Fascism's Legacy: Liberalism

[Barbara Branden]

Fascism's Legacy: Liberalism

by Daniel Pipes

Jerusalem Post

January 10, 2008

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5355

Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron – or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really.

His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.

These facts jar because they contradict the political spectrum that has shaped our worldview since the late 1930s, which places communism at the far Left, followed by socialism, liberalism in the center, conservatism, and then fascism on the far Right. But this spectrum, Jonah Goldberg points out in his brilliant, profound, and original new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday), reflects Stalin's use of fascist as an epithet to discredit anyone he wished – Trotsky, Churchill, Russian peasants – and distorts reality. Already in 1946, George Orwell noted that fascism had degenerated to signify "something not desirable."

To understand fascism in its full expression requires putting aside Stalin's misrepresentation of the term and also look beyond the Holocaust, and instead return to the period Goldberg terms the "fascist moment," roughly 1910-35. A statist ideology, fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism. It is totalitarian in Mussolini's original meaning of the term, of "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Fascism's message boils down to "Enough talk, more action!" Its lasting appeal is getting things done.

In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government, individualism, democratic debate, and capitalism. Its appeal is liberty and leaving citizens alone.

Goldberg's triumph is to establish the kinship between communism, fascism, and liberalism. All derive from the same tradition that goes back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution. His revised political spectrum would focus on the role of the state and go from libertarianism to conservatism to fascism in its many guises – American, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and so on.

As this listing suggests, fascism is flexible; different iterations differ in specifics but they share "emotional or instinctual impulses." Mussolini tweaked the socialist agenda to emphasize the state; Lenin made workers the vanguard party; Hitler added race. If the German version was militaristic, the American one (which Goldberg calls liberal fascism) is nearly pacifist. Goldberg quotes historian Richard Pipes on this point: "Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism." He proves this confluence in two ways.

First, he offers a "secret history of the American left":

* Woodrow Wilson's Progressivism featured a "militaristic, fanatically nationalist, imperialist, racist" program, enabled by the exigencies of World War I.

* Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fascist New Deal" built on and extended Wilson's government.

* Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society established the modern welfare state, "the ultimate fruition" (so far) of this statist tradition.

* The youthful New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s brought about "an Americanized updating" of the European Old Right.

* Hillary Clinton hopes "to insert the state deep into family life," an essential step of the totalitarian project.

To sum up a near-century of history, if the American political system traditionally encouraged the pursuit of happiness, "more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered."

Second, Goldberg dissects American liberal programs – racial, economic, environmental, even the "cult of the organic" – and shows their affinities to those of Mussolini and Hitler.

If this summary sounds mind-numbingly implausible, read Liberal Fascism in full for its colorful quotes and convincing documentation. The author, hitherto known as a smart, sharp-elbowed polemicist, has proven himself a major political thinker.

Beyond offering a radically different way to understand modern politics, in which fascist is no more a slander than socialist, Goldberg's extraordinary book provides conservatives with the tools to reply to their liberal tormentors and eventually go on the offensive. If liberals can eternally raise the specter of Joseph McCarthy, conservatives can counter with that of Benito Mussolini.

[Chris Grieb]

Goldberg is going to be a DC area bookstore. I'm curious to see is there are a lot of leftists at the signing. I am also planning to ask about Ayn Rand's "Fascist New Frontier.

What he has had to say as been good. I suspect it is a revelation to many people.

[Reidy]

If you get a chance to ask, let us know what Goldberg says. He's probably getting a lot of questions about this. I checked the index of the book, and Rand is nowhere to be seen. On the other hand, I've heard of his mentioning her in at least one radio interview. It looks like a good book, and its popularity a good sign, in any case.

Edited January 11, 2008 by Reidy

[Reidy]

P.S. Bruce Bartlett's Wrong on Race looks like a valuable companion piece.

[Chris Grieb]

Reidy; Thanks for the tip about the Barlett work. I wonder if Cato will do book forum.

[Martin Radwin]

Fascism's Legacy: Liberalism

by Daniel Pipes

Jerusalem Post

January 10, 2008

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5355

Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron – or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really.

His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.

