Liberal fascists?
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sandorski @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 11:58 am
sasquatch2 sasquatch2:
It is easy for self-appointed intellectuals to confuse reality with what they are taught by a biased lecturer in a university. Currently, any scepticism of GW will not be a successful enterprise in the study of meteorology or climate scierce even though GW is as realistic as the virgin birth.
Dad once said the teacher is not always right but is the one who passes or fails you.
Unfortunately these ivory tower experts impose their prejudices and world views.
Even a casual observation of Nazi policy versus the policies of the USSR, the PRC and even North Korea are indistinguishable. Same military parades, secret police etc.
Dad once said the teacher is not always right but is the one who passes or fails you.
Unfortunately these ivory tower experts impose their prejudices and world views.
Even a casual observation of Nazi policy versus the policies of the USSR, the PRC and even North Korea are indistinguishable. Same military parades, secret police etc.
Excuse us for not accepting your Ass as a legitimate source of knowledge.
sasquatch2 @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:11 pm
sandorski
$1:
Excuse us for not accepting your Ass as a legitimate source of knowledge.
Define us....or is this a LIBRANO reflex of claiming to speak for a majority?
romanP @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:28 pm
sasquatch2 sasquatch2:
It is easy for self-appointed intellectuals to confuse reality with what they are taught by a biased lecturer in a university.
I know, it's so bad to be biased by facts. University professors should be studying their bible more, knowing things about political science isn't important.
$1:
Currently, any scepticism of GW will not be a successful enterprise in the study of meteorology or climate scierce even though GW is as realistic as the virgin birth.
Dad once said the teacher is not always right but is the one who passes or fails you.
Unfortunately these ivory tower experts impose their prejudices and world views.
Dad once said the teacher is not always right but is the one who passes or fails you.
Unfortunately these ivory tower experts impose their prejudices and world views.
You're just jealous because you never went to any university!
$1:
Even a casual observation of Nazi policy versus the policies of the USSR, the PRC and even North Korea are indistinguishable. Same military parades, secret police etc.
Having parades and secret police is not what defines fascism.
BartSimpson @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:52 pm
Mr_Canada Mr_Canada:
In the USA there is:
Property crime every 3 seconds
Child abuse every 10 seconds
Burglary every 13 seconds
Violent crime every 19 seconds
Assault every 31 seconds
Rape every 46 seconds
Murder every 27 minutes
Property crime every 3 seconds
Child abuse every 10 seconds
Burglary every 13 seconds
Violent crime every 19 seconds
Assault every 31 seconds
Rape every 46 seconds
Murder every 27 minutes
Only because I've been slacking off.
YOUR_DEAD @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:59 pm
Wow, and here I thought us Canadians were a more polite moderate bunch. I expect this kind of discussion on some US boards I frequent but not here? I guess I'll just keep to the news page like I have been for the last couple of years...
Joe_Stalin @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:13 pm
$1:
Fascists on the left
Colby Cosh, National Post
Published: Friday, February 15, 2008
Jonah Goldberg's controversial new book Liberal Fascism has all the faults you might expect from a book by Jonah Goldberg. It is written in a breezy, beseeching personal style better suited to the Internet, where Goldberg has made a name for himself as one of the blogosphere's top conservative pundits, than to a permanent work between covers. Some of the historical examples he uses will age fast and be confusing to future readers (which "L.A. riots" is he talking about, Dad?). The inflammatory cover art works at cross-purposes with Goldberg's serious intentions. And, yes, the book does overreach in advancing its central hypothesis that there is a recurring menace of nationalistic state-worship in American leftist politics.
But it doesn't overreach too far -- certainly not nearly as far as liberals go every day in associating the contemporary right with fascist traditions. Don't trust those who "review" Liberal Fascism by writing off National Review's Goldberg as a boyish goofball riding the helter-skelter of conservative intellectual decline. This book deals with the concept of "fascism" in a serious, informed way, acknowledging it as a phenomenon easier to recognize than to define. It relies on the established, and frankly decisive, argument that fascism was, in practice, communism without the internationalism -- a revolutionary, anticapitalist, antibourgeois phenomenon of the left that belongs on the same side of the political spectrum as communism, not at the opposite end. And much of what Goldberg has to say about the fascist strain in "progressive" politics from the late 19th century to now requires the author to be confronted, not merely dismissed.
