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Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.533
EAN: 9780385511841
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0385511841
Label: Doubleday
Manufacturer: Doubleday
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: January 08, 2008
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: January 08, 2008
Studio: Doubleday
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Editorial Review:“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 Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Helps clarify Americal Fascism
Quite liked it, could relate to the author as a fellow ex-progressive.
Demonstrates clearly the fascist roots of today's "progressives"; the whitewash, lies and coverups indulged in by today's Left about the radically racist-eugenicist-socialist origins of the Left's heroes.
Explains the semantic subterfuge and linguistic drift that maps Classic Liberalism into today's Conservatism, and fascist-socialist-pragmatist utopianism into today's Liberalism.
Finally, ... Read More
Rating: - Liberal Fascism
I had some eye opening experience, when my neighbor gave me to read Goebbels's Diary translated into Czech by Vaclav Moravec. It was 1974 in then communist Czechoslovakia and books like that were not around, this one was found in the roof structure of the church, where my neighbor was laying new roof tile. Official line of communist propaganda never missed an opportunity to place themselves into exact opposite to Nazism/Fascism. When I read the Diary (which described Hitler's rise to power), I was ... Read More
Rating: - The truth hurts...
This book is a must read, or listen, for anyone who wants to know the truth behind liberals. I'd put this book along with The Marketing of Evil, by David Kupelian, and the Emancipation Revalation Revolution dvd, as must haves for Americans who really want to know what the hell happened to our country.
Rating:  - The opposite of the truth
The fact is that Hitler and Mussolini were on the far right. Rather than try to distance their far right from today's far right, Goldberg tries to make them mainstream left. In other words, rather than merely downplaying the truth, he is telling us the opposite of the truth.
I'm a liberal, but am not going to claim that Stalin and Mao were on the right.
Rating: - This book will change your opinion about fascism, FDR, and liberals.
Liberals are fascists.
They are *not* Nazis, as Goldberg repeats thought out the book. They are fascists. All Nazis are fascist. Not all fascists are Nazi. Being a fascist is not about hating Jews but its about government control on daily life.
It's a bold statement, but by the end of the book it makes sense. Goldberg first describes Mussolini and Hitler's regimes, slicing the fascism from Nazism and Communism. Then he compares it to turn-of-the-20th-century Progressivism ... Read More
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