These facts jar because they contradict the political spectrum that has shaped our worldview since the late 1930s, which places communism at the far Left, followed by socialism, liberalism in the center, conservatism, and then fascism on the far Right. But this spectrum, Jonah Goldberg points out in his brilliant, profound, and original new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday), reflects Stalin's use of fascist as an epithet to discredit anyone he wished – Trotsky, Churchill, Russian peasants – and distorts reality. Already in 1946, George Orwell noted that fascism had degenerated to signify "something not desirable."

To understand fascism in its full expression requires putting aside Stalin's misrepresentation of the term and also look beyond the Holocaust, and instead return to the period Goldberg terms the "fascist moment," roughly 1910-35. A statist ideology, fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism. It is totalitarian in Mussolini's original meaning of the term, of "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Fascism's message boils down to "Enough talk, more action!" Its lasting appeal is getting things done.

In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government, individualism, democratic debate, and capitalism. Its appeal is liberty and leaving citizens alone.

What has long been called "conservativism" calls for none of these things. Limited government, individualism, free market capitalism, and leaving citizens alone are tenets not of conservativism but of classical liberalism and, carried to their ultimate conclusion, libertarianism.

Under the regime of "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush, federal government spending, both military and non-military, has increased far faster than it did under "liberal" Bill Clinton. In addition to which, Bush has done more to trash the Constitution and civil liberties than any president since FDR. Bush has been aided in this effort by the many "conservative" members of Congress, who have rubber-stamped all of his depradations of Americans' liberties. What now passes for conservatives, the so-called neoconservatives, don't even pretend to believe in small government. They are open in their support of big government, both domestic and international.

Jonah Goldberg is an editor at National Review Online. National Review has been an advocate of big government conservatism for years. National Review is also the magazine that published a vicious review of Atlas Shrugged shortly after it was published, written by Whittaker Chambers. National Review has been viciously attacking Ayn Rand and objectivism ever since. Considering the history of National Review with respect to objectivism, it's rather surprising that Barbara Branden would praise the work of a leading National Review writer and editor. That seems even worse than TAS inviting Lindsay Perigo as a guest speaker.

I have some advice for Goldberg and his legions of big government, war-mongering conservatives, which unfortunately they will not choose to follow. My advice is, "To a gas chamber, go!"

Martin

[Chris Grieb]

Martin; I have been reading Goldberg's blog and from what I read he's not a big government conservative.

It's been almost fifty years since the NR review of Atlas. For the record I don't like it but from what I have hear about Liberal Fascism it sounds good. There are great problems about the conservative movement but Goldberg's book is not one of them.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It is funny how so many words mean the same thing. How about tribalism? Doesn't that fit, too?

When I went to Brazil, it was still in the military dictatorship phase. The word that was considered the satanic root of all evil was communism, but a close second was socialism. You could get in serious trouble back then discussing these things in the wrong place. Like jail and torture trouble. Yet if socialism is defined by the number of government-owned industries, Brazil was the most socialist government on earth—literally. Back then, I remember reading that Brazil had a greater number of government-owned industries than most communist countries like Russia. (If I had known that before going, I would not have gone.) You just weren't allowed to say it and a good portion of these companies were mixed economy (private and public ownership at the same time). It was a holy mess privatizing all that later.

I see something similar with the word "fascism" in today's world. Lot's of government structures are fascist with a dash of other elements mixed in, but you are not supposed to say it.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

I have some advice for Goldberg and his legions of big government, war-mongering conservatives, which unfortunately they will not choose to follow. My advice is, "To a gas chamber, go!"

Martin

If it were not for war mongers I would have ended up in the gas chambers and become a cake of soap on some Nazi's bath tub. You would have grown up in some totalitarian dictatorship. War mongers have saved our asses on several occasions. That drunken bigot imperialist war monger Winston Churchill saved England from the Nazis.

Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?

Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.

Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?

Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Mongol General: That is good! That is good.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

I see something similar with the word "fascism" in today's world. Lot's of government structures are fascist with a dash of other elements mixed in, but you are not supposed to say it.

Michael

You don't have to say it; you can see it. See the back side of a pre-Kennedy dime.