Nothing in Liberal Fascism is going to astonish those of us familiar with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Leftism: from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse (1974) in one or another of its incarnations. Goldberg does not mention Kuehnelt-Leddihn, which seems like an odd omission, as the old traditionalist-Catholic Ritter wielded a large influence on National Review in its heyday and on its founder, William F. Buckley. The hard-to-find older book retains its idiosyncratic hold today on a cult of conservative admirers, but it is possible that Goldberg was trying deliberately to put his argument on an entirely separate foundation, and he is, unlike Kuehnelt-Leddihn, primarily concerned with the American context.
In constructing his narrative of the 20th century, Goldberg is more successful the further back he goes. He regards the Progressive movement as nothing less than American-style fascism before there was such a word; in his view it reached its culmination in the oppressive political environment of the First World War. This is a harsh judgment on early local Progressive reformers who sought to clean up city governments and make the franchise broader and more effective. It's telling, for a close reader, that Goldberg entirely avoids dealing with major figures such as Robert La Follette.
But how can any decent modern liberal deny that Goldberg's identification of Woodrow Wilson as a proto-fascist is accurate? Goldberg's chapter on Wilson is near-essential reading for all students of American history, whatever their political stripe. It is only because his own voluminous poli-sci works are not read anymore that we ignore Wilson's racism, his fawning over authoritarian models like Bismarck, his preference for a unitary state over the divided powers distributed in the Constitution, his belief that the bovine masses needed unrestricted leadership, and his contempt for individualism. This became more than mere theory during the War, a forgotten time in America when patriotic street gangs ran amok, peace advocates were jailed for "sedition," the economy came under an unprecedented degree of state control, and the free press was openly crushed -- all at the behest of a president who believed himself divinely inspired to restore moral health to the nation, and indeed the world.
Goldberg delivers other impressive debating points. He devotes overdue attention to the embrace of coercive eugenics by the "best" minds of interwar progressivism. He puts acknowledged quasi-fascists like the Canadian radio star Father Charles Coughlin and Louisiana governor Huey Long in their correct socialist context, showing that they cannot rightly be called "right-wing" and that no one would have described them as such in their time. And he rightly identifies a streak of blindly fascist youth-and action-worship among the New Left student radicals of the 1960s, convincingly comparing their lives and mythos to those of the Nazi martyr Horst Wessel -- although Goldberg has a major unacknowledged problem here, insofar as the New Left bomb-throwers hated the guts of "weak-kneed" liberals.
He perhaps descends into even shakier polemic in reserving a full chapter to the fascist qualities of Hillary Clinton's "politics of meaning" -- but I defy any honest moderate to deny that he feels a slight shudder of horror whenever he is reminded of the maxim that "It takes a village to raise a child." The f-word is one that should be used with care. To a surprising degree, Goldberg handles it thus. I fear I cannot find a better term for his book than the dreadful cliche "eye-opening."
Link
Colby Cosh, National Post
Published: Friday, February 15, 2008
Jonah Goldberg's controversial new book Liberal Fascism has all the faults you might expect from a book by Jonah Goldberg. It is written in a breezy, beseeching personal style better suited to the Internet, where Goldberg has made a name for himself as one of the blogosphere's top conservative pundits, than to a permanent work between covers. Some of the historical examples he uses will age fast and be confusing to future readers (which "L.A. riots" is he talking about, Dad?). The inflammatory cover art works at cross-purposes with Goldberg's serious intentions. And, yes, the book does overreach in advancing its central hypothesis that there is a recurring menace of nationalistic state-worship in American leftist politics.
But it doesn't overreach too far -- certainly not nearly as far as liberals go every day in associating the contemporary right with fascist traditions. Don't trust those who "review" Liberal Fascism by writing off National Review's Goldberg as a boyish goofball riding the helter-skelter of conservative intellectual decline. This book deals with the concept of "fascism" in a serious, informed way, acknowledging it as a phenomenon easier to recognize than to define. It relies on the established, and frankly decisive, argument that fascism was, in practice, communism without the internationalism -- a revolutionary, anticapitalist, antibourgeois phenomenon of the left that belongs on the same side of the political spectrum as communism, not at the opposite end. And much of what Goldberg has to say about the fascist strain in "progressive" politics from the late 19th century to now requires the author to be confronted, not merely dismissed.
