On Liberal Fascism:
28/9/10 09:42![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
underlankers.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsAs 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.
_______________
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.
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.
_______________
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.
Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 19:12 (UTC)Jonah Goldberg is lying to you. Enumerating every one of his lies would practically fill a new book, so I’ll just start here with the biggest one.
”the fascist label was projected onto the right by a complex sleight of hand…before the war, fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States…After the war, the American progressives who had praised Mussolini and even looked sympathetically at Hitler in the 1920s and 1930s had to distance themselves from the horrors of Nazism. Accordingly, leftist intellectuals redefined fascism as “right-wing” and projected their own sins onto conservatives, even as they continued to borrow heavily from fascist and pre-fascist thought.”
Anyone going through periodical archives of the 20s and 30s, anyone reading writers of that era, knows that both liberals and conservatives associated fascism with the right wing well before WWII. Travel books of the 1930s, for instance, listed the Nazi party under right wing political groups, as did liberal magazines like The New Yorker and conservative magazines like Time. It took no “liberal sleight of hand” to associate fascism with the right.
...It’s fascinating to observe, for instance, how Goldberg handles the knotty problem of Henry Ford:
“Hitler said he was a great admirer of Henry Ford, though he didn’t mention Ford’s virulent anti-Semitism. What appealed to Hitler about Ford was that he ‘produces for the masses. That little car of his has done more than anything else to destroy class differences.’”
This is practically the only mention of Ford you will find in this book, and it strongly implies that Hitler’s main attraction to Ford was not Ford’s bigotry, but the fact that Ford produced cars “for the masses.”
It was Ford’s anti-Semitism and his beliefs about the superiority of “Anglo-Saxons” that made him a hero to the Nazis, who bought up translations of his book The International Jew at a tremendous rate. It was also his anti-Communism and, in spite of all Hitler’s rhetoric about eliminating “class differences,” Ford’s disdain for the concept of equality. Ford believed that there was “no greater absurdity and no greater disservice to humanity in general than to insist that all men are equal,” a philosophy that jibed quite well with Hitler’s belief that “men are not of equal value or of equal importance.”
Nor is there much talk about the Spanish Civil War, an odd omission in any discussion of 20th century fascism. (But then, the number of leftists and liberals who flocked to Spain to fight fascism well before the Second World War wouldn’t do much for Goldberg’s claims about that liberal plot to associate fascism with the right after WWII, would it?) Nor is there much about such Hitler supporters in Germany as Emil Kirdorf, an industrialist “so reactionary that he called the policies of the Imperial government ‘dangerously radical’” because it “had allowed Bismarck’s antisocialist law to lapse.” (From Who Financed Hitler, by James and Suzanne Pool) or steel heir Fritz Thyssen.
What Goldberg is doing here is juxtaposing the complex politics of the 20th century against the ignorance of many 21st century young people who have apparently gleaned their notions about the rise of fascism from skimming novels or half-watching movies about it while they blog on their laptops. Goldberg then declares this historical ignorance to be the fault of liberals out to fool us all and presents facts well known to anyone who’s bothered to read up on the subject as if they were carefully hidden secrets. At the same time, he carefully omits facts that indicate the more widespread popularity of Hitler and Mussolini and Franco among their contemporaries on the right.
I’d be delighted to discuss it with you at greater length-- I'd especially like to have a cozy chat about the connection between Jonah Goldberg's eagerness to revise history and his admiration for the bloodthirsty policies of mass murderer Augusto Pinochet.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 20:39 (UTC)It's easier for people to remember the Comintern than it was to remember International fascism was just as willing to back ideological cohorts as international capitalism and communism were during the Cold War. I find it interesting also that the British Tories who led Britain into war in 1939 at just thought of Hitler as a good chap who'd revived German national pride and nothing evil would come of Nazism.....
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 20:44 (UTC)What you talk about is the sleight of hand. You claim liberals and conservatives, but only cite Time, which supported right wing causes only under Henry Luce as a form of anti-communism, and probably saw the fascist types either through the nonfactual prism of his liberal counterparts or through an "enemy of my enemy" prism. Which it is I'm not sure.
This is practically the only mention of Ford you will find in this book, and it strongly implies that Hitler’s main attraction to Ford was not Ford’s bigotry, but the fact that Ford produced cars “for the masses.”
Okay. And this disproves things why? You quote Ford at length, but never actually prove that Hitler liked Ford because of his anti-semitism, or whether it was simply an added feature. Goldberg states quite clearly that Hitler did not mention Ford's anti-semitism as a reason for liking him on page 147, so the statement is accurate according to the facts. You provide nothing to indicate that it wasn't his industrial attitude that made him appealing.