And don't knock fascists too hard. The Roman fascists built great aquaducts, great running water toilets, great roads, and they got the chariots to run on time. Rome's greatest day happened after the Republic ceased to be. There was 200 years of peace and relative prosperity -- the Pax Romana. Where is the Pax Americana?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[merjet]

Observe that both "socialism" and "fascism" involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates "the vesting of ownership and control" in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government.

Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms: it means "property," without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, without any of its advantages, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility.

In this respect, socialism is the more honest of the two theories. I say "more honest," not "better"—because, in practice, there is no difference between them: both come from the same collectivist-statist principle, both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government—and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects.

-The New Fascism: Rule By Consensus (in Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal)

[Brant Gaede]

I see something similar with the word "fascism" in today's world. Lot's of government structures are fascist with a dash of other elements mixed in, but you are not supposed to say it.

Michael

You don't have to say it; you can see it. See the back side of a pre-Kennedy dime.

And don't knock fascists too hard. The Roman fascists built great aquaducts, great running water toilets, great roads, and they got the chariots to run on time. Rome's greatest day happened after the Republic ceased to be. There was 200 years of peace and relative prosperity -- the Pax Romana. Where is the Pax Americana?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Uh, they sure made the Jews happy.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Uh, they sure made the Jews happy.

--Brant

A temporary setback for the Jews and inadvertently the Diaspora guaranteed the survival of the Jewish people. God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. Eventually the Imperium Romanum disappeared but the Jews are still around. A Jewish tourist to Rome can see what the Titus Arch it says --- Judea Capta. Guess who owns Jerusalem and Judea now.

As we say in Hebrew -- Hoo y'tzachek achronee, y'tchachek ha tov yotzer -- He who laughs last, laughs best.

And so it goes.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.

Now, that really takes the cake. Mysticism on top of fascism. Control of the Fed, control of the Treasury auctions, investment banking, publishing, music, movies, Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, fake 'intelligence' and fifth column traitors, with prayer meetings and punishment for all.

We need to take Galt's radio speech more seriously. Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

[BaalChatzaf]

God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.

Now, that really takes the cake. Mysticism on top of fascism. Control of the Fed, control of the Treasury auctions, investment banking, publishing, music, movies, Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans, fake 'intelligence' and fifth column traitors, with prayer meetings and punishment for all.

We need to take Galt's radio speech more seriously. Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

I knew that I should have marked that sentence as ironic. It turns out the Romans saved the Jews from destruction by driving them out of the Holy Land and all over the Eurasian land mass. That is not what they intended, but that is what happened. Because the Jews were dispersed among the nations, they were not in a single place to be destroyed. Hence my ironic observation, not to be taken literally. I should have said so. My error.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Barbara Branden]

Ba'al, you wrote: "A temporary setback for the Jews..."

Not temporary for the dead ones.

Barbara

[BaalChatzaf]

Ba'al, you wrote: "A temporary setback for the Jews..."

Not temporary for the dead ones.

Barbara

However there are those Jews who lived and whose descendants now live because of the Diaspora. If all the "eggs were in one basket" we would not be having this conversation. Long term survival of the Jewish people was an unintended side effect of the Roman conquest of Judea. What can I say? Thank you, Caesar.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Alfonso Jones]

Ba'al, you wrote: "A temporary setback for the Jews..."

Not temporary for the dead ones.

Barbara

However there are those Jews who lived and whose descendants now live because of the Diaspora. If all the "eggs were in one basket" we would not be having this conversation. Long term survival of the Jewish people was an unintended side effect of the Roman conquest of Judea. What can I say? Thank you, Caesar.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al -

This sounds like rationalization based on a collective (racial group). Is this what you really mean?

Alfonso

[BaalChatzaf]

Ba'al, you wrote: "A temporary setback for the Jews..."

Not temporary for the dead ones.

Barbara

However there are those Jews who lived and whose descendants now live because of the Diaspora. If all the "eggs were in one basket" we would not be having this conversation. Long term survival of the Jewish people was an unintended side effect of the Roman conquest of Judea. What can I say? Thank you, Caesar.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al -

This sounds like rationalization based on a collective (racial group). Is this what you really mean?