Nothing in Liberal Fascism is going to astonish those of us familiar with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Leftism: from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse (1974) in one or another of its incarnations. Goldberg does not mention Kuehnelt-Leddihn, which seems like an odd omission, as the old traditionalist-Catholic Ritter wielded a large influence on National Review in its heyday and on its founder, William F. Buckley. The hard-to-find older book retains its idiosyncratic hold today on a cult of conservative admirers, but it is possible that Goldberg was trying deliberately to put his argument on an entirely separate foundation, and he is, unlike Kuehnelt-Leddihn, primarily concerned with the American context.
In constructing his narrative of the 20th century, Goldberg is more successful the further back he goes. He regards the Progressive movement as nothing less than American-style fascism before there was such a word; in his view it reached its culmination in the oppressive political environment of the First World War. This is a harsh judgment on early local Progressive reformers who sought to clean up city governments and make the franchise broader and more effective. It's telling, for a close reader, that Goldberg entirely avoids dealing with major figures such as Robert La Follette.
But how can any decent modern liberal deny that Goldberg's identification of Woodrow Wilson as a proto-fascist is accurate? Goldberg's chapter on Wilson is near-essential reading for all students of American history, whatever their political stripe. It is only because his own voluminous poli-sci works are not read anymore that we ignore Wilson's racism, his fawning over authoritarian models like Bismarck, his preference for a unitary state over the divided powers distributed in the Constitution, his belief that the bovine masses needed unrestricted leadership, and his contempt for individualism. This became more than mere theory during the War, a forgotten time in America when patriotic street gangs ran amok, peace advocates were jailed for "sedition," the economy came under an unprecedented degree of state control, and the free press was openly crushed -- all at the behest of a president who believed himself divinely inspired to restore moral health to the nation, and indeed the world.
Goldberg delivers other impressive debating points. He devotes overdue attention to the embrace of coercive eugenics by the "best" minds of interwar progressivism. He puts acknowledged quasi-fascists like the Canadian radio star Father Charles Coughlin and Louisiana governor Huey Long in their correct socialist context, showing that they cannot rightly be called "right-wing" and that no one would have described them as such in their time. And he rightly identifies a streak of blindly fascist youth-and action-worship among the New Left student radicals of the 1960s, convincingly comparing their lives and mythos to those of the Nazi martyr Horst Wessel -- although Goldberg has a major unacknowledged problem here, insofar as the New Left bomb-throwers hated the guts of "weak-kneed" liberals.
He perhaps descends into even shakier polemic in reserving a full chapter to the fascist qualities of Hillary Clinton's "politics of meaning" -- but I defy any honest moderate to deny that he feels a slight shudder of horror whenever he is reminded of the maxim that "It takes a village to raise a child." The f-word is one that should be used with care. To a surprising degree, Goldberg handles it thus. I fear I cannot find a better term for his book than the dreadful cliche "eye-opening."
Link
I may have to post a few educational excerpts from Jonah's book for the enjoyment of the farleftoids here.
![[cheer]](./images/smilies/icon_cheers.gif "Cheer"){kind=icon}
xerxes @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:17 pm
Go right ahead. We'll take great pleasure in shitting all over Goldberg's "book".
Mustang1 @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:23 pm
Firstly, my additions to the definition were indeed spot on. In fact, I'm having a hard time believing anyone that is remotely politically aware would even find fault in them, but let's see your how your "reservations" stack up
mapleleafsnation mapleleafsnation:
Even though fascism supports elitism, it doesn't support corporatism. Actually fascists states differ on their economic view. Fascism under Hitler had a lot of socialism inside of it, so it would appeal to the working classes. It may sound surprising. However remember the Hegel is often cited as a fascist but also a communism. Researchers who say he's a fascist will thus admit that some branches of fascism has a lot of socialism. Which is normal, shouldn't everything be bound to the interests of the state?
Whoops! Here's a head-scratcher! Fascism "doesn't support corporatism"?!?!? Huh? Firstly, corporatism (I'll even grant the earlier anarcho-syndicalism) is a characteristic of fascism. In the Italian vein, it was a prominent tenet - even Gentile makes mention of it in his work. In fact, a rejection of the individual rights in favor of a "corporatist" view that people are the "workers in the state and the gearing of all economic activity to the support of the corporatist state are basic elements of fascism (see Rourke). Not only that (and I'd grant National Socialism as more complex, but quasi-corporatist manifestations did exist like state officializations of economic interests) how do you explain Mussolini's Charter of Labor or the National Council of Corporations?
$1:
Your comment on the way fascists see society is completely untrue. Nazism does not equal fascism, they are different movement. Nazism came out of fascism (and fascism from nationalism). In my textbook the author described it as simply as this 'fascism+racism= Nazism' (Ball, 2006). In Italy, there were a lot of different ethnic groups (Especially in Southern Italy. Muslims, Greeks, Western Europeans).