Nor is there much talk about the Spanish Civil War, an odd omission in any discussion of 20th century fascism. (But then, the number of leftists and liberals who flocked to Spain to fight fascism well before the Second World War wouldn’t do much for Goldberg’s claims about that liberal plot to associate fascism with the right after WWII, would it?)
Sure it would - again, friend of my enemy. That they liked the Communists more doesn't mean that the entire premise is broken.
Nor is there much about such Hitler supporters in Germany as Emil Kirdorf, an industrialist “so reactionary that he called the policies of the Imperial government ‘dangerously radical’” because it “had allowed Bismarck’s antisocialist law to lapse.” (From Who Financed Hitler, by James and Suzanne Pool) or steel heir Fritz Thyssen.
The book doesn't talk about who you want him to talk about. Big deal. This doesn't disprove anything, either.
What Goldberg is doing here is juxtaposing the complex politics of the 20th century against the ignorance of many 21st century young people who have apparently gleaned their notions about the rise of fascism from skimming novels or half-watching movies about it while they blog on their laptops.
Wildly, wildly incorrect. What Goldberg is doing is synthesizing nearly 100 years of history and scholarship into a volume that succintly sets the record straight as to the roots of the progressive movement and the parallels between the American left and the ideas behind fascism.
Goldberg then declares this historical ignorance to be the fault of liberals out to fool us all and presents facts well known to anyone who’s bothered to read up on the subject as if they were carefully hidden secrets.
If the facts are well known, then you shouldn't be complaining about them. Goldberg is clear early on that this is Not News, it's just not something that the left wants to really publicize, and for good reason.
At the same time, he carefully omits facts that indicate the more widespread popularity of Hitler and Mussolini and Franco among their contemporaries on the right.
So you say. But it's not about popularity, since, again, the fascists were often fighting the Communists and the Communists were "worse." It's about ideology, which is where he spends the bulk of his time.
So yeah, I'd love to see the information you've got that somehow proves Goldberg wrong. So far, this isn't a great start.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 20:50 (UTC)Hitler did not pin an Iron Cross on him for designing the assembly line, buck-o.
There were a significant number of Communists in the Interwar USA. The Stalinists were very different than the Nazis. The difference can be seen in how Hitler allowed his troops to kill 1/4 of Belarus where the USSR strictly enforced the discipline of *their* conquering troops.
Actually it does, as I assure you that the German industrialists were not about to back Hitler if they were a bunch of Commies, they would have backed the KPD.
The actual American Left of Eugene V. Debs and the Wobblies liked Lenin's boys, not Hitler's.
Actually it's because a good number of them hated those Jews running the Soviet Union and didn't really care if Hitler's conquest of the USSR meant the extermination of all the Slavs and Gypsies and Jews in the Soviet Union, you can't cleanse society of those filthy Reds without a little bloodshed, after all.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 20:53 (UTC)There were a shitload of American conservatives who saw Obama as the way out and the change we needed and that he was a good candidate for standing for those things. Are we going to blame Obama on the conservatives, or put him in league with them, based on that?
Actually it does, as I assure you that the German industrialists were not about to back Hitler if they were a bunch of Commies, they would have backed the KPD.
Assure me based on what?
The actual American Left of Eugene V. Debs and the Wobblies liked Lenin's boys, not Hitler's.
The socialists liked the socialists, yes. The progressives, who were like the socialists but with rare moments of clarity, however...
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 21:05 (UTC)Namely that there were actual Communists they would have backed before they backed the Jew haters?
I do not think you understand the Palmer Raid gang very well if you say President Birth of a Nation Wilson was a Communist.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 21:16 (UTC)For that reason, no. For other reasons, maybe.
I do not think you understand the Palmer Raid gang very well if you say President Birth of a Nation Wilson was a Communist.
I don't recall saying Wilson was a Communist, so I guess that solves one problem.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 21:23 (UTC)Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 21:28 (UTC)Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 28/9/10 21:40 (UTC)Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 30/9/10 02:57 (UTC)I cited Time (and The New Yorker) as a single example of the consensus. (If you've got some contemporary quotes aside from Hayek who referred to the Nazis as "leftist" by all means cite them.) Henry Luce saw the Nazis precisely the way everybody else at the time saw the Nazis. And he was not prone to the "enemy of my enemy fallacy" as his distaste for Joseph McCarthy indicates.