Alfonso

I mean I know who to thank for my survival. Jews have always been targets of choice. Dispersion is one of the best defenses. Nor do I have any regrets about my Jewish upbringing. Several years of Talmudic study sharpened my wits for mathematics. It is no coincidence that the boys from the Y'shivah ace the mathematics section of the S.A.T. Judaism, the thinking man's religion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

However there are those Jews who lived and whose descendants now live because of the Diaspora. If all the "eggs were in one basket" we would not be having this conversation. Long term survival of the Jewish people was an unintended side effect of the Roman conquest of Judea. What can I say? Thank you, Caesar.

Ba'al Chatzaf

They are hardly more dispersed today.

--Brant

[Mike11]

Guys, I'm sorry, I need to start doing posts that make sense, I assure, this was my last Rant, against a rant.

I find Pipes to be engaged in a dishonest, partisan attack here and this is why -

1. What can not be placed under the label "Fascist" using Pipes' definition?

2. Given the common root of the Marxists and Fascists is Hegel why does he use the term "Fascism" as the source of the Left?

3. The extent to which the target, Liberals, fit this definition is exaggerated.

4. Why does Pipes label "left" movements as Fascist when aspects of the rightwing can equally be included?

1.

To a Libertarian the far Right and Left are the same, both encouraging Statism. That said this article takes Fascism as a word and applies it so far I think I could use it to describe Innocent XIII's move for Papal supremacy in the middle ages as Fascist, it would meet the criteria of -

"A statist ideology, fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism."

What is not covered here? Has there ever been a totalistic ideology and corresponding organizational frame work that did not do this?

Fascism, which is defined by the Wiki (a definition confirmed by the operation of the Italians and Nazis) as follows:

Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, corporatism, populism, collectivism, and opposition to political and economic liberalism.

The article by Pipes however is much, much looser encompassing Soviet style Communism, the modern Welfare State and several other things. What is the common denominater here? What could these movements have in common?

The first ting I thought of was pretty simple, that being all Libertarians tend to group all Big ZGovernment movements as the same in terms of the liberty/repression scale. The second was that Pipes is correct in seeing an underlying trend, at least between Leninists and Fascists but simply mistakes the latter to be the origin of the former. A better case can be made for Hegel.

2.

In order for the article to have attacked both Fascists and Communists it would have to address their common root, or rather largest common root, Hegel, though "Hegelian Legacy: Liberalism" isn't as flashy. It is from Hegel we get the idea of the Self as part of the historical Organism, an organism with the State at its top.

Here is some stuff from the Wiki article on Hegel -

Perhaps the main reason that so much writing about Hegel emerges from the so-called Left-Hegelians is that the Left-Hegelians spawned Marxism, which inspired a global movement lasting more than 150 years, encompassing the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution and even more national-liberation movements of the 20th century. Yet that isn't, to be precise, any direct result of Hegel's philosophy.

20th century interpretations of Hegel were mostly shaped by one-sided schools of thought: British Idealism, logical positivism, Marxism, Fascism and postmodernism. With reference to Fascism, Italy's Giovanni Gentile "...holds the honor of having been the most rigorous neo–Hegelian in the entire history of Western philosophy and the dishonor of having been the official philosopher of Fascism in Italy."[23] However, since the fall of the USSR, a new wave of Hegel scholarship arose in the West, without the preconceptions of the prior schools of thought.

Even than though Hegel merely inspired Fascism and Marxism; both movements attacked Hegel even as they drew off him.

3.

Pipes lays out the following as meeting his definition as fascist:

* Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society established the modern welfare state, "the ultimate fruition" (so far) of this statist tradition.

* The youthful New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s brought about "an Americanized updating" of the European Old Right.

* Hillary Clinton hopes "to insert the state deep into family life," an essential step of the totalitarian project.

Words have meanings. The term "Welfare State", with its aspects of helping the poor members of society, public education and public Health Care is not Fascism, its not Totalitarionism either. Its that simple.

4.

