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 enlarge | Author: Jonah Goldberg
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  325 reviews
Sales Rank: 303
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 496
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.6
ISBN: 0385511841
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.533
EAN: 9780385511841
Publication Date: January 8, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
 Immaculate! March 25, 2008
Bernard Chapin (CHICAGO! USA)
29 out of 36 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RR982UFBVRE2U Hi all. I decided to do a video review for Liberal Fascism. Honestly, I don't think this book could have been any better. Hope you enjoy the review. If not, I'll respect your diversity anyway.
Not at all what I'd expected March 14, 2008
Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA)
24 out of 32 found this review helpful
I have to admit that I had not planned to read this book; the title and cover, as well as some of the reviews in the major media, led me to believ that this was a screed of the Ann Coulter sort, long on invective and short on fact and reason. But I received a copy as a gift a few days ago, and I was surprised to learn that it is anything but.
Goldberg goes to great pains to say that this book is not an attack on liberalism, nor is he saying that liberals are fascists. What he is doing, rather, is uncovering the hidden intellectual antecedents of the modern liberal movement in the Progressive anbd Fascist movements of the past. Now before you jump to conclusions claiming (as some reviews have) that Goldberg is equating liberalism with Nazism, consider that Fascism as a movment long preceeded Nazism by a good 15 years, and that in the 1920 Mussolini was greatly admired by progressives for his social programs. Western intellectuals looked at Fascism as a model for modern progressive government, with its emphasis on social services and cradle-to-grave goverment care. Nazism took these ideas, along with the Fascists' rejection of the Internationalism of the Communists, but added to that his own veneer of antisemitism.
Not that the American Progressives were any less guilty of racism and nationalistic fervor; during the Wilson era, which modern liberals point to as a time of great social progress, this country saw newspapers and magazines shut down for printing dissent, people imprisoned for expressing opinions contrary to government policy in their own homes, and the infamous Palmer Raids, in which suspected radicals- foreigners- were rounded up and imprisoned and expelled.
Those who still think of the McCarthy era- a brief period of history in which a group of Hollywood party members became martyrs for lying to congress- was the time when fascism came to America should really read about the Wilson era- or, for that matter, FDR, who, despite being a great wartime leader, imprisoned and confiscated the property of thousands of native born Americans because of their race, and attempted to stack the Supreme Court in violation of the Constitution.
The legacy of the Progressives is no mere historical artifact. Today's liberal offspring of the progressives often complain of government abuse of power, and yet too often they endorse sweeping government powers in support of their political aims. Consider the great "urban renewal" experiments in social engineering of the 1960s, in which neighborhoods were destroyed, property seized, and populations rounded up into housing projects. Or the famous "HillaryCare" initiative, in which a complete nationalization of health care was dreamed up not in the public forum, or even in Congress, where it could be debated, but behind closed doors.
Liberals are forever accusing Conservatives of being the intellectual heirs to Mussolini and Hitler, but the historical record tells a very different story. I've touched on just a small part of this book; there's a tremendous amount of well-researched history that should be of interest to anyone, whatever their political preferences, if only to see a very different view of history from that written by the Progressives and their followers. Of course, I'm sure this review will get the usual collection of ignorant responses that many other positive reviews have received, mainly by people who have not read the book, and many of whom have, in their comments, opined that it should be burned, or never have been printed. And that is very telling in and of itself.
Kinship in Communism & Fascism: Who would have thought? January 21, 2008
G. Rademacher (Hamilton, MT United States)
82 out of 119 found this review helpful
A cogent answer for the slingers of "Fascist" arrows at conservatives. Jonah Goldberg's well-researched new book, Liberal Fascism, reveals Adolph Hitler's National Socialist Democratic Party and the Communist Party grew from identical Socialist roots. They both advocated state control of the people and means of production and commonly pursued identical socialist programs to realize their special brand of utopia.
Liberal Fascism documents that Fascism & Communism are not enemies at all. In fact, you might say they could pass for Siamese twins and occupy the left in tandem.
Mr. Goldberg documents both fascist and communist societies rest on the same socialist pillars
* The state, not the citizenry, either owns or controls all or most production.
* Like monarchies of old, the state reigns supreme over individuals. These forms of government inevitably extend control into sacrosanct areas - property, religion, family and even thought. (You see evidence in current U.S.Supreme Court decisions, attempts at public school socialist indoctrination, attacks on religion and political correctness, to name just four.)
But, aren't the two systems ideological enemies? Seems not. Marxian socialist principles under gird both. In the 1930s, the two groups clashed only because they both wanted to recruit the same German Socialist party constituents. Hitler molded the principles around nationalism. Lenin shaped his around international communism. Both degenerated into dictatorships.
Incidentally, Jonah says his title came from H.G. Wells and he had no intent to impugn the Left. This progressive and famous writer of last century coined the phrase as a "badge of honor". "Progressives must become `liberal fascists' and `enlightened Nazis,' he told the Young Liberals at Oxford in a speech in July 1932."
Jonah also gently reminds us the Left has never ceased espousing many fascist/communist principles and programs. (As if in confirmation, this book prompts near apoplexy from the anointed. Some so want to derail this topic, they hacked Goldberg's Amazon.com page, not once but twice! a "first" at Amazon. To avoid debating issues, some leftists forestall any chance at honest discussion by hurling the "Fascist" label at conservatives. So, you can understand their anguish. Jonah's research pins that slur back on the throwers.