Be careful as I NEVER stated that Nasizm and Fascism were interchangeable concepts. In fact, I specifically labeled National Socialism as a "VARIANT". It would seem that your own source supports my assertion. Next time, don't ascribe positions to me that aren't outlined in my text.
$1:
Actually, Germany fascism was in somewhat a meritocracy. If you did very good things, and got noticed, you would probably be rewarded for it. Of course, you'll see a lot of von and van as generals, that's because meritocracies are utopias, and they also started at a higher level (welfare, tradition). Your comment made it sound like if Fascists favorised a chaste system.
I never suggested anything even remotely like a "chaste system" - that's your misinterpretation. In fact, Hitler DID see social systems based on race criteria and furthermore, these Social Darwinist principles should see "desired" races in control functions instead of "undesirables". You'll notice that I used the historical manifestation of Herrenvolk master race usurping its rightful societal status instead of biological misfits, the Untermenschen
Mustang1 @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:27 pm
sasquatch2 sasquatch2:
It is easy for self-appointed intellectuals to confuse reality with what they are taught by a biased lecturer in a university. Currently, any scepticism of GW will not be a successful enterprise in the study of meteorology or climate scierce even though GW is as realistic as the virgin birth.
Dad once said the teacher is not always right but is the one who passes or fails you.
Unfortunately these ivory tower experts impose their prejudices and world views.
Even a casual observation of Nazi policy versus the policies of the USSR, the PRC and even North Korea are indistinguishable. Same military parades, secret police etc.
Dad once said the teacher is not always right but is the one who passes or fails you.
Unfortunately these ivory tower experts impose their prejudices and world views.
Even a casual observation of Nazi policy versus the policies of the USSR, the PRC and even North Korea are indistinguishable. Same military parades, secret police etc.
You've had your ignorance busted wide open by me again, samsquantch. You're an uneducated dreg who passes his tinfoil hat, peon crap off as informed, but it's nothing more than the ramblings of an irrelevant troll.
You actually (this still kills me) claimed that Stephen Harper's campaign adviser and architect of the last successful Conservative campaign was a "Communist"!! You, in your fog of ignorance, think that Thomas Flanagan is a "communist" because he doesn't share your utter lack of education! Priceless.
Stay out of politics. You know squat.
xerxes @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:31 pm
What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!
sandorski @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:45 pm
xerxes xerxes:
What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!
sandorski @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 2:49 pm
YOUR_DEAD YOUR_DEAD:
Wow, and here I thought us Canadians were a more polite moderate bunch. I expect this kind of discussion on some US boards I frequent but not here? I guess I'll just keep to the news page like I have been for the last couple of years...
So did I when I first arrived here. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only Canadian here, but have come to accept the unfortunate truth.
kenmore @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 3:30 pm
stemmer dont confuse the extreme right wing anti everything that breaths conservatism in the US with Canadian politics.. and dont combine Canadian Liberalism with that of the US...we are different in alot of ways and politics is one of them....
Zipperfish @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 3:42 pm
Joe_Stalin Joe_Stalin:
$1:
Fascists on the left
Colby Cosh, National Post
Published: Friday, February 15, 2008
Jonah Goldberg's controversial new book Liberal Fascism has all the faults you might expect from a book by Jonah Goldberg. It is written in a breezy, beseeching personal style better suited to the Internet, where Goldberg has made a name for himself as one of the blogosphere's top conservative pundits, than to a permanent work between covers. Some of the historical examples he uses will age fast and be confusing to future readers (which "L.A. riots" is he talking about, Dad?). The inflammatory cover art works at cross-purposes with Goldberg's serious intentions. And, yes, the book does overreach in advancing its central hypothesis that there is a recurring menace of nationalistic state-worship in American leftist politics.
But it doesn't overreach too far -- certainly not nearly as far as liberals go every day in associating the contemporary right with fascist traditions. Don't trust those who "review" Liberal Fascism by writing off National Review's Goldberg as a boyish goofball riding the helter-skelter of conservative intellectual decline. This book deals with the concept of "fascism" in a serious, informed way, acknowledging it as a phenomenon easier to recognize than to define. It relies on the established, and frankly decisive, argument that fascism was, in practice, communism without the internationalism -- a revolutionary, anticapitalist, antibourgeois phenomenon of the left that belongs on the same side of the political spectrum as communism, not at the opposite end. And much of what Goldberg has to say about the fascist strain in "progressive" politics from the late 19th century to now requires the author to be confronted, not merely dismissed.
