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| Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonah Goldberg
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $16.11
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Avg. Customer Rating:  354 reviews
Sales Rank: 261
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0385511841
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.533
EAN: 9780385511841
ASIN: 0385511841
Publication Date: January 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Incendiary title but an absolute must read! January 9, 2008
249 out of 373 found this review helpful
Goldberg is certainly not the first one to make this argument; Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig Von Misses all made a similar case a generation or two ago, but Goldberg's book is funny and highly readable. I finished my copy in the airport and the plane the day I bought it.
If history is written by the "winners", then the history of fascism has been written by those who have historically claimed to "fight fascism", namely Marxists and the left. Ignoring the often forgotten chapter of history when the leftist Popular Front allied themselves with fascist Germany, the left has always claimed that they alone have fought the good fight against fascism and they use the fascist club to beat their ideological opponents with. Look at recent bestsellers from Naomi Wolf and Chris Hedges and it is evident that this club of "fascism" is still used with great effect. After all, one of fascisms biggest targets were communists and conservatives don't like communists, so conservatives must be fascists. It's a typical "Logical Fallacy", but considering the ability of most of today's left to come with anything resembling reasoned thinking and a ideology still mired in discredited mid 18th century Marxist though, it shouldn't surprise.
In his book, Goldberg takes a good stab at a more thoughtful and objective look at fascism, and its real historical roots. Its not about whether Hitler was a vegetarian, or if Nazi Germany had welfare. Its about how these two ideological cousins, fascism and leftism are similar in both form and function and how Fascism grew out of leftists and leftist movements of the late 19th and early 20th century, who were looking for an alternate path power. If Fascism and leftism look so similar in form and function, its because one was built off the other. Fascism developed as a fascio, a form of radical socialism. While opposing communism and social democracy, fascism was rooted in radical leftist dogma, including the theories of those such as Gabriele D'Annunzio (a former anarchist), Alceste de Ambris and or former socialist Benito Mussolini. Both fascism and leftism in general share as a prime goal collectivization for the common good of the people and the use of totalitarian power and violence to achieve this.
This is by no means a new argument, but its one that challenges the long held conventional wisdom of the demagogues who have appropriated the definition of fascism, and its time to remake that definition into what it really was.
Should be read along with Joshua Muravchik's, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism for more background.
A brilliant piece of research January 8, 2008
215 out of 449 found this review helpful
The amount research that has gone into this book is amazing. Those who attack Goldberg from the Left will undoubtedly avoid mentioning the facts presented in this work. Check out, for example, the admiration that Benito M. had for JM Keynes and his ideas. This is a book that should be read by anyone concerned about the power of the state. Peter Schweizer, Hoover Institution
Amazing how these reviews are up the day the book comes out. January 8, 2008
201 out of 394 found this review helpful
People sure do hate Jonah Goldberg, especially people who've never met him and have no interest in what he has to say. I, for one, quite enjoy Jonah's work because he peppers his facts and extensive research with humor and pop culture analogies all too often shunned by "intellectuals." It's not difficult to be smart and funny, to know history and current event, but so few pundits do it. Jonah does, and does it well. I look forward to reading the whole book (just 40 pages in) and writing a second review, but I couldn't just sit by and allow these attack reviews to go unanswered.
Ultimate airplane book January 11, 2008
172 out of 273 found this review helpful
This is a perfect airplane book. The cover will insure that you have an empty seat next to you to stretch out, the content will keep you entertained even during the inevitable delays, and the bright red cover makes it hard to lose. What more can you ask for in a book?
As for the negative criticism? Goldberg has committed the unpardonable sin of our modern culture. He deigns to use actual history to support his arguments. The fact that he uses lots of it and uses it accurately only compounds the faux pas. It puts his critics in the uncomfortable position of having to do actual research of their own if they wish to engage him.
I've read the book. It has it's weak spots and reaches too far in places, but overall Goldberg makes a sustained and coherent case for his premise, and critics will have to do more than feel hurt and sling mud if they want to refute him.
This is more than the standard --"first chapter/last chapter/ back cover/ with filler" --offering that dominates this genre.
 Author mistakenly equates all authoritarianism with fascism January 12, 2008
158 out of 307 found this review helpful
The primary problem I had with this book is not so much the author's associating American liberalism/progressivism with European fascism but with his attempt to say that all authoritarianism and idealization of the State is by definition, his definition, fascism. He goes so far as to say Lenin, Stalin, and Castro are fascists. This is absurd. They were, or are in the case of Castro, certainly authoritarian, but to call them fascist it to miss the clear differences in their economic policies from people like Hitler or Mussolini who were economic centrists--a Third Way between capitalism and socialism.
If one takes into consideration all of the various political ideologies present in western democracies during the 19th through the early 21st centuries and places them on a Cartesian plane with economic issues on the x-axis (left/right) and social issues on the y-axis (authoritarian/libertarian) one can more easily distinguish the differences between various points of view. Authoritarian rightists like the American Republican and Democratic Parties would be in the upper right, authoritarian leftists like Castro and Lenin would be on the upper left, libertarian leftists like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela would be on the lower left, and libertarian rightists such as Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand would be on the lower right.
Given a model of political philosophy such as above fascists are close to the center of the economic axis, though historically they leaned to the economic right, not the left as Goldberg asserts. Where Goldberg is correct is in associating fascism and American liberalism on economic issues. The Democratic Leadership Council, modern UK Labour, and the German Social Democrats under Schroder (all of whom are representative of economic centrism) have even openly embraced the term the term Third Way to represent their politics. However it must be clearly emphasized that all of these groups are certainly more socially libertarian than any historical or contemporary fascist parties.
Apart from their economic centrism - once again centrism being a center between advocates of neo-liberal capitalism and economic policy as advocated by authoritarian Marxist-Leninists or libertarian socialists - historical and contemporary fascists, like the British National Party or the French National Front, openly embrace a law and order social policy that seeks to empower the police and military while promoting race and nationalism as paramount values. American liberals, on the other had, do not advocate for these things or at least not nearly as much as the BNP or the Front national.
In general Goldberg states an interesting case for associating American liberalism with European fascism but he makes some pretty big mistakes by calling all authoritarianism fascism and calling it part of the economic left. The latter can be partially forgive as, in the American context that he is writing, the economic views that liberals and fascists share are the far left to some someone as far to the right economically as Goldberg.
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