another dumb editor who didn't really read the book because he has a lazy mind

Contemporary liberal using fascism inappropriately alert!

I was never on his show,” Gore Vidal, with whom Mr. Buckley had a famous feud, said on Thursday. “I don’t like fascism much."

nothing fascist about Buckely's show as far as I know...it featured guests from Jimmy Carter to Margaret Thatcher. Gore Vidal is a retard? Maybe.

Why do people send me reviews for books they haven't read?

Anyhow here is another rebuttal to an editor who won't read my blog, but is for my bestest (summon Zlad) friend in the whole wide world.

*sigh*

Again I'm going to take fragments of his article which I either considered Hyperbole, Erroneous, Stupid or just plain IGNORANT. Also in many parts it does appear that he got so bored reading the book that he has amnesia.

Ok lets begin at someplace near the beginning.

Michael Tomasky begins by talking about a Marxist Professor and moves on to how bored he is with a well researched book...basically in the first page he throws the book out the window and after that it goes down hill
So I can report with a clear conscience that Liberal Fascism is ultimately oone of the most tedious and inane-- self-negating--books that I have ever read. I suspect our white-coated researchers of the future would conclude mainly that we were a society with too much time on our hands--or at least that there was once a certain Goldberg with far too much time on his. Liberal Fascism is a document of a deeply frivolous culture, or sub-culture.

It is good to see that on page 1 of 7 the reviewer has kept an open mind. Of course this is in THE NEW REPUBLIC...

So let us break this down: People who are intelligent and well read from the future will think this book is stupid because Mr. Tomasky thinks its stupid...thus making him a forward thinking individual whose intellect is unquestionable. Well great. Good thing we've already reached the "If you don't agree with me then you are an idiot" phase of the argument. I had a roommate like this in college...he was a moron and suffered from Only Child Syndrome. I have no idea about Mr. Tomasky's mental state but he is quite the master of out of hand dismissals.

Moving on...

The chief "rival identity," of course, is that of conservatism, and Goldberg, a noisy conservative pundit, has as his stated agenda the need "to dismantle the granite-like assumption in our political culture that American conservatism is an offshoot or cousin of fascism." He makes it abundantly clear that when some dopey lefty calls George W. Bush (or, for that matter, Jonah Goldberg) a fascist it really grates his cheese, and so he has set out to even the libelous score. He has taken it upon himself to make the case that fascism really has its antecedents on the left--that the American Progressive movement "was a sister movement of fascism." He shows that many American progressives in the 1920s, and even into the 1930s, expressed admiration for aspects of Italian or German society--Lincoln Steffens, or Rexford G. Tugwell. (He also makes it clear with thirty-two citations of this magazine that he considers it something like the historic house organ of liberal fascism.)

As to the libelous score...language is something to be respected and not thrown about carelessly or changed to fit one's own views. Words by definition have meaning. Yes he sites the New Republic 32 times...let us see why.

Page 11) "We are trying out the economics of Fascism without having suffered all its social or political ravages," - George Soule Editor of The New Republic writing in reference to the FDR administration.

Page 28) Giuseppe Prezzolini, a frequent contributor to THE NEW REPUBLIC, who would later become a respected professor at Columbia University, was one of Fascism's (meaning Italian Fascism as Mr. Goldberg only capitalizes Fascism for Italy's version) earliest literary and ideological architects.

I'll find one more of the 32 citations just for shits and giggles...

Ah here we go Herbert Croly...Founding Editor of the New Republic...oh heck time for several of his quotes. This quote comes from his book "The Promise of American Life."

"An individual has no meaning apart from the society in which his individuality has been formed."

Well damn Mr. Croly you are a fecking genius, let me tip my hat to you; you just said that person's environment determines his or her behavior and he or she would feel out of place in a different society? Well actually you said that their personality has no merit in a different society...so you're a douchebag and by extension your entire world view. Of course I don't believe that, but hey I just had to use Tomasky's logic.

And if Mr. Tomasky had actually bothered to read this book in a thoughtful manner (not in one marathon sitting) he would have had far fewer headaches and actually been able to process what was in there. But no he tried to PLOW through 465 pages of dense information and analysis. No wonder it seemed so boring. I'm sure he would try to read the whole Lord of the Rings in one sitting then blow his head off and wonder why there was so much damn poetry and singing.

Fail...epic fail, and you did it wrong.

moving on...