Nothing in Liberal Fascism is going to astonish those of us familiar with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Leftism: from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse (1974) in one or another of its incarnations. Goldberg does not mention Kuehnelt-Leddihn, which seems like an odd omission, as the old traditionalist-Catholic Ritter wielded a large influence on National Review in its heyday and on its founder, William F. Buckley. The hard-to-find older book retains its idiosyncratic hold today on a cult of conservative admirers, but it is possible that Goldberg was trying deliberately to put his argument on an entirely separate foundation, and he is, unlike Kuehnelt-Leddihn, primarily concerned with the American context.
In constructing his narrative of the 20th century, Goldberg is more successful the further back he goes. He regards the Progressive movement as nothing less than American-style fascism before there was such a word; in his view it reached its culmination in the oppressive political environment of the First World War. This is a harsh judgment on early local Progressive reformers who sought to clean up city governments and make the franchise broader and more effective. It's telling, for a close reader, that Goldberg entirely avoids dealing with major figures such as Robert La Follette.
But how can any decent modern liberal deny that Goldberg's identification of Woodrow Wilson as a proto-fascist is accurate? Goldberg's chapter on Wilson is near-essential reading for all students of American history, whatever their political stripe. It is only because his own voluminous poli-sci works are not read anymore that we ignore Wilson's racism, his fawning over authoritarian models like Bismarck, his preference for a unitary state over the divided powers distributed in the Constitution, his belief that the bovine masses needed unrestricted leadership, and his contempt for individualism. This became more than mere theory during the War, a forgotten time in America when patriotic street gangs ran amok, peace advocates were jailed for "sedition," the economy came under an unprecedented degree of state control, and the free press was openly crushed -- all at the behest of a president who believed himself divinely inspired to restore moral health to the nation, and indeed the world.
Goldberg delivers other impressive debating points. He devotes overdue attention to the embrace of coercive eugenics by the "best" minds of interwar progressivism. He puts acknowledged quasi-fascists like the Canadian radio star Father Charles Coughlin and Louisiana governor Huey Long in their correct socialist context, showing that they cannot rightly be called "right-wing" and that no one would have described them as such in their time. And he rightly identifies a streak of blindly fascist youth-and action-worship among the New Left student radicals of the 1960s, convincingly comparing their lives and mythos to those of the Nazi martyr Horst Wessel -- although Goldberg has a major unacknowledged problem here, insofar as the New Left bomb-throwers hated the guts of "weak-kneed" liberals.
He perhaps descends into even shakier polemic in reserving a full chapter to the fascist qualities of Hillary Clinton's "politics of meaning" -- but I defy any honest moderate to deny that he feels a slight shudder of horror whenever he is reminded of the maxim that "It takes a village to raise a child." The f-word is one that should be used with care. To a surprising degree, Goldberg handles it thus. I fear I cannot find a better term for his book than the dreadful cliche "eye-opening."
Link
Colby Cosh, National Post
Published: Friday, February 15, 2008
Jonah Goldberg's controversial new book Liberal Fascism has all the faults you might expect from a book by Jonah Goldberg. It is written in a breezy, beseeching personal style better suited to the Internet, where Goldberg has made a name for himself as one of the blogosphere's top conservative pundits, than to a permanent work between covers. Some of the historical examples he uses will age fast and be confusing to future readers (which "L.A. riots" is he talking about, Dad?). The inflammatory cover art works at cross-purposes with Goldberg's serious intentions. And, yes, the book does overreach in advancing its central hypothesis that there is a recurring menace of nationalistic state-worship in American leftist politics.
But it doesn't overreach too far -- certainly not nearly as far as liberals go every day in associating the contemporary right with fascist traditions. Don't trust those who "review" Liberal Fascism by writing off National Review's Goldberg as a boyish goofball riding the helter-skelter of conservative intellectual decline. This book deals with the concept of "fascism" in a serious, informed way, acknowledging it as a phenomenon easier to recognize than to define. It relies on the established, and frankly decisive, argument that fascism was, in practice, communism without the internationalism -- a revolutionary, anticapitalist, antibourgeois phenomenon of the left that belongs on the same side of the political spectrum as communism, not at the opposite end. And much of what Goldberg has to say about the fascist strain in "progressive" politics from the late 19th century to now requires the author to be confronted, not merely dismissed.