This is where Pipes exposes himself as the propagandist he is most clearly. In America today there is a powerful, religious, war praising movement, of which Pipes is a part - the neo-con/Christian Right. At least this movement is as right wing statist as the New Deal/Hillary line is leftist. Recent moves to have America defined as a "Christian Nation" in the guise of a national religious education week, attacks on gay rights, perpetual calls to kill our muslim enemies, the teaching of Creationism - all of these escape Pipes' notice but surely they are anti-individualist movements who follow "A statist ideology, (using) politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism." as much as the "left" he attacks.

Why the blindspot? To me the only logical explanation is, for the same reason Stalinists liked to focus on the American Jim Crow laws. A propagandistic distraction. Nothing more.

Pipes wanted the Glamor of the Holocaust, the murder of tens of thousands of political opponents, the elimination of the Vote and the Fuhrer Princip to spice up his petty myopic partisan smear.

Edited January 13, 2008 by Mike11

[Mark]

... “It’s been almost fifty years since the NR review of Atlas.”

National Review reprinted Whittaker Chambers’ stupid (stupid, stupid) review January 5, 2005 in celebration of the magazine’s 50th anniversary. “Celebration” is the word they used.

[Mark]

Daniel Pipes’ review of Jonah Goldberg’s book makes it sound good, but I noticed two details which betray Pipes’ usual agenda. One of them Martin Radwin already pointed: conservatives may talk limited government but under them government doesn’t shrink, it grows – sometimes even faster than under the liberals.

The neoconservatives don’t even talk limited government. They’re as explicitly for big government domestically as they are for projecting it overseas.

The other detail in Pipes’ review is buried in the middle:

... “If the German version [of fascism] was militaristic,

.... the American one (which Goldberg calls liberal fascism)

.... is nearly pacifist.”

Pacifist? Let’s remove the slur and replace the above with “American liberals opposed U.S. entry into foreign wars.” Then the truth is the opposite. The liberals (or “progressives” as they sometimes call themselves) were very much in favor of U.S. entry into WWI, WWII, and initially even Vietnam (e.g. John Kennedy).

Around 1914 John Dewey wrote several New Republic magazine articles promoting U.S. entry into the war in Europe. I’ve read them and they are amazing. He says how it would be a good thing because it would get Americans used to the idea of government control of private property – it’s that bald and brazen. Dewey was typical of the fascist liberals. (Randolf Bourne is a notable exception.)

Come WWII, again it was fascist liberals like FDR who wanted the U.S. in the war. The better conservatives like Robert Taft and of course Ayn Rand (using “better conservatives” very broadly, their philosophies differed), on the contrary, were “America Firsters.”

Pipe’s statement is completely wrong. Setting aside the “pacifist” smear the truth is just the opposite.

I referred to Daniel Pipes’ usual agenda. The “pacifist” smear is part of it. He’s as much a neo-conservative as that amorphous term allows. (The only thing they all have in common is unequivocal support for Israel.)

Daniel Pipes has shared the podium several times with Yaron Brook, and once, I think, with Leonard Peikoff.

How often does Pipes denounce the Patriot Acts, the Military Commissions Act, the Real ID Act, the Defense Authorization Act, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, the Martial Law Act? Ever? Anyway, about as often as ARI, which is never.

[Mark]

I inadvertently started reading Robert Kolker (aka Ba'al Chatzaf)’s post. It began:

“If it were not for war mongers I would have ended up in the gas chambers and become a cake of soap on some Nazi's bath tub.”

At which point I looked to see who the idiot was who wrote this and skipped the rest. The above baloney is a part of traditional Nazi Holocaust history that’s been debunked even by mainstream historians. The “Nazi soap” story is ridiculous. It’s an atrocity story that’s part of propaganda common around war time. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could say it’s hogwash right out loud in Germany and Austria and not go to jail. Cecil Adams writes a bit on this at the end of The Straight Dope.

As for Mr. Kolker’s personal concern, I mean really, would even one so degraded as a Nazi Storm Trooper want a cupboard full of Robert Kolker soap? To wash himself with?

[Chris Grieb]

Jonah Goldberg's appearance at Heritage will be repeated at 10 AM EST on Book TV. C-Span 2 if you get cable.