Becuase Everything Else Sucks

Jonah Goldberg: Liberals are Nazis

By Manila Ryce
Published Friday, December 28th, 2007, 6:19 pm
Filed under: Personal Posts, US Politics

Jonah Goldberg is a “conservative commentator”, which means rather than focusing on disagreements between philosophies, he makes a living attacking the character of anyone he disagrees with. When you take into account that Goldberg’s mother was the one who told Linda Tripp to deceive Monica Lewinsky into confiding in her as a friend, you might have an idea of the kind of traditional conservative family values that young Jonah was instilled with. As with all Neocon pundits, his strategy is to keep his opposition on the defensive with outlandish claims that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. His latest rather sloppy attempt is to call liberals fascists.

Let’s take a look at his Amazon summary:

“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents.

So rather than make a book dispelling these valid points concerning the fascist characteristic of the conservative movement in the states (such as nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, and privatization of the government) Goldberg simply hurls the same charge at the accuser? Need we remind Goldberg that scapegoating all problems on one group of people is another characteristic of a fascist society?

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?

It obviously isn’t effective at shutting them up, is it? Actually, the group whose ideas are considered “beyond the political pale” in America is the Left. We’re exposed to the entire spectrum of conservative thought, from Neocons like you to Paleocons like Paul (don’t tell me the media ignores Paul when Scarborough, Tucker, and Beck have all pronounced their undying love for him), but when’s the last time you’ve heard anything from real liberals like Noam Chomsky, or even Dennis Kucinich in the corporate media? When we do hear of genuinely leftist policies being enacted in a place such as Venezuela, it is unacceptable for anyone respectable to view these changes as anything other than steps towards authoritarianism. If Pelosi and Clinton are what you consider liberals, then it’s time to read some more books before you decide on writing one.

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.

Again, out of those three choices, only FDR could be considered a liberal. Hillary’s party affiliation means nothing. Ideologically she belongs to Jonah’s camp. Oh, and Hitler was about as socialist as Hillary is progressive. Comparing two right-wing fascists to each other, whom you define as liberals, is not a valid argument. Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

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.

Um, they also killed Jews. But why bring up the most obvious result of Nazism when you can focus on the minor similarities which nearly all of Europe shares? Here’s an eerie fact: Hitler’s last name begins with the same two letters as Hillary’s first name! Oh no! You know who else the Nazis killed? They killed liberals, particularly communists and socialists, who they claimed were conspirators guilty of treason. Now why would Nazis silence people who subscribe to the same socialist philosophy?

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.

Wrong. First off, we’ve already established that what Jonah defines as “modern progressivism” is Neocon-lite and not anywhere to the left, let alone center of the political spectrum. Secondly, everything about fascism is contrary to classic liberalism. The reason Goldberg compares “modern” liberal thought to “classic” fascist thought rather than classic to classic is because “modern progressivism” isn’t liberal at all. Hence, Jonah must know that his argument relies entirely on the misnomers of political terminology than actual philosophy. If a fascist claims to be a liberal, that’s all the proof Golberg needs to rail against liberalism.

“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.”

It’s actually the other way around. Hitler admired what the United States was able to do in terms of propaganda, the ghettoization of ethnic minorities, and other legalized tactics of control.

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.

Again, please explain how. Classic liberalism is profoundly anti-capitalist, so it’s contradictory to define any corporation as “liberal”. By listing wealthy organizations and groups considered to be the modern bourgeois as prime examples of “liberal fascism”, Golberg and the summary writer once again show how ignorant they are of the philosophy Golberg thinks he’s critiquing.

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.

Actually, Jonah shows us that what we’ve really forgotten is what liberalism is, and why we wish we knew just as little about the Right.

h/t to Blue Gal for making my world a little bit sadder by introducing me to this fuckwad. I’ve now paid forward the favor. You’re welcome.

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11 Responses to “Jonah Goldberg: Liberals are Nazis”

  1. Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.

    Well, that explains the lack of eggs at Tengrain’s Little Hut.

    Regards,

    Tengrain

    Ps - Actually, I’m surprised Doughy Pantload has been off your radar. He seems so ripe for your plundering, Manila. The part that is really funny about this turd of a book is that he essentially had it ghost written. He advertised for “research assistants” all last year at Pooh’s Corner Online.

    Tengrain
    12/28/07 at 10:28 pm

  2. Yeah Ten, there are down sides to not having cable. I guess that goes for having feathers up your butt too, but I have yet to discover any.

    Manila Ryce
    12/28/07 at 10:39 pm

  3. the saddest part is that people will actually buy this book, even when it lands on the $1 table along side Coulters and Hannity. Also this delusional clown has spawned another Goldberg…he has a kid. I guess the acorns dont fall from the Lucianne nut tree. I hope his father is turning in his grave.

    this is the definition of a fuckwad

    distributorcap
    12/29/07 at 9:20 am

  4. He does have some good points though. I want to read the book before I comment on it, but I always thought that environmentalism is a totalitarian movement.

    Keith
    12/29/07 at 1:17 pm

  5. @Keith
    Environmentalism is just another word for not shitting where we eat, like we did for hundreds of thousands of years before we regarded everything on God’s green earth as a commodity. I’ve always thought of pollution as being totalitarian in nature, since it’s almost exclusively committed by large corporations of which there is no democratic control. Environmentalism is a democratic movement working against the tyranny of business.