Nothing in Liberal Fascism is going to astonish those of us familiar with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Leftism: from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse (1974) in one or another of its incarnations. Goldberg does not mention Kuehnelt-Leddihn, which seems like an odd omission, as the old traditionalist-Catholic Ritter wielded a large influence on National Review in its heyday and on its founder, William F. Buckley. The hard-to-find older book retains its idiosyncratic hold today on a cult of conservative admirers, but it is possible that Goldberg was trying deliberately to put his argument on an entirely separate foundation, and he is, unlike Kuehnelt-Leddihn, primarily concerned with the American context.
In constructing his narrative of the 20th century, Goldberg is more successful the further back he goes. He regards the Progressive movement as nothing less than American-style fascism before there was such a word; in his view it reached its culmination in the oppressive political environment of the First World War. This is a harsh judgment on early local Progressive reformers who sought to clean up city governments and make the franchise broader and more effective. It's telling, for a close reader, that Goldberg entirely avoids dealing with major figures such as Robert La Follette.
But how can any decent modern liberal deny that Goldberg's identification of Woodrow Wilson as a proto-fascist is accurate? Goldberg's chapter on Wilson is near-essential reading for all students of American history, whatever their political stripe. It is only because his own voluminous poli-sci works are not read anymore that we ignore Wilson's racism, his fawning over authoritarian models like Bismarck, his preference for a unitary state over the divided powers distributed in the Constitution, his belief that the bovine masses needed unrestricted leadership, and his contempt for individualism. This became more than mere theory during the War, a forgotten time in America when patriotic street gangs ran amok, peace advocates were jailed for "sedition," the economy came under an unprecedented degree of state control, and the free press was openly crushed -- all at the behest of a president who believed himself divinely inspired to restore moral health to the nation, and indeed the world.
Goldberg delivers other impressive debating points. He devotes overdue attention to the embrace of coercive eugenics by the "best" minds of interwar progressivism. He puts acknowledged quasi-fascists like the Canadian radio star Father Charles Coughlin and Louisiana governor Huey Long in their correct socialist context, showing that they cannot rightly be called "right-wing" and that no one would have described them as such in their time. And he rightly identifies a streak of blindly fascist youth-and action-worship among the New Left student radicals of the 1960s, convincingly comparing their lives and mythos to those of the Nazi martyr Horst Wessel -- although Goldberg has a major unacknowledged problem here, insofar as the New Left bomb-throwers hated the guts of "weak-kneed" liberals.
He perhaps descends into even shakier polemic in reserving a full chapter to the fascist qualities of Hillary Clinton's "politics of meaning" -- but I defy any honest moderate to deny that he feels a slight shudder of horror whenever he is reminded of the maxim that "It takes a village to raise a child." The f-word is one that should be used with care. To a surprising degree, Goldberg handles it thus. I fear I cannot find a better term for his book than the dreadful cliche "eye-opening."
Link
I may have to post a few educational excerpts from Jonah's book for the enjoyment of the farleftoids here.
It doesn't seem logical to blame the current ills of the US on so-called "Liberal Fascists" since the liberals have been completely out of power and out of vogue in the US for several years now. Also, one should bear in mind that it is teh neo-conservatives who have the socialist leanings, not the liberals. Liberals supprot, for example, leaglization of pot and gay marriage. These are steps that would make people MORE free, not less free. Neo-conservatives in the US generally support arbitrary detention, torture, warrantless telephone tapping, massive government spending, increasing of enforcement agencies, more laws banning stuff they see as immoral and so on.
Neither the Liberals or Conservatvies, as they are currently, strike me as particularly fascist. Comparing present-day Canada to Nazi Germany, or Stalin's USSR is just plain silly.
As Blue Nose said, the term "fascist" has just been inflated to a meaningless catch-all term to be applied to something you really don't like.
mapleleafsnation @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:12 pm
Mustang corporatism is the equivalent of a government that is a 'capitalist paradise'. A market liberal government would adopt a form (not a pure form) of corporatism.
Corporations goal is to gain power in their own fields of society. That completely goes against fascism as it splits power among corporations (and away from the state). Fascism means unity I would like to remind you. I'm not sure if you understand this concept. However you seem to make a huge of a good logic (but faulty concept) so what are your sources?
