On Liberal Fascism:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

As this book keeps recurring as a topic in this community, I'll remind the apologists for this particular piece of fishwrap what exactly it is that they're trying to claim as high scholarship on international fascism of the 1920s through the 1940s:

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.

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So, let's have a look-see. WEB Du Bois is this guy:



......

Yes, I totally see it! The guy who invented modern civil rights tactics would be absolutely fond of a pan-German Jew hater like Hitler.

Wilson hardly could have espoused fascism given that it didn't exist until the HARDING Administration and by then he was insensible from strokes. Mussolini, an ex-socialist, invented the movement. I suppose Wilson also had magic voodoo powers to influence events before they even happened.

I also hardly think the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Legion_of_America counts as "friendly." 

Someone also ought to talk to Goldberg about his misogyny issues. I mean, really, a schoolteacher giving a hug is equal to Babi Yar. *snerk*.

And that Irving Berlin song?

It goes like this:

In Japan our hands are tied, ve don't like it.
Mussolini's on our side, ve don't like it.

So those on this community that reference this particular book that could more or less define the TVTropes Critical Research Failure on its own........this is what you're referencing. And this, BTW, is why I have a hard time taking anything the Goldberg apologists say seriously.

Comments

That is.......not the best comparison:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism.

Stalinist society was uniquely vulnerable to quacks like this guy, who were able to exploit the ideologues for all they were worth. Had German so-called "intellectualism" lasted more than 12 years there would have been an awful lot of Lysenko analogues with the word "von" in their names.

Re: That is.......not the best comparison:

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

But the irony is, of course, that Aut disce, aut discede, manet sors tertia caedi (learn, leave, or be beaten) is the motto of Winchester College's schoolroom, and has been since soon after its founding in 1382. Current fees about £30,000 pa. The children of English Stalinists cost their parents a whole heap of money, and these days the school authorities have abolished all the beating too.

Re: That is.......not the best comparison:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Of course another irony is that due to Soviet rule many of the nationalities of the "prison of nations" were literate urban peoples after the USSR collapsed when the Russian Empire of 1917 was mostly a great mass of peasantry ruled by all-powerful landlords.