But very little of the story he tells is news to students of history. We had already heard that Steffens said of the Soviet Union, "I have been over into the future, and it works," so it is not exactly a shock to read that he had kind words for a similarly regimented society. We similarly understand that the Wilson administration did indeed shut down The Masses and fan racism and xenophobia and round up radicals, and no liberal today thinks of these moves as things to be proud of or to duplicate. We are also acutely aware that some New Dealers were fans of the totalitarian Soviet Union. Roosevelt's second vice-president was one such, and he kicked Henry Wallace off the ticket in 1944 for just that reason. Since Roosevelt did not manage to keep Wallace's expulsion out of the papers, it is not exactly a secret.

From the first sentence he is well off base. Most US history courses, including A.P. US History and all of the non-decade specific courses I took at University spoke about much of what happened during the WWI period other than...here's how the war started and america got involved...the end. When it comes to the New Deal there are discussions of work programs and social security and maybe the Smoot Hawley tariff act but certainly not the inner workings and motivations of the Roosevelt Administration. History courses certainly aren't that exacting. The average person is not tolld this history because the average person is taught to a test. Kicking Wallace off the ticket is well besides the point as there were more than just him in the administration who thought favorably of Stalin and his ilk.

Tomasky so far has at least used two logical fallacies:

1) Appeal to Authority/Bandwagon: reference the future people who would thing we are stupid for writing/reading this book

2) Irrelevent Appeal: Wallace being removed from the ticket

3) Ad Hominim: declaring the book boring and unnecessary for intelligentpeople to read

4) The Intelligent Socialist Appeal: See Appeal to Authority.

Continuing:

We have also recognized, since at least the 1950s and in some prescient instances even earlier, that certain consanguinities between the far left and the far right did exist in those days, and that the Nazi program was in some respects a left-wing program, appealing on a class basis--and, always, a racial basis--to German workers and the petit bourgeoisie.

No you haven't...that is just an outright lie. Heck I've had arguments with my BESTEST friend in the whole wide world about ust that issue...in fact most political text books still describe Hitler as Right Wing...and thats true only if you mean he is to the RIGHT of an avowed Marxist by about a picometer. Of course racism has noting to do with Fascism...more with german fascism and progressivism in the USA. In fact it has more to do with the prevailing social model and geography than anything else. But in the case of this book racism is used as an example of how fascism/socialism/communism uses some external enemy to incite the populace in to action. Doesn't HAVE to be racism, but it has to be SOMETHING.

ever onward...

"Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left." Now that is revisionism. But for all his chapter and verse on the proletarian rhetoric that Nazis employed, Goldberg somehow forgets to mention certain other salient matters, like the fact that within three months of taking power Hitler banned trade unions--and on the day after May Day, 1933. Their money was confiscated and their leaders imprisoned. And the trade unions were replaced with the Nazi "union" called the German Labor Front, which took away the right to strike. Hitler did many worse things, of course. I single out this act because it would hardly seem to be the edict of a "man of the left." And there exist about a million nearly epileptic quotes from Hitler and Goebbels and other Nazis expressing their luminous hatreds of liberalism and of communism, none of which seem to have found their way into the pages of Liberal Fascism.

Ok now just previously Tomasky had admitted that Hitler could be considered leftist and in fact it has been thought so for the last 58 years. So it is NOT revisionsism, and he doesn't FORGET to mention the destruction of the trade unions...they aren't necessary whent he STATE TAKES OVER THE UNIONS DUTIES...AND NO YOU CAN"T STRIKE AGAINST THE STATE WHICH HAS YOUR OWN GOOD IN MIND. Its not "right-wing" to bust unions in this manner it is decidedly Bismarckian and socialist where the state nationalizes what was previously a private endeavor. They hate liberals and communists because as Goldberg points out...they were fighting FOR THE SAME CONSTITUENCY. TOmasky's argument there is like saying Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton hate eachother so...one of them isn't a Democrat by that virtue. Yet another fallacy.

These points are not all that is missing from Goldberg's "analysis." I wondered, while reading his execration of Wilson (with which one can agree up to a point) how he could be so worked up about "liberty cabbage"--the name given to sauerkraut during World War I, in a fit of xenophobic bowdlerization-- as evidence that America was at the time an explicitly fascist state, without it occurring to him that maybe, just maybe, his conscience should compel him to make note of our more recent business about "freedom fries." Remember this was not an abstraction: the name of French fries was in fact changed to "freedom fries" in all the House of Representatives cafeterias in 2003. But of this, not a word.

Ok... so the Congress was fascist in naming the fries freedom fries...whoopdi doo: Doesn't negate his point in any way. And the argument is again followed by a fallacy...where he makes it out as if the liberty cabbage was the ONLY fascist thing that happened. He also makes the excuse that current bad behavior excuses past bad behavior because somehow now its ok to...oh forget it its just a twisted argument that holds no water.

