I agree that the term “fascist” has been degraded to mean anything the speaker does not agree with, especially if the object of the insult is politically to the right of the speaker. This is very unfortunate, as it dilutes the original meaning of the term and actually blunts one’s understanding of genuine Fascism. However, I think that Jonah Goldberg also wields a wide brush and overuses the term.  I haven’t read his book yet, of course, so I am basing my comments on the SNN interview.

Frankly, I am unconvinced that liberalism is rooted in fascism. I am also bothered by a tendency, during the interview, of conflating anyone left of center into one left-wing current of authoritarianism and moonbattery. The left half of the spectrum runs from Stalinists  and Trotskyites all the way to supporters of a mild welfare state, and it includes legions of people who are democratic and sensible and who don't eat organic food.  Herewith, my thoughts. In advance, I apologize for the length.

1. It is true that leftists should not be assumed to be against anti-Semitism. In fact, the left only first became supportive of the Jews in the wake of the Dreyfus affair. And even after the affair was underway, there were prominent socialists who were anti-Dreyfus (Jules Guesde springs to mind). During the nineteenth century, some socialists and anarchists were outspokenly anti-Semitic because they associated Jews with capitalism. Think of Marx, Duhring, Bakunin, Proudhon, etc. And, of course, I don’t have to get into the horrid anti-Semitism of the Soviet bloc.

2. It is also true that, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was a fair amount of cross polination between the far right and far left. I could add some more examples to those Goldberg gave: Mussolini started his political life as a socialist. Many Nazis took the “Socialism” in “National Socialism” very seriously (the Strasser brothers, most prominently). In France at the end of the nineteenth century, Georges Boulanger was a nationalist and populist demagogue who, as a precursor to Hitler and Mussolini, had many admirers on the far left and proto-fascist right. The Vichy regime won over to its ranks several prominent socialists who had never stopped being socialists, but who were not averse to working for Petain's "National Revolution."  (Marcel Déat is the only name I remember, but there were others.) If I remember correctly, the economic system of “corporatism” was originally embraced by the left before it was definitively taken over by the fascists.

I don’t mean to draw up a laundry list of the sundry examples that I can think of off-hand, so I’ll stop here and just say that the extreme left and right did see some crossovers, or at least some fuzzy boundaries, in those years. That’s because both ends of the political spectrum were against capitalism and liberal democracy, and both were or claimed to be pro-labor and populist. (The communist labor movement’s color was red, the anarchist’s black, and the far right labor movement’s color was yellow.)

However…

3. To say that fascism was “a phenomenon of the left” seems to me to be an exaggeration. Fascism was a distinct movement with a distinct ideology. It shared some of the left’s anti-capitalism, at least in rhetoric, and it shared with Communism a totalitarian bent. But fascism’s overall ideals and vision were profoundly different from that of any social democrat, socialist or Communist. The fascists tended to be nationalistic in their orientation, not internationalist like the left. Though supposedly pro-labor, the fascists were against “class warfare.” They did not interpret history and economics in terms of class, but rather in terms of nation or state, or, in the Nazi case, in terms of race. The fascists didn’t aim for anything like leftwing socialism or Communism. Rather, they were for a cooperative relationship among the different classes of society, especially between management and labor within each sector of the economy--all of this overseen by the state. The state and big business would attend to the needs of labor, but they would also control labor, and certainly not to put power in the hands of the workers.

I also think that Goldberg is indulging in overstatement when he says that liberalism “has roots in fascism.” Yes, there are many on the left in the US who call themselves liberal and who behave obnoxiously. But roots in fascism? I’m not convinced. They can be intolerant, overbearing, dictatorial, and determined to impose their view on others, and they often demonize or ridicule those who disagree with them. But by that criterion, the Moral Majority were fascists, too.  Actually, I always thought that liberalism has its roots in some of the best parts of Western political heritage: the Enlightenment, John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes, FDR, and democratic reformers of every stripe. The goal of most liberals is to balance freedom with some measure of social justice, to combine loyalty to democratic institutions and the rights of private property and enterprise with an understanding that some measures are needed to ensure opportunity and to protect society’s most vulnerable. That is to say, to defend freedom, but also to shield people from the depredations of an unregulated market, generally doing this with laws to protect the poor, workers, pensioners, minorities, etc. It’s a question of a mixed economy within a politically democratic framework. Is that fascism?