As for Henry Ford -- oh come now. I've posted facts that indicate the Nazis admired Ford for his anti-Semitism. And the fact that Jonah Goldberg says something does not make it "a fact." During his trial in 1923, a witness referred to Hitler's admiration for Henry Ford as "a great individualist and a great anti-Semite."
Is it your contention that Ford was a leftist?
BDJ: Sure it would - again, friend of my enemy.
What "friend of my enemy" are you talking about here? Franco was a fascist. The leftists then as now were sworn enemies of fascism. The Spanish Civil war was regarded then and remembered now as a battle between leftism and fascism. Franco was not a "friend of leftism's enemy." He was the enemy.
bdj: The book doesn't talk about who you want him to talk about.
The book doesn't talk about important facts that disprove its silly premise.
What Goldberg is doing is lying his fool head off and counting on young readers not knowing anything about the Third Reich.
bdj: it's not about popularity, since, again, the fascists were often fighting the Communists and the Communists were "worse." It's about ideology, which is where he spends the bulk of his time.
And the Nazi ideology on women, race, labor unions, and art put them firmly on the side of the right.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 1/10/10 16:51 (UTC)Yes, you cited one conservative publication - unless you're trying to make the case that The New Yorker was a conservative publication, which is silly. That one publication got it wrong doesn't mean much.
Henry Luce saw the Nazis precisely the way everybody else at the time saw the Nazis. And he was not prone to the "enemy of my enemy fallacy" as his distaste for Joseph McCarthy indicates.
If he has a distaste for McCarthy, that kind of proves my point - being anti-Communist trumped being anti-fascist.
As for Henry Ford -- oh come now. I've posted facts that indicate the Nazis admired Ford for his anti-Semitism.
Nazis, yes. Hitler? Didn't appear to be a top reason, although I'm positive it didn't hurt.
And the fact that Jonah Goldberg says something does not make it "a fact." During his trial in 1923, a witness referred to Hitler's admiration for Henry Ford as "a great individualist and a great anti-Semite."
"A witness." For what it's worth, Goldberg's sourcing has been better than yours on this, and he's not trying to perpetuate the "fascist = right" myth, so I'm prone to take his scholarship more seriously at this point.
What "friend of my enemy" are you talking about here? Franco was a fascist. The leftists then as now were sworn enemies of fascism. The Spanish Civil war was regarded then and remembered now as a battle between leftism and fascism. Franco was not a "friend of leftism's enemy." He was the enemy.
Again, being anti-Communist trumped being anti-fascist. Keep in mind the American mindset of the time, which was significantly reversed during the war.
The book doesn't talk about important facts that disprove its silly premise.
Assuming it disproves anything, sure. You call it important - that doesn't make it so.
What Goldberg is doing is lying his fool head off and counting on young readers not knowing anything about the Third Reich.
Odd, then, that so many people who know so much about the Third Reich agree with his premise.
And the Nazi ideology on women, race, labor unions, and art put them firmly on the side of the right.
Highly disputable.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 3/10/10 21:20 (UTC)Your comments about Henry Luce and Time indicate the extent to which the kind of historical revisionism you've embraced just leads to more and more historical revisionism. There' s no question about Luce being a conservative Anti-Communist, and if you'd said differently back then (or indeed as recently as ten years ago) you'd have been laughed out of the room. Are you seriously saying that anyone who disliked Joseph McCarthy must have been a commie sympathizer? Including Whittaker Chambers?
And again -- do you consider Henry Ford to have been a leftist?
I am plainly much more familiar with the "American mindset" during the Spanish Civil War than you are. Actually having met and spoken to people who were alive then (at least one of whom actually went to Span and fought there) helps. And no, I'm sorry, it is not "highly disputable" that Nazi ideology on women, race, labor unions, and art "put them firmly on the side of the right." Hitler loathed the advances women had made under the liberal Weimar Republic and rolled those advances back. His profoundly conservative, "let's-hearken-back-to-a-Golden-age" attitude towards art also reflects that of the right wing, as did his arresting labor union leaders -- something that gladdened the heart of his wealthy contributors and convinced them they'd found an ally.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 4/10/10 00:41 (UTC)Well, the Goldberg book is all about this. Besides, you act as if consensus entirely matters here - that a largely liberal media (even then) would try to hang it on the right should shock no one.