And why not a word, except for the lazy intellectual deception with which he had to know some reviewer would charge him? Here is where Liberal Fascism gets simply ridiculous. For Goldberg, the fact that Progressivism and totalitarianism shared certain traits--a belief in the possibility of collective action through the state, basically--tells him all he needs to know about both creeds. Ipso facto, any totalitarian impulse must therefore have leftish origins. Never mind that there actually was a totalitarianism for which the left was responsible--the one called communism. Goldberg is after more arcane understandings.

The left was responsible for Fascism in Italy and Germany, not "conservatism" as it is practiced today. It was progressivism and socialism that resulted in "totalitarianism" (Nothing is outside the State) and Fascism. So now he'scallingthe 465 page volume
that was admittedly well researched...lazy...or arcane, either way Tomasky thinks you should not be interested. Another Ad Hominem. Yay.

Meanwhile his own creed, conservatism, is a thing entirely apart, a blameless and wholesome--and, it practically goes without saying, vastly outnumbered--tendency that has had to fight Nazis and communists and liberals alike tooth and nail so as to prevent any sign of the incubation of a religion of the state. Hence there is no connection between "liberty cabbage" and "freedom fries": the former was the handiwork of statist brainwashers, the latter the handiwork of the native rising up of noble individualists.

He forgot to read the last chapter. It hammers on conservatives. Also the title of the book should have told him (plus reading the dust jacket) that this book had a certain purpose and he's still somehow appraently expecting some kind of equal excoriation.

That Hitler had the backing of many conservative financiers whose names are well-known to history but missing from this book--Fritz Thyssen, Hjalmar Schacht, and the rest--isn't interesting to this conservative student of fascism. That Hitler and his cohort were vegetarians and health nuts, and thus similar to some left-leaning Americans today--now that is fascinating! Why, Dachau even "produced its own organic honey." What better proof of the kinship between fascism and liberalism?

Actually Hitler only had the backing AFTER he was gaining power and businesses (like they do) got behind the front runner so they weren't seen as enemies. And yes they were health nuts...germany was one of the first to ban smoking and also strip its citizens of their personal firearms (gun control). The state knows what is best for you...that is the message. These are additional examples however minor to show HOW FAR the government reaches in to your life. That is...as far as it thinks it should at the time...no limit. Tomasky fails to maintain coherence here by simply ommitting persuasive facts and placing in their place seemingly harmless things like Organic Honey and the like...as if somehow the ONLY reason dachau was fascist was because of the honey...riiiight.

I could stop here but I won't.

for the Grand Finale I'm going line by line.

Read again the passage I cited above, Goldberg's definition of fascism.

No its your interpretation of his definition of Fascism.

Is it really equally true of liberalism and fascism that each "views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good"?

Yes the only difference is that one preaches revolution and the other incrementalism.

Is it equally true under each system that "everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives"?

Yes. Otherwise you are a racist bigoted homophobe.

Is there really no appreciable difference--how clever, the way he slides quickly past this!-- between "force" and "regulation and social pressure"?

Its called deductive reasoning. Social pressure often brings about regulation and force.

This is ignorant nonsense, and over the course of four hundred pages it becomes excruciatingly dreary nonsense.

Fail. Ad Hominem.

Goldberg would have difficulty distinguishing between, say, seat-belt laws and the banning of political parties.

Exaggeration...Hyperbole...and again called Mr.Goldberg stupid.

Yes, the former may well be a manifestation of the "nanny state," but it does have an indisputable social utility--and more importantly it is not exactly comparable to the latter.

Well yes...now we have the appeal to sanity after all of that.

Is Social Security a fascist program?

Yes..its is fascist and socialist and communist, but its a nice and soft form of it...like Goldberg says throughout the book. The New Deal is not about mass genocides.

Goldberg implies as much, partly because Roosevelt felt moved to push for the program owing to pressure from his (admittedly) quasi-fascistic left in the persons of Huey Long and Father Coughlin, and partly because Social Security is, after all, administered by the state.

He doesn't IMPLY it, he comes out and syas it many times.

And once you start implementing public pension systems, well, how far away can the execution of political opponents really be?

And again we have an outright lie. Goldberg is very careful to say that one does not always lead to the other, and in the USA it is unlikely for this to happen at all because our version is softer and nicer and more incremental to avoid many of the big social problems Europe eerienced.

Thanks for reading.

Barbequeueueueueueueue at my place.

,

zomg people who can't self examine

AHEM! ATTN David Oshinsky your Membership in the Saul Alinsky Club is ready...but here's a point by point refutation (by and large) of your critique of "Liberal Fascism" Anything left out was done so because it was excessive and or so ignorant I chose to ignore it.