I see that the totalitarian left had a lot in common with fascism, but I cannot see how one can trace democratic welfare-state liberals back to fascism, except by caricaturing liberalism beyond recognition. Same goes for social democrats or democratic socialists or the anti-Stalinist left, however defined. Michael Harrington and Irving Howe had nothing in common whatsoever with fascism or with any kind of totalitarianism. Yes, the Webbs admired Stalin, and the Fabians were influential for a time, but their influence didn’t last. The movement fell apart when the Webbs’ admiration for Stalin became apparent, precisely because their followers didn’t share that admiration. So bringing up the Fabians strikes me as a weak argument. OK, they were there for a time and some of their better ideas influenced many important people. But that influence didn’t last. It's as if Goldberg were cherry-picking examples of left-wing leaders who had some nice things to say about some very nasty regimes. But why not talk about Leon Blum?

And what about Edouard Bernstein, whose ideas, in the long run, had far more influence than those of the Webbs? Bernstein's book, Evolutionary Socialism, charted the course for social democracy, a political movement that has been overwhelmingly important in Western European postwar politics. Bernstein broke with the Marxists precisely because he valued democratic political institutions. He didn’t see them as chimeras just set up to bourgeois interests, as did the Marxists. And he didn’t see them as just a route to power, but rather as precious in of themselves for the very same reason that all democrats did.

4. The fact that HG Wells flogged his notion of “liberal fascism” does not strike me as evidence of liberalism's roots in fascism. This was apparently his own conception, probably reflecting, however clumsily, the political fashions of the day. Wells didn’t support actual fascists in the end, and the idea of a "liberal fascism" didn’t exactly take hold among parties of the left or the left-of-center. Again, it is an interesting anecdote, a curiosity, but it tells me little or nothing about the evolution of liberalism.  I am sure that there were many liberals and leftists back then who didn't care for fascism of any kind, and who said so. I am sure that, if one looked for them, one would find many examples of leftists and liberals who were not in the thrall of Germany, Italy or the USSR. I am sure that, if one looked hard enough, one could find examples of American industrialists who voted Republican, pious Catholics, monarchists, and vegetarians who also had some good things to say about Hitler and Mussolini before WWII. Does that mean that American industrialists who voted Republican, pious Catholics, monarchists, and vegetarians have their roots in fascism?

5. I don’t know if FDR consciously modeled the New Deal on First World War “socialism.” I’ll have to defer to Goldberg on that. But I’m skeptical. During the First World War, Wilson did develop centralized boards to oversee every aspect of the economy (transport, agriculture, industry). The most powerful was apparently the War Industries Board, which allocated raw materials, fixed prices, and literally told manufacturers what they could and couldn’t make. I understand that this was done to increase production and to avoid strikes and other disruptions, all to better coordinate the war effort.

Anyway, governmental power in the US, especially presidential power, has long tended to increase in wartime because the country would enter a crisis mode. The same happened under Lincoln during the Civil War, for instance. As for FDR’s New Deal, agencies like the CCC, TVA, and AAA were meant to work as an economic stimulus, or as a way to generate government-business-labor cooperation, or, in the case of the AAA, as a way to bolster farm prices with subsidies to prevent over-production.  I don’t see these measures as socialism. Wilson and Roosevelt were responding to crises, though very different crises. The New Deal tried to provide work, cooperation and supports in an attempt to stimulate the economy and provide a short-term solution to massive unemployment. It did not try to manage every sector of the economy single-handedly. Wilson was fighting a war, and his measures were meant for wartime, not as a permanent model for US society.  I don’t think FDR had, or ever intended to have, the equivalent of Wilson’s centralized boards.

Admittedly, the power and reach of the US government gradually increased over its history, with jumps during wartime, and also during the Depression and the 1960s Great Society. This has been an evolution towards more government (though some of that’s been reversed since Reagan), but not towards fascism. More government does not mean fascism, or even a sort of fascism.  To claim otherwise strikes me as polemics. It’s certainly polemics to see liberalism as a segue to fascism, however smiley-faced.

By the way, there was a book written in the early 1980s, called Friendly Fascism, by Bertram Gross, which also predicted that fascism would not come in jackboots, but in a more benign form. However, he predicted that it would result from the unrestrained power of corporations, aided by a conservative government that would favor the very rich. So, you see, it’s easy to use the term “fascism” to describe the abuses of power or potential abuses of power by the other side, whichever side that is.

6. This is a reaction to something that Tom Paine said regarding the fact that the left didn’t always oppose fascism during the 1930s and 1940s. I wouldn't say “the left” when I mean the Communists. It’s true that the Communist parties followed the foreign policy of Stalin in lockstep. After the Nazi-Soviet Pact, they suddenly became warmer towards Nazi Germany. Once Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, all that went out the window and they hated Germany again. But this was the Communists… not the democratic left. On a related note:  I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with Goldberg that Stalinism is “part of the liberals’ intellectual history.” Stalinism and liberalism are different species entirely.