"fascists tend to think of hierarchy not as social transmission through legal inheritance, but as a biological transmission of racial qualities" -Mustang1
Here you specifically said fascists, not nazis. This is outlined in your text. This comment makes an assumption that fascists generally behave like Nazis because what you mentioned is a quality (as something that describes) of nazism, not fascism.
Standard form:
1. Mustang1 and Mapleleafsnation agree that Nazis believe that social classes are defined biologically. "Hitler DID see social systems based on race criteria" -Mustang1. Mapleleafsnation agrees to that
2. Mustang1 said 'Fascists tend to think of hierarchy [...] as a biological transmission of racial qualities'.
3. Premise two and premise 1 can't both be right.
4. 'racism+fascism=Nazism' (Ball, 2006).
Conclusion: Premise one is right and premise two is false because fascism isn't related to racism but nazism is. (why do you think some groups referred to as 'neo-nazis' don't actually hate jews but other minorities?)
Now read what you said again. 'Fascists tend to think of hierarchy [...] as a biological transmission of racial qualities' -Mustang1
Do you know what a caste (I made a spelling mistake, sorry) is? 'A system in which class is ascribed by birth' (Mitchell, 2008). What you said is exactly this. Classes are a social hierarchy. Castes are transmitted through blood (biological transmission) lines. This is a caste. I'll put this in standard form so it's clear.
1. A caste is a system in which class is ascribed by birth (Mitchell, 2008).
2. Classes are a social hierarchy.
3. Castes is transmitted through birth.
4. Mustang1 said hierarchy is transmitted biologically.
5. Mustang1 said Fascists think of hierarchy as transmitted biologically.
Conclusion: Mustang1 thinks 'fascists tend to' (mustang1) believe in caste.
I'm not arguing that Hitler didn't believe in social darwinism. In fact he did, we agree on this. However, Nazism does not mean fascism. That's like saying that what a son says, the father said. In some cases they might think the same way, but the son and father's opinion will differ many times.
On to my promised definition of conservatism. Just be careful that it might not be 100% accurate because I'm a conservative and nobody is safe from the 'Halo effect'. Some of my comments might make conservatism look better than it really is (I'm always willing to question my political beliefs). However the bigger points should be accurate, I hope. Go ahead and question it if you feel I'm completely wrong, if I am I will willingly admit it.
Conservatism is the ideology of imperfection (Ball, 2006). Now I believe all of you are reading this and saying 'So he implies liberals are perfect?' but that's not what it means. You remember how I explained that liberals see human nature as bad (or good, but I didn't talk about this so I won't develop on that, it would complicate it too much)? This is why I talked about liberalism first, it makes it easy to place conservatism relatively to it. Well Burke (first thinker of conservatism) believed that human nature is imperfect, this is a more realistic view. Also, a social contract (a metaphysical agreement to give up freedom for security) is not what will allow us to become perfect, as a matter of fact they believed that any government that is based on a social contract is corrupt because the government would want to take away too much freedom for not enough security (Perhaps George W. Bush?).
What they think would make us perfect is a slow but steady improvement of society, not through reforms but through 'evolution' (they have an organic view of society, but that concept is a bit too complicated for me to even dare attempt to say I master, just know that this organic view is not related to social Darwinism). Burke didn't use the term evolution but it resumes his idea well. What do I mean by evolving? Basically the same thing as biologists mean to the evolution of animals. Each generation keeps what is good and removes what is bad.
The last sentence of the last paragraph is a key to understand other concepts. I have a quotation (I think by Burke but I can't confirm) that goes this way 'Every new generations are savages that must be tamed by the institutions in place.' This belief is a nice way to resume many values of conservatism.
1. Hierarchy
2. Tradition
3. Order
4. Established institutions (My teacher said mainly Church, but I argued government and he agreed).
Those are all necessary if you want to preserve the good stuff. To start with, if there is no order, few things will be good, right? Traditions are basically a record of all the good stuff of the past of a society, a metaphysical guide of the good things of society. Hierarchy and established institutions are very similar, they both serve the purpose of promoting order and tradition. Those four main values (subjectively picked by me as I feel they are the most important and the other ways are repetition/included in those four bigger ones) all work together like the organs of a body to make sure society works well, if one fails everything will fail just like in your body (a hint at what I meant by 'organic view of society' that the conservatives have).
An interesting way to describe the conservatives way to see the evolution of society is this example. "If you and your significant other buy a two bedroom house, and you have a baby each two years. Eventually the house will be too small for all those people, right? A liberal would say 'Buy a new house', however the house has some sentimental values, it's the family's first house and they know the neighborhood so instead conservatives would say 'Instead of buying a new house, we should simply renovate and add more rooms this way we'll keep what we like in our house, but still meet the needs of our family'[sic]" (Corless, 2007 note that I think the author sourced it from someone else).