    Manila Ryce
    12/29/07 at 4:49 pm

  6. Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. If only life were as simple as you paint it.

    Instead of resorting to the same fear-based, vilifying tactics as so many on the right like to resort to these days, why not do some research?

    Your claims are so ridiculous that they almost don’t even justify refuting, but I will concede you this, reluctantly. Any philosophy in its pure form that takes into account neither irony nor entertains the necessity of reform is dangerous. But in saying this, let me also add that that tendency is the domain of BOTH the right and the left equally.

    Comrade Kevin
    12/29/07 at 5:01 pm

  7. You know, I saw this in my email earlier and immediately sent Distributorcap a note admonishing him to come by. I know how much he loathes Jonah.

    I loathe Jonah too, but reading this raised the level by about a thousand percent. What a complete and utter ass. You know, it kills me that this kind of hate can be spewed and he gets paid for it. Even when his crap ass book is on the $1 table.

    FranIam
    12/29/07 at 7:15 pm

  8. So let’s review: “Jonah Goldberg is a “conservative commentator”, which means rather than focusing on disagreements between philosophies, he makes a living attacking the character of anyone he disagrees with.” Yet that is precisely what liberals do. It is what Manila Ryce and others did here, now.

    Unwarranted, unsupported, undocumented, dishonest, cruel character assassination is bedrock essential policy of liberals in the U.S. today. “Bush is a liar.” “Bush lied, people died.” “Bush is a terrorist.” “Bush and the U.S. military have murdered over 600,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.” Of course the list of such despicable lies is endless. Yes they are lies because there is no credible evidence to support them. They are simply and blatantly malicious statements designed to destroy the character of the target without regard to even the slightest basis in truth.

    Jonah said: “Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.”

    Manila said: “It’s actually the other way around. Hitler admired what the United States was able to do in terms of propaganda, the ghettoization of ethnic minorities, and other legalized tactics of control.”

    What? Manila, you have managed to support Jonah’s point while intending to refute it. Hitler admired the propaganda skills of the American left (the liberals), which were so successfully practiced in a “free press” environment because the “free press” was (and still is) dominated and controlled by the liberals. Wilson (Democrat) was a racist white supremacist and Roosevelt (liberal Democrat) did in fact incorporate many fascist policies in the New Deal. Their “… ghettoization of ethnic minorities, and other legalized tactics of control.” were not Republican, conservative, or neo-con in nature but were conceived and implemented by liberal Democrats.

    When Jonah says: ““Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents.” And: “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?” He is utterly and factually correct.

    Only an ignorant or dishonest liberal propagandist would say otherwise.

    Mac
    12/30/07 at 2:17 pm

  9. @Mac
    “What? Manila, you have managed to support Jonah’s point while intending to refute it.”

    Nice turn around, but my comment was in reply to Jonah’s argument that the West was inspired by Hitler. A little bit of comprehension goes a long way. Jonah was making the case that Liberalism was influenced by Hitler, not that Hitler was influenced by Liberalism. If in his book Jonah then goes on to make the opposite claim that Hitler was inspired by those he also claims were inspired by him, then he makes a rather successful argument against himself by contradicting his previous statement without my help.

    You’re also making a huge mistake by confusing Democrats with liberals and individual liberals with the entire philosophy of Liberalism. By this logic, I suppose pointing to the fascist ideals of Bush, who claims to be a Christian, would then mean that Christianity is a fascist philosophy? No, of course not. At most, you could claim that Bush follows a certain type of philosophy which is fascist in nature and apart from Christianity’s original teachings (as Chris Hedges does quite well in his book “American Fascists”). It insults your intelligence to just take a handful of convenient individuals who identify themselves with the philosophy you despise rather than analyzing the philosophy itself. State propaganda has been carried out by people who identify themselves as both conservative and liberal. Jonah is correct in highlighting Dewey as a fascist, but is incorrect in thinking his personal quest to create wartime hysteria is any reflection on Liberalism. Need I also mention that it’s a rather ironic claim coming from a warmonger like Jonah himself that such jingoism is a liberal trait? All things considered, Goldberg fails to make his case, and relies solely on guilt by association. We can apply this logic to other characteristics of the people we hate. John Dewey was a man too. Why not say all men are fascists? Why not say all white people are fascists? Why not claim all Americans are fascists? Simple. Because those are all idiotic arguments.

    Manila Ryce
    12/30/07 at 7:05 pm

  10. Hey man. Way to go on getting fuckwad up on the google search! I’m most impressed.

    Also, from your last post on this board, “It insults your intelligence to just take a handful of convenient individuals who identify themselves with the philosophy you despise rather than analyzing the philosophy itself.” Exactly how Communism was demonised, by looking at Stalin, Lenin and the Soviet empire rather than at the philosophy and the ideals of Communism.

    Vay Nadarajah
    01/15/08 at 2:45 am

  11. @Vay Nadarajah
    “Exactly how Communism was demonised, by looking at Stalin, Lenin and the Soviet empire rather than at the philosophy and the ideals of Communism.”

    Very true. If you actually look at the philosophy, the Soviet Union was not communist at all. It was a state capitalist system. Everyone’s just looking for a scapegoat.

    Manila Ryce
    01/15/08 at 4:39 am

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