7. Liberalism a political religion? Any simplistic ideology can be a political religion. Whether a political philosophy devolves into a religion doesn’t depend only on the philosophy itself, but also on a person’s approach to that philosophy, on how open-minded that person is. People on the left or the right can be overly dogmatic, believing in their politics with a dose of quasi-religious faith. For instance, the belief in the “free market” as the panacea for society’s ills, the belief that “supply side” economics works, and that almost all domestic government is by definition bad government…all these are simplistic views that could qualify as a political religion.

8. Affirmative action in the USA has nothing to do with thinking that people are born in any kind of iron cage of racial identity. I don’t like the way affirmative action is often done, but the concept has merit. It simply recognizes that it’s not an even playing field for minorities out there. It’s not being racialist to see that different races are treated differently by society. And let’s not forget that the quotas against the Jews in the early part of the twentieth century were not installed for the same reason that affirmative action has been. The former was to enforce an ethnic/religious group’s outsider status. Affirmative action aims at just the opposite for blacks and other minorities.

9. I agree that the Frankfurt School and deconstructionism have had a profound influence on the intellectual left. But, Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man aside, these movements were mainly from the left; certainly the Frankfurt School was neo-Marxist. Even though these philosophies have done some mischief, I cannot understand how they’re crypto-Nazi in their values or methodology. Many academics who adhere to these approaches can be arrogant, be intolerant of those who disagree with them, write impenetrable articles about “texts” and moral relativism in journals that no one reads, and raise political correctness to the level of catechism. But all that does not make them crypto-Nazis or crypto-anything. It just makes them insufferable.

10. OK, Goldberg is not calling leftists Hitlerite Nazis, but that’s not really the point. He is saying that they have roots, not merely similarities, but roots, in fascism…not Nazism, but fascism. I don’t follow his tracing of those roots. Yes, I can accept that some people on the left admired Germany and Italy in the 1930s. That was before the war and the concentration camps. It was at a time when many people had lost faith in capitalism and liberal democracy, which they saw as effete, especially in comparison to the apparently vigorous fascist Italians and Nazi Germans. Believe me, when WWII came, they got over it.

11. Not all liberals deny that choices involve trade-offs. Isn’t that what Blairism and Clintonism were all about?  Whenever you aim for a balance between too much government heavy-handedness on the one hand and a predatory capitalism with enormous inequities on the other, whenever you try to figure out a pathway between the two extremes…you’re perforce engaging in trade-offs. Also, health care always balances cost versus quality, whether it’s in a private or public system or a system based on a national health insurance. Try getting your care through an HMO, and you’ll see that private care doesn’t mean the best care. Go to a doctor in the US, and experience the long waits, the rushed or indifferent care, and the subsequent fights with an insurance company that’s tries to give you as little as possible. I’ve had fights with insurance companies that have lasted for years. The British NHS? Well, I have heard it’s bad. But Canada’s system? Germany’s? Holland’s? Australia’s? Denmark's? I don’t think most citizens of these countries would want to trade places with Americans.

In any case, whenever you have tons of demand and limited resources, as every country does with health care, you will have to compromise no matter what system you have. Is health care rationed here in the USA (where I live)? Of course it is, but it's effectively rationed based on ability to pay. Or it’s meted out based on what's most profitable for the provider or insurer. Not the best method, in my view.

12. In this interview, the terms “liberals” and “left” are often used interchangeably. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed to me. That’s sloppy. All liberals are not moonbats. I am a dyed-in-the-wool liberal (surprise, surprise), and I don’t eat organic food or wheat germ. I do see politics as the art of the possible.

13. Saying that there is a strain of utopianism on the left may be accurate enough, but that statement ignores the fact that, in the post-war period, the mainstream left in Europe and the USA hasn’t been utopian but very practical, indeed. Kennedy and LBJ were utopians? Clinton? Mondale? Or, regarding those who could really claim a socialist heritage…Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Brandt, Schmidt? Hell, after little time in office, even Mitterrand gave up on anything remotely utopian, and the French Socialist party had until then been genuinely Marxist. For heaven’s sake, there are weird and awful strains at both ends of the political spectrum. The point is to avoid those strains.

14. I would call Meryl Yourish a moderate, by the way. She does not strike me as a full-fledged liberal. In this podcast, she was on the right track when she spoke of fascistic tendencies on the right as well as on the left. But here the problem was that she was attaching the word “fascist” to what amounted to problems like too much government regulation, intolerance and the desire to impose one's views on others. That’s a long way from genuine fascism. Again, this does us a disservice by muddying the meaning of the word “fascist.”