Another reviewer says the author "equates all authoritarianism with fascism." He definitely takes pains not to and deals in-depth with that idea in later chapters. Obviously the reviewer did not read all the book.
Liberal Fascism is a bombshell of a book - well worth reading to achieve a balanced view between current progressive & conservative thought.
Socialism with all its detours January 26, 2008
Michael T Kennedy (Mission Viejo, CA USA)
62 out of 101 found this review helpful
This is a big book and can be a bit tedious in places. Having said that, I highly recommend it as strong medicine for some pernicious distortions of history. This is political science, history and quite a bit of philosophy organized by chronology. A few points are made with more heat than necessary but it is apparent that it would draw intense fire from the left no matter what the title or the cover art. He begins with a chapter that sets out his theme; conservatives are not the heirs of the Nazis. That would seem obvious except for the rhetoric from the left which stimulated him to write the book in the first place. For example, on page 4 Jonah points out that Congressman Charles Rangel called the "Contract With America" of the 1994 election " more extreme than Nazism." Bill Clinton said in 2000 that the Texas GOP Platform was "a fascist tract." There is plenty of provocation for an angry response. This, however, is not an angry book.
I fancy myself a student of history, having written one history, but I learned a good deal of new information. Mussolini, for example, was an extremely intellectual socialist and editor of a newspaper called "Class War." He was the author of a number of well received books. What I did not know was how popular he was with the Progressive Movement in the US. He even appeared in a 1923 Hollywood movie with Lionel Barrymore. His reputation with the American left was high until World War II. The founder of Fascism was a socialist and an inspiration, readily acknowledged at the time, to the Progressive Movement. Of course, the chapter on Woodrow Wilson was a revelation to me. The War Socialism of Wilson's administration is not well known and he is mostly a cardboard figure in American history. Most interest seems to be directed at the aftermath of the war and the failure of the Versailles Treaty. How he organized the government during the war is ignored and the excesses pointed out by Goldberg in his book are almost all new information. I will have to read more from a neutral source as Wilson seems to have been the beneficiary of a whitewash. I do know from family history how the Germans were vilified during the war but did not know how much this was government policy. Perhaps Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor had more precedent than is usually understood.
Goldberg's chapter on Hitler points out once again that the Nazis were socialists and Hitler had many interests that are present in the Environmentalist Left of today. He was very health conscious, a vegetarian and violently anti-smoking. In a later chapter, Goldberg goes back over this information and compares the Nazis, with their mystical attachment to the German forest, to modern day environmentalists. There is a trend running back to the Fabian Socialists, through the Nazis, on to American academics that is tolerant of genocide, as long as it is in a good cause. The current enthusiasm for abortion began with eugenic impulses of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. She is a saint of Feminism but her interest in eugenics is ignored. In 1922, she wrote," More children from the fit, less from the unfit- that is the chief issue of birth control." The fact that 70% of abortions are performed on black women is another statistic that never seems to make its way into the newspapers.
Goldberg pulls together a number of threads that were either ignored or distorted in American history. It can get tedious, as I said, but the end result is a fascinating accomplishment of revisionist history. It is an excellent companion to Amity Schlaes history of the Great Depression, "The Forgotten Man." Both of them emphasize the Progressive roots of Herbert Hoover and Schlaes makes the point that his policies toward the deepening financial crisis in 1932 differed little from Roosevelt's that followed. Goldberg discusses at length the open fascism of Hugh Johnson's National Recovery Administration until it was declared unconstitutional.
There are times when Goldberg gets a bit over the top, as when he considers "Forrest Gump" an example of a fascist movie. I agree with him, however, that "American Beauty" was such an example. His comparison of the Nazis' anti-Semitism and the popularity of "Whiteness Studies" in college curricula may seem extreme but I'm not sure. He may well have a point. All in all, I highly recommend this book although it is not light reading. It is pretty good history and will stimulate some reconsideration of the Progressive Movement in America and its modern liberal descendants.
The world needs more books like this. January 17, 2008
Joe E (Baltimore, Md.)
127 out of 183 found this review helpful
This is one the best books I've ever read in the sense that it really forces you to grapple with a wide variety of political preconceptions you may have. Mr. Goldberg compiles an enormous amount of evidence that early 20th century Progressivism has much more in common with Fascism and Nazism than the average reader probably ever knew. Despite the provocative title, the author does not under-state the differences. He simply points out the extensive, largely unknown similarities. And despite the serious subject matter and the enormous research that went into this book, it's a very well-written and easy read.
This book raises so many issues regarding the proper role of government, the extent to which it's fair to compare ideologies on procedural as well as substantive grounds, the extent to which linguistic limits hamper the entire debate and many other philosophical questions that I can't possibly do anything but trivialize them by pretending to write a synopsis here. I've posted a number of comments in the many, many forums that have cropped up regarding this interesting thesis, and I'll just repeat that this is wonderful revisionist history. You may not agree with the author's thesis. You may think he over-states the opposite thesis, but I guarantee you will learn more about Nazism and Fascism than you ever have, and you will definitely not think of them the same way again.
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