jew & constituted perhaps the first instance of structured hyper-nationalism organised into an identity group with distinctive dress that uses violence to achieve their racist, reactionary aims; because they thought that radical means were required to save the rotten core of their bigoted society.

Because we all know how to summarise that sort of a group in one word, don’t we…?

James: “moderate conservatives” is two words, surely?

(See here for Goldberg and the Klan – punchline: Indeed, it seems as if Goldberg is almost poised to declare the Klan “liberal” or yet another “progressive” offspring; but surely even that must give a pseudo-thinker like Goldberg pause. If the Klan is just another “phenomenon of the Left,” then the word no longer has any meaning.).

“t is undeniable that the best way to have avoided complicity in the horrors of the last century would have been to have adopted the politics of Jonah Goldberg. Much can be said against moderate conservatives, but it has to be admitted that their wariness of grand designs and their willingness to place limits on the over-mighty state give them a clean record others cannot share.”

That pretty clearly identifies Goldberg as one of the “Moderate”s cited, does it not?