15. Maybe the best thing would be to never say “fascist,” but only “Fascist.”  That is to say, use the term to refer to the actual, historical Fascism, rather than just to anyone who is intolerant, wants to impose policies we disagree with, and in general doesn't want to play nicely with others.  Maybe we could say “fascistic” as an adjective to describe something or someone that really resembles Fascism in style or content. Or else, let’s just use the term “intolerant” or even “authoritarian.” That way, we all don’t contribute to a dumbing down of the political debate by over-using the term “fascist” where it shouldn’t be used. And while we’re at it, let’s admit that there’s intolerance and hyperbole on both sides. I despise Michael Moore…and Ann Coulter. Fair enough?

Joanne, I'd advise you to read the book. Your definitions of "left" and "right" are all over the place and unhistoric.

Goldberg's central point is common sense truth to me as a Dutchman who was raised in an old Catholic socialist family, studied politics, has read many primary German and Dutch sources from the 1920-40s and now lives in New York.

Short version: Mussolini started as a socialist, German fascism was called national socialism for a reason, it was no accident Belgian socialist leader Hendrik de Mann was a nazi collaborator, etc. Read Orwell and Hayek. Fascism, nazism, communism, socialism, it's all basically the same thing.

Post-1968 American "liberalism" is a euphemism for socialism, it's not the liberalism of democracy, individualism, free speech and free markets. Anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism and anti-semitism are closely linked.

Peter,

With all due respect, my definition of "left" is not ahistoric. I was basing it precisely on history. My definition of "left" is all over the place because the term "left" has historically been all over the place; it has meant a range of things. As I took pains to point out, the "left" is a broad term that has encompassed everything from Stalinism to welfare-state liberals. I also pointed out that the word "socialism" was in "National Socialism" for a reason. There, you're just repeating my own views. But that's not to say that socialism and Nazism are the same thing, although one can easily point out the parallels between Soviet Communism and Nazism.  And it's certainly not to say that liberalism is an heir to fascism. That makes little sense to me.

The fact that some liberals in the 1920s and 1930s may have said some illiberal things or were fascinated by Germany and Italy, or the fact that some liberals and many left-wingers today are intolerant and dogmatic...this does not tell me that liberalism has roots in fascism.  If that were the case, then every political philosophy could claim roots in practically every other political philosophy.

Sorry, but maybe the book makes a good case, as you say. To convince me, it had better make a very, very, good case. And as for post-1968 American liberalism, it's lots of things. That depends on who is calling himself a liberal. But many liberals...what am I saying!! The overwhelming, vast, crushing majority of Americans who call themselves liberals...are for the freedoms guaranteed by American democracy. The majority, if not all of them, are for capitalism, but for a mixed economy. What's wrong with that? One can argue in good faith about how much or how little a government can or should do...but so what? If American liberals weren't for a mixed capitalist economy, they wouldn't call themselves liberals, but rather socialists, actually socialists of a stauncher sort, since even many socialists are for a market economy. It depends on what kind of socialism they support.

The term "socialist" runs across a spectrum, from a Marxist supporter of a command economy to a supporter of a very strong welfare state.  It runs along a spectrum where a difference of degree do indeed mean a difference in kind. In fact, often it's just a difference in kind. There are socialists who value democracy as much as the most ardent free marketeer, and there are socialists who don't think much of Western democracy. Those two types of socialists are separated by light years. Unless, of course, you're willing to argue that there was no daylight between Helmut Schmidt and Erich Honecker.

Also, I already referred in my comment to the crossovers between the far left and the far right. You should have read my comment more closely, though, again, I apologize for the length, so it's easily understandable if you read over that point. In any case, I mentioned that the left and right extremes in their formative years shared a hatred of capitalism and liberal democracy. However, to say that, because some left-wing nuts eventually became right-wing nuts, "fascism, nazism, communism, socialism, it's all basically the same thing," just doesn't make sense to me. They're not all basically the same thing. Now who's being ahistorical here?

I haven't read Hayek although I did touch on his thought in a class I took; I should take a closer look, even though I do know what he says in broad strokes. As for Orwell, I've practically everything he wrote. Orwell hated totalitarianism, but remained a socialist until his dying day. He was a socialist (small "s"), but hated Soviet Communism. I didn't see anywhere in his writings, his novels or his essays, where he concludes that they're all the same thing.

I've also read lots of original sources and  scholarly sources, not in German and Dutch but in English and French. I've studied politics and history, too. Only, I seem to have derived different conclusions from my studies than you have from yours.

