Liberal Fascism

As far as I'm concerned, Jonah Goldberg has about as much credibility as Glenn Beck or Ann Coulter—or for that matter, Michael Moore.

In other words? Not much, if any. He's an ideologue who's talking smack, no more.

edited 9th Feb '11 6:57:13 PM by FarseerLolotea

Actually calling Rosseau the father of facism makes some small amount of sense while being extremely hyperbolic. He was not a facist of any sort, but the facists and nazis were definetly inspired by parts of his beliefs. Especially his attacks on modern society.

Don't you mean "his attacks on eighteenth century society"? Rousseau, like Plato, has been accused by people like Karl Popper of advocating an unrealistically perfect society with an authoritarian tinge, but except in that very general sense you can't really call either the ancestor of fascism. This is all really more to do with Jonah Goldhagen's wish to abuse people he doesn't agree with politically.

I'd be more willing to buy that if Karl Popper wasn't one of the worst historians of philosophy the world has ever seen.

So, this book is garbage? With a title like that, I'm not surprised. Sounds like the equivalent of an Alan Moore movie.

edited 17th Feb '11 6:53:31 AM by Scardoll

Don't be dumb, Alan Moore has never had a bad movie adaption of his work with the possible exception of From Hell.

[[selffacepalm]]Dammit, stupid Names The Same.

Meant to say Michael Moore, not Alan Moore. [[/selffacepalm]]

edited 17th Feb '11 8:32:58 AM by Scardoll

I made the mistake of borrowing one of Goldhagen's previous books, on genocide (sorry - forgotten the title) from my local library. It was long, rambling, and managed to be both boring and (unsurprisingly)depressing. And his solution for genocide is basically that the UN/US should invade anywhere it looks like the government might be committing genocide soon. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? I haven't taken him very seriously since.

"Don't you mean "his attacks on eighteenth century society"? Rousseau, like Plato, has been accused by people like Karl Popper of advocating an unrealistically perfect society with an authoritarian tinge, but except in that very general sense you can't really call either the ancestor of fascism. This is all really more to do with Jonah Goldhagen's wish to abuse people he doesn't agree with politically."

No I mean all society, or at least all urbanized society. Rossau beleived in a back to nature philosophy where everything would be better if everyone went back to living in mostly isolated little farming families. The nazis agreed with this line of thought and one of their reasons to want to conquer and ethnically cleanse eastern europe was to gain the land area needed to do this.

I'd be more willing to buy that if Karl Popper wasn't one of the worst historians of philosophy the world has ever seen.

books like these in general really crack me up, because they're really just pretexts for the author to attack people he/she doesn't like. See all of ann coulter's books, for example.

If you've read The Open Society And Its Enemies closely, you should know that it's exactly those "principles of idealism" which Popper calls dangerous ideas. As for the Republic (as Plato's book is so often mistranslated into English - in Dutch we simply call it "the State", which is a lot closer to the original Greek title polis "city-state"), I don't care if Plato thought it could exist or not. Anyone who considers a dictatorship, with apartheid taken Up To Eleven, an ideal state is evil in my book, Values Dissonance or not.

As for liberalism - unlike most of you Americans, when I say "liberal", I do mean "liberal", not "leftist". Liberalism, in the sense as it is used in most European languages, is a political ideology which is actually more often right-leaning.
Anyway, I always say that liberalism started out as a revolt of people with money against people with money and hereditary titles. Socialism, on the other hand (which for various reasons never got off the ground in the US), started out as a revolt of people without money against people with money.

Which was your favorite part of The Open Society And It's Enemies, the part where Karl Popper lies about Schopenhauer, the part where Karl Popper lies about Plato, or the part where Karl Popper lies about Hegel?

Well, I assume that he's speaking the truth (or at least trying to), but I can't be sure, because I haven't read Plato, Hegel, Schopenhauer or Marx - I know it's bad form to hear one side only, but I'm not actually all that interested in philosophy, beyond a certain point of abstraction (I'm much more into politics). The Open Society And Its Enemies is one of the few philosophical books I've read. So yeah, I don't think I'm the right one to debate the truthfulness of this book.

^^^ 'Ideal' is a tricky word in philosophy. It doesn't always mean 'best/perfect' so much as 'living in the mind'. I mean, even in art, you wouldn't call Egyptian painting perfect or the best - but it's still idealized art.

Granted, my nigh-untouched copy of The Republic is gathering dust on the shelf at my mom's house even as we speak, so what do I know?

edited 13th Apr '11 5:24:45 AM by FurikoMaru

Fascism is such a notoriously slippery and nebulous concept it's near impossible to nail down as a political doctrine. However, I'd guess that there's a significant crossover in ideology between classical liberalism and the most-prominent strains of fascism, social darwinism in particular. How this translates to modern liberalism is altogether harder to define, due to it's equal level of ambiguity as an ideology. Do we mean the neo-liberalism of the Thatcher era, or Liberalism as it's defined stateside - as a centre / centre-left ideology?