I'll keep playing with this example to further explain conservatism. Eventually, the mother will reach menopause (or be tired of having kids I assume). When this time comes, the house will fit their needs completely, they will not need to further change it ever again right (it's probably going to be something like a mansion if they add a room every two years...)? Well this is exactly how conservatives see society, once humans are perfect we will not need to change anything (changing something would mean falling back to imperfection). This explains why conservatives like the Status Quo so much. In theory this works, of course in reality it could seriously be doubted that humans will ever be perfect, which is why conservatives do allow some change to happen.
This was a summary of the ideology of conservatism. In my minds it's much simpler than liberalism because that's the only trend. Liberalism has a bunch of different flavors...
So after all of this, where does fascism fit? Is it more liberal? Is it more conservative? A political scientist would say neither and both, it depends.
http://www.canadaka.net/modules.php?nam ... c&start=30
Read the post on this page before continuing. Fascism and liberalism were defined there (and also there's a political line I will be using).
Fascism is a regime, or if you prefer a system of government. Regimes fit into governments and ideologies.
An example that some people might be a bit more familiar with (but that I feel might be as misunderstood) is republicanism (do not confused with the Republican party) which is also a regime. A Republic isn't always a democracy (republic of China, some merchant republics of Italy) but it can often be (France, U.S.). Some republics are liberal (U.S.) some are communist (China) some are conservative (Some merchant republics).
Do you get where I'm going?
Fascism cannot be pin-pointed on the political line I posted. Stalin fascism was also on the far left, communist fascism. Hitler fascism would be on the extreme left, radical fascism. However it could also be on the right, as Hitler wanted to have the German nation be like it 'used to be' (in his mind), invading other countries was actually retrogressive for Hitler because he believed that he was claiming land that belonged to the German nation.
Fascism could in theory be liberal or conservative, however for this to happen it would be very hard.
A key concept that separates liberals from radicals (communists, socialists) is that they believe in the concept of law (because of the social contract). Liberals believe that all the change they make should be done inside the country's code of law (constitution). In western civilization where most countries are governed by a democracy. Coming on top and declaring yourself 'divine king that everybody has to listen to no matter what' is kind of hard to do inside a democracy. That's basically impossible in Canada (unless a party was to win 100% of the seats and would drastically alter the constitution). This means that Canadian liberals cannot be called fascist in a rational manner. Of course if you want to use it as an insult, go ahead...
Conservatism and fascism? It's also very hard to see happen in our modern world. Democracy is now a tradition in western civilization. So if a representative declare himself 'divine king that everybody has to listen to no matter what,' it would go against one of the basic ideas of conservatism because that's going against traditions. Also, conservative trends are most often present in 'good times'. Usually when things go well, people don't want to change things too much. Could this explain the coming of conservatives in power? I think so. The 90's were a decade of peace relatively to the crisis of the rest of the century. Everybody stop and ask yourself, would you mind reliving through the 90's and the early 21st century or take a risk of changing things and jeopardizing this? Republicains tried and it failed, right? Should Canada take the same risk?
Anyway this is what is called going off topic. As I was saying, conservatives usually are in power during good times. Fascism usually takes root in times of disorder and incertainty (the inter-war!). Hard time usually make people unite together to bring a solid front against problems. Fascism means unity. When there was a snowstorm, many of you probably helped your neighborhoods to shovel. Conservatism meeting fascism would be a very hard thing to see happen.
On this however, I have to be honest and say I'm wondering if the Renaissance absolute monarchies could be considered fascist? The concept didn't exist yet, but they were very centralized. Monarchy is a very traditional institution (two terms that I used to describe conservatism). It could be debated.
However in modern times I think that fascism meeting conservatives values is very unlikely and thus calling conservatives fascists shows a lack of knowledge, however it is a good insult?
Historically this insult was started by Stalin, Stalin basically called everything that wasn't socialist 'fascist'. This was his only way of pointing the differences between Hitler and him, more socialists people (but not communists) picked it up and called liberals and conservatives facists. Since liberals are closer to socialists, it ended up being liberals who are also calling conservatives fascist. I think conservatives calling liberals fascist is as irrational.
It's like saying 'You're stupid!' and then having somebody respond 'No, you're stupid!'.
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