So why did this podcast find a need to attack homosexuals by suggesting that an equivalent to McCain being endorsed by the NYT is for him to lead a gay pride parade in SanFrancisco? I thought the Islamofascists thought people's sexual choices were an appropriate target of ridicule.

N, I don't think the podcast was attacking homosexuals at all. They were just  making the point that McCain's participating in a gay pride parade would alienate a lot of Republican voters...a safe assumption...and that an endorsement from the New York Times would likely have the same effect, because the paper is seen as too liberal by those voters.

Thanks Joanne for setting that straight. Right Wing Duck wrote that line and I thought it was clear that we weren't really laughing at homosexuals, more the straightness of the core Republican vote. Though if they can accept McCain, maybe times they are a changing.

And for the record, Islam doesn't  think sexual preference is a "target for ridicule". I believe the rulling from all the major schools of Islamic jurisprudence is death by various means.

I haven't had time to also answer Joanne's long comments (though I'll collect on that bet that the episode title was bound to elicit a long response :-). I was in brain surgery yesterday (as an observer thankfully).

Joanne, you're just babbling, picking bits and pieces to fit your worldview. Read the book.

Gee, that's the first time anyone has accused me of babbling. Oh well. Maybe I'll read the book. In the meantime, I'll just continue to babble, or not babble, as I choose. Peter, thank you for your polite, judicious and open-minded response...Ahem!

OK, Brian, you're right. That title was a bait for liberals and I fell into the trap.  You probably bet not only on getting a long response, but on getting that response from me. You won, and I hope you collected handsomely, although I have no idea who would've bet against you on this one. :-)

Oh, and, about the brain surgery excuse...unless you were having the surgery or were performing it, the excuse doesn't wash. Sorry, that's a demerit for you.

Anyway, I can see your need to take some time to respond to my long comment. After all, any comment that contains as many well-argued points as mine own will indeed require an effort in drafting a response. So, being the understanding, open-minded and non-fascistic liberal Democrat that I am, I fully understand. I feel your pain. (OK, maybe I don't.) Don't worry, be happy, and take all the time you need to try to do your very best at mustering an answer. And, with luck, you'll do a better job than poor Peter here. (tee hee...)

Oops...I meant to say "as my own." Sorry for the error.

I really was scrubbed in and watching brain surgery. Fascinating and I'm rather grateful that my experience of brain surgery has only been as an observer. For the technical it was a short procedure (4 hours) removing a non-malignant tumour growing against the skull just below the left ear and causing tinnitus and mild hearing loss. So far, I'm told, the patient is recovering well.

As to the fascinating debate of Left vs Right. I'm not a political scientist and don't want to be. Frankly the whole thing gets a bit tiresome but I'm very impressed that we have even one person like Joanne listening. Because it means that, and this show is trying hard at this, we are not talking political allegience here. We're trying to diagnose the bigger problems.

What we call the Left today is, along with quite a large part of the Right, utterly confused about what the main threats to the world are. We're clear here at Shire Network News, we hope we can spread that to both Left and Right and Up and Down.

Brian of London

Thanks, Brian. I guess, then, that you have at least one liberal in your audience. As for you're not wanting to be a political scientist, that's probably a good call. I also don't think of it as a fun career. I nearly became one and then fell out of love with the discipline. If economics is "the dismal science," then political science must be the dismal social science. And, yes, it can get tiresome. I did feel the need to answer some of the points made in the podcast. However, getting into such things so much can be a bit boring, as one ends up going around in circles, making the same points again and again.

The liberals are socialists who are just not ready to tell people they are socialists. Free speech, ownership of private property and free choice are absolutely against their beliefs. They want decisions removed from the individual and given to the government.

Lets look at any program they want to introduce and what it demands of others. None of our freedoms demands that any other person pay or work for another person. Every program that the liberals have require people work against their will for others. Whether it is at work to pay for their health care or the government dictating the cost. They may argue that plenty of other things like defense cost people money and time, but only to ensure we protect those rights from foreign powers. And what is the one government spending program they would like to cut most?

Sorry, Shane, but that's nonsense. You're using caricature and a broad brush. I won't get into any more arguments now...sigh (!)

That was a fairly long winded bunch of excuse-making in defense of American liberalism, and nitpicking of various shades of gray.

Liberalism=democrat=socialist="progressive"

If you want to see modern fascism on parade, by any definition from public/private partnerships to Nazi tactics..look at the sweetheart deals of government non-profits and child stealing tactics of your state's Department of Human "Services"

The DHSs are the epicenter of American Fascism.