Certainly, if you take Thatcher as an example, there's a great deal of crossover with hard-right dictatorships. Strongarming the unions, fighting flat-out imperialist conflicts over small land areas more valuable for propaganda purposes than any material goal, stratifying society across ethnic / geographical lines and placing the interests of the state and it's industries ahead of it's citizens.

Regardless, the word "Fascism" gets thrown around a great deal by both the right and left these days to demonise the opposition, and it's use in any kind of serious political debate is pretty pointless.

I think that Goldberg means "social liberalism"—or, hell, social democracy—rather than "economic liberalism" here...

But if one were to take it that way, then while still untrue, it's not far off the mark: The connection between borderline-authoritarian economic liberals and neoliberals and hard-right dictatorships (not "fascist" ones per se) is far from a tenuous one.

I've always personally seen fascism as more an outgrowth of authoritarian populism than of any particular economic or even conventionally social worldview; it's like the cultural equivalent of abuse-induced sociopathy.

If it comes to Plato's 'Republic', I think it's safer to call its political system totalitarian than fascist - because it does regulate all the areas of life of citizens, but it is not directed against any group, national or not.

That other Wiki says that the full title of Goldberg's book is 'Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning', which suggests that, as Midnight Rambler has already said, the distinction between American and European notion of liberalism IS important here and the book clearly is about the former and not the latter. (If Plato's political project is liberal, it is 'liberal' in American, not in European sense.)

Which makes Goldberg's view much more credible - after all, socialism is about redistributing the goods, not 'redistributing the goods of the volunteers'.

There's no father of fascism. Fascism doesn't really mean anything, anyway. It's just a vague term for 'I don't like this'.

(One of) the major problem(s) here is the conflation of any autocracy with fascism. There are different ways to be totalitarian, and fascism has some specific earmarks you don't see elsewhere.

edited 30th Apr '11 3:54:50 PM by jewelleddragon

@Strange Dwarf

Yes, "fascism" does mean something. However much the term may be abused, it does refer to a distinct political philosophy in which the state supersedes the individual. All contribute and band together for the creation of a strong overall society which will, in turn, take care of all. But the entire society (which, unfortunately, transfers to the governing bodies) is the important part, not the individual.

And yes, this does sound a lot like the ideas of American liberals.

And the ideas of dogs!

And some of the bases of Fascism, such as strong Nationalism, sound a lot like the ideas of American Conservatives.

Honestly, the best thing to do is to not take seriously a book that's obviously got the agenda of painting American Liberals as Hitler. Even the connections like you mentioned are found in a wide variety of governmental systems; it's hardly a reason to write a book called "Liberal Fascism" (Which doesn't sound like it will make much sense internationally).

edited 2nd May '11 9:26:56 AM by Scardoll

We discussed this a little bit in my European History class back in high school (not the book itself, but some of the ideas that it discusses). While I would never go so far as comparing modern-day liberals to fascists, it is true that fascism does have a few surprisingly liberal roots.

An important thing to remember is that it's a relatively new philosophy (it's only been around since the 1920s), but it's not like oppressive, undemocratic systems of government are a new idea. Despite "Fascist!" being the go-to insult for politicians whose policies are seen as undemocratic, "fascism" isn't just an umbrella term for any system of government that keeps the people down and doesn't allow voting.

Before fascism came around (when most absolutist governments in Western Europe were governed through Conservative Authoritarianism) rulers generally concerned themselves with:

• Keeping an established aristocratic class on top and oppressing minorities
• Preventing popular participation in government by any means necessary
• Keeping the status quo intact and preserving domestic tranquility

Conservative Authoritarianism leaves room for basic personal freedoms, as long as the people don't interfere with the government or try to challenge the status quo.

By contrast, though, a few of fascism's distinguishing features are:

• Fringe minority groups seizing power by force, but never relinquishing power
• Forcing popular participation in government, and persecuting those that don't openly support the ruling party
• Encouraging violent revolutionary spirit, as long it it's in support of the ruling political party

When Hitler and Mussolini rose to power, they got most of their support from militantly loyal political followers (most of them everyday citizens) who used violence to suppress their opponents. Conversely, most of their opposition came from wealthy aristocrats who were upset at having their ancestral hold on government taken from them.

So...if you consider things like revolution, popular participation in government and opposition to aristocracy to be "liberal" ideas, you could make the argument that fascism is a relatively liberal philosophy. But it only looks that way when compared to systems like Louis XIV's France, Henry VIII's England or the Medici Family's Florence. Compared to the democratic governments that are the norm in the Western world today (particularly in the United States) they're definitely not liberal in the sense that we understand the term.

edited 17th Aug '12 12:11:11 PM by TheMightyHeptagon

Sorry for the Wall of Text, but that's the best way that I know how to explain it.

edited 17th Aug '12 12:19:37 PM by TheMightyHeptagon