Note Updates at the end of the post
-- Jonah Goldberg, of the National Review, has written a major historical study: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Ron Radosh has written a New York Sun review that's worth reading. Here is an excerpt:
Turning to what he calls liberal racism, Mr. Goldberg offers readers his finest chapter. It is a devastating picture of how liberals adopted eugenics — a basic part of Nazi doctrine — which was not, as some liberal intellectuals have argued, an outgrowth of conservative thought. Fans of Margaret Sanger, perhaps the single most important feminist hero of the 20th century, will never be able to think of her in the same way. Mr. Goldberg dissects her hidden views of eugenics. A socialist and birth-control martyr, she favored banning reproduction of the "unfit" and regulation of everyone else's
reproduction. She wrote, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue of birth control." She opposed the birth of "ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Her words reveal her motive in advocacy of birth control. She sought to remove "inferior" people from being born to poor people, whose mothers by definition were "unfit." Sanger's partisans in Planned Parenthood, the group that stemmed from her work, will be shocked to learn that her publication endorsed the Nazi eugenics program, and that Sanger herself "proudly gave a speech to a KKK rally." That was not surprising, since she clearly viewed blacks as inferior. Hence her "Negro Project," in which she sought to urge blacks to adopt birth control.
Here Jonah Goldberg responds to a Fred Siegal negative review. John Murray of the U. of Toledo bolsters Goldberg.
** Update: 1/7/07 - Mark Gauvreau Judge of Books and Culture offers a review titled "Everything You Know About Fascism is Wrong." He praises the book with one criticism (my underlining below):
Last year, I was speaking at a prestigious university in Washington, D.C., and brought up Margaret Sanger. Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a racist who believed in eugenics and felt that birth control was essential to controlling the "inferior races"—i.e., blacks.
When I said this, the students looked incredulous. A couple even shook their heads; obviously I was disseminating bad conservative propaganda. Margaret Sanger, liberal icon, a racist? Please.
The historical record on Sanger is clear. Yet those who refuse to acknowledge her commitment to eugenics are impervious to evidence. They are the same ones who will be shakingtheir heads at Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, the devastating new book by Jonah Goldberg, an editor at National Review. The sad paradox is that the more the Left rend Goldberg apart, avoiding the book like anthrax because they assume we are in Ann Coulterville, the more they will make his point.
Goldberg has marshaled a staggering amount of evidence to conclude, as the first chapter has it, that "everything you know about fascism is wrong." . . .
In short, the very term "fascism" has been misused for decades now. Although on several occasions Goldberg openly invites criticism, admitting that he is not a professional historian, he has done the work of a historian; besides, he is a much better writer than most historians. And the case he makes is as persuasive as it is provocative. . . .
Fascists have often called for the overturning of religious tradition, to be replaced by the dictatorship of the people; have engaged in a "cult of action" that sought to smash the bourgeoisie; and have relegated certain people and races to the dustbin of "inferiority." Considered this way, the radicals of the 1960s fit quite snugly into Goldberg's thesis.
Goldberg does stumble with his shoulder-shrug at gay marriage, which he supports. For once in this mesmerizing book he falls to apply his model. Gay marriage activists, after all, have all the trademarks of fascism, and more. They want to control the courts and inflict their philosophy on the reluctant bourgeoisie. They are obsessed with "street action" and protest, and contemptuous of Christianity. They have turned homosexuality into an exalted state, often claiming that gay people are more sensitive and enlightened than others.
While the Left will claim that Goldberg thinks that everyone he disagrees with—from FDR to Hillary Clinton—is a fascist, this is not true. Progressives, he notes, are not building concentration camps. Hillary Clinton wanting universal health care is not Crystal Night. But by reexamining the history of fascism and its pathologies, Goldberg shows where the fascist impulse—to smash the past, accumulate power, and create utopia—is most likely to resurface.
Mark Gauvreau Judge is the author most recently of God and Man at Georgetown Prep: How I Became a Catholic Despite 20 Years of Catholic Schooling (Crossroad).
Goldberg cites the following:
Here's the short interview I did with Vox Day of World Net Daily regarding my book. Here's the unabridged version. And here's his original review (in which, ahem, he compared the book to Closing of the American Mind).
** Update 1/8/07 - Daniel Pipes calls it a "brilliant, profound, and original new book.
. . . 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 establishing the kinship between communism, fascism, and liberalism.
Pipes review (which truly needs to be read in its entirety; it's that helpful) concludes:
'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.
Update 1/10/08 - Jonah Goldberg's recent speech about the book at the Heritage Foundation can be found here. This speech is being carried by C-Span this weekend. Of his speech, Goldberg wrote today:
As I said, I wish I'd had a chance to hone the speech a bit more before it got taped by C-Span (I'm not normally so nervous as those who attended the NH gig might attest) but I think it went well and if you watch through the Q&A you'll get a pretty good sense of the primary themes of the book.
Update 2/13/08 - Thomas Sowell offers a fine review of the book.