"Goldberg is less convincing here because he can’t get a handle on Roosevelt’s admittedly elusive personality. He treats Wilson as a serious thinker, rigidly focused on his goals, but portrays Roosevelt as a classic dilettante, shallow and detached. For Goldberg, even the president’s greatest skill — his ability to communicate with the masses — was negated by his failure to chart a steady course and stick to it. One is left to ponder how the outlines of America’s modern welfare state emerged from such a lazy, superficial mind."

- mistake here is that Goldberg was saying he was shallow in that his ideas were large ideas and even the monetary policy was simplistic/detached from reality. That doesn't negate that he thought about it seriously or was focused rigidly...

Is something missing here? Goldberg races from Wilson to Roosevelt to Kennedy and on to Bill Clinton with barely a glance at what happened in between. The reason is simple: for Goldberg, fascism is strictly a Democratic disease. This allows him to dispose of the politics of the 1920s in a single sentence. “After the Great War,” he writes, “the country slowly regained its sanity.” What Goldberg may not know — or is afraid to tell us — is that the 1920s were anything but sane. This was the decade, after all, that contained the largest state-sponsored social experiment in the nation’s history — Prohibition — and it lasted through three Republican administrations before Franklin Roosevelt ended it in 1933. The 1920s also saw the explosive spread of the Ku Klux Klan in the Republican Midwest, a virtual halt to legal immigration under the repressive National Origins Act and an angry grass-roots backlash against the teaching of evolution in public schools.

ok this will take a while

to point 1) The title of the book answers this and the reviewer is a moron. David did you eve read it? Perhaps you just skimmed.

point 2) Prohibition: passed over a presidential veto; Roosevelt didn't get rid of it on his own, but it was shown to be a failure and the states, congress and Roosevelt got rid of it

point 3) the KKK was largely made up of Democrats and not Republicans. there was no "Republican" mid-west like there is today; Roosevelt's 4 time election proves this, and many of our grandparents are life long democrats despite having little philosophically in common with said party.

The Scopes Monkey Trial...pfff that's just off topic because its got nothing to do with the feds...that's a Godwin. The NOA is just another quota system like the US govt has always had. We have never had "open immigration".

"The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson-Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, Asian Exclusion Act, (43 Statutes-at-Large 153) was a United States federal law that limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, according to the Census of 1890. It excluded immigration to the US of Asians. It superseded the 1921 Emergency Quota Act. The law was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s, as well as East Asians and Asian Indians, who were prohibited from immigrating entirely.

The Act passed with strong congressional support in the wake of intense lobbying. [1] There were only six dissenting votes in the Senate and a handful of opponents in the House, the most vigorous of whom was freshman Brooklyn Representative Emanuel Celler. Over the succeeding four decades, Celler, who served for almost 50 years, made the repeal of the Act into a personal crusade. Some of the law's strongest supporters were influenced by Madison Grant and his 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race. Grant was a eugenicist and an advocate of the racial hygiene theory.

The act was also strongly supported by Samuel Gompers, well-known union leader and founder of the AFL. Gompers was himself a Jewish immigrant, and uninterested in the accusations by many Jews of the time that the quotas were based purely on anti-Semitism." - Wiki

The NOA as you can see was broadly supported by those who favored Eugeniucs and believed that certain peoples were of a lesser race. The eugienics thing was as we now know...stupid, but it had its appeal based some in racism and some in science...bad blend. And its supporters were unions and socialists who had their own businesses.

"I had entertained the slim hope that Goldberg might consider the “fascist” cult of personality surrounding Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” hokum (“Prouder, Stronger, Better”). But, alas, such scrutiny is reserved only for the Clinton presidential campaign of 1992, with its “Riefenstahlesque film of a teenage Bill Clinton shaking hands with President Kennedy.” Indeed, even George W. Bush’s spectacularly staged landing on an aircraft carrier in full battle regalia to declare “mission accomplished” in Iraq escapes notice here. It doesn’t take a village for Goldberg to play the fascist card; a single Democrat will do."

Point 1) Fine...very well but then you can say that about any popular candidate/populist message. Doesn't make it untrue. Fascism creeps in everywhere.

Point 2) GWB landing on the carrier was becuase he WAS A PILOT in the Air Guard in Texas. Full Battle Regalia? WTF it was a regulation flight suit...you don't pilot a fighter jet in a suit and tie.

Point 2a) The mission accomplished banner was for the USS Abraham Lincoln which had the longest deployment of a US Carrier ever and it had in-fact completed its mission for Afghanistan and then for Iraq. The banner was not for the Iraq war as a whole as it had been mistakenly portrayed in the media and by politicians/pundits. Good bit of Propaganda tho on their part. The last senstence is just playing a victim and being a pussy. Call the Whaaaambulance. END

- Justin
Barbequeueueueueueueueueued!