Your comments about Henry Luce and Time indicate the extent to which the kind of historical revisionism you've embraced just leads to more and more historical revisionism. There' s no question about Luce being a conservative Anti-Communist, and if you'd said differently back then (or indeed as recently as ten years ago) you'd have been laughed out of the room. Are you seriously saying that anyone who disliked Joseph McCarthy must have been a commie sympathizer? Including Whittaker Chambers?
You seem to have utterly missed my point.
I am plainly much more familiar with the "American mindset" during the Spanish Civil War than you are. Actually having met and spoken to people who were alive then (at least one of whom actually went to Span and fought there) helps
To a point. It also hurts - you're speaking from a place that you may be too close to.
And no, I'm sorry, it is not "highly disputable" that Nazi ideology on women, race, labor unions, and art "put them firmly on the side of the right." Hitler loathed the advances women had made under the liberal Weimar Republic and rolled those advances back. His profoundly conservative, "let's-hearken-back-to-a-Golden-age" attitude towards art also reflects that of the right wing, as did his arresting labor union leaders -- something that gladdened the heart of his wealthy contributors and convinced them they'd found an ally.
And if you consider those conservative-only viewpoints, well, it sure fits your predisposed notion.
So do you have anything of substance here or what?
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 5/10/10 02:11 (UTC)When you're talking about terms like "right wing" and "left wing", yes, consensus matters. It's called "common usage" and it's the very basis of language.
bdj: that a largely liberal media (even then) would try to hang it on the right should shock no one.
Except that the only way you can argue that this was all a liberal conspiracy is by defining pretty much every other diarist, letter writer, journalist, travel author, and commentator of the time as "liberal." Not to mention every historian.
"Hitler was seeking in MEIN KAMPF to establish sole and undisputed claim to the leadership of the volkisch Right." -- Ian Kershaw, HITLER, (1999)
"In little more than a year the party had become a respected force in Bavarian right-wing politics, largely because of Hitler's magnetic personality and obsessive drive." -- John Toland, ADOLF HITLER, (1976)
"But the heaviest responsibility of all rests on the German Right, who not only failed to combine with the other parties in defense of the Republic, but made Hitler their partner in a coalition government." -- Alan Bullock, HITLER, A STUDY IN TYRANNY, 1952.
If the Nazis were "liberal," why has Glenn Beck found Nazi sympathizers like Elizabeth Dillings so appealing?
And again -- do you consider Henry Ford a leftist?
bdj: you're speaking from a place that you may be too close to.
I'm speaking from a place much closer to reality and the actual facts than you are. So far you've given no indication you've read anything at all on this subject than Jonah Goldberg's whoppers.
bdj: And if you consider those conservative-only viewpoints, well, it sure fits your predisposed notion.
They sure as Hell aren't typical left wing viewpoints -- certainly not here in the US, and not in Europe either then or now.
So are you ever going to cite a few contemporaries of Hitler and a few respected historians who refer to him as "leftist?" And are you ever going to answer the question I've already asked a couple of times -- Was Henry Ford a leftist?
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 5/10/10 02:54 (UTC)Common wisdom is not always common. Many people believing something false does not make that thing true.
Except that the only way you can argue that this was all a liberal conspiracy is by defining pretty much every other diarist, letter writer, journalist, travel author, and commentator of the time as "liberal." Not to mention every historian.
Not at all. That the left drives the media, thus drives the narrative, means that those ideas come to the forefront. Many conservative writers, surely, latched onto that narrative for a variety of reasons.
I'm speaking from a place much closer to reality and the actual facts than you are.
Not that you have much in facts to go on so far. You're arguing fact via consensus, not fact via evidence.
So far you've given no indication you've read anything at all on this subject than Jonah Goldberg's whoppers.
One does not need to have read Liberal Fascism to come to these conclusions. But, then again, if you're operating under the incorrect premises about the right the the way you have been for however many years now, it's a problem that goes deeper than simply dismissing the evidence that doesn't suit you.
You assume that those who do not share your viewpoints aren't well-read. It may be that we are well-read, and that's where we've come to our conclusions, and not the other way around.
They sure as Hell aren't typical left wing viewpoints -- certainly not here in the US, and not in Europe either then or now.
Yikes.
Re: Shortened Version of What I Posted back in 2008:
Date: 5/10/10 03:23 (UTC)Was Elizabeth Dilling a leftist?
What have you read on the Third Reich and Hitler aside from Goldberg's book?
PFT: They sure as Hell aren't typical left wing viewpoints -- certainly not here in the US, and not in Europe either then or now.
bdj: Yikes.
Got any facts to offer, or are you just planning to emote?