I am going to be doing a critique of this book Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg that came out in 2008 that covers the topic of Fascism of the 20th century such as Italy but then also looking. I will be giving a break down of the book with some critiquing along the way then some final impressions. The book starts by describing the different ways in which people throw around the word Fascism, whether its anti-conservativism, or anti-communist, or whether its being associated with racism, Nazism, militarism and all these other different concepts in modern society. He also mentions that often in discourse, fascism is one of those words thrown about that people don’t really understand but it is supposed to cause a disgusted reaction. He uses definitions taken from news, articles and even writers on the subject such as George Orwell. Then for the first part of the book, Jonah looks at the USA, comparing that to Italy and Germany and makes the claim that the first form of totalitarianism in the sense of how we see it today, was not those two countries but rather the USA. The USA’s progressives had everything that is seen in a totalitarian state, imperialism, militarism, racist, promotion of eugenics and so on. It was the closest movement to anything like Nazism that America had produced. This resounds as true since there are other scholars who have written on the progressive era such as The Illiberal Reformers by Thomas C. Leonard, which covers it in far better detail. Jonah does give a balanced view later the positives they did such as ending childhood labour but also the negatives like eugenics, palmer raids, and prohibition. However it has not yet given a definition of what fascism actually is an historical sense. This book does mention the connection between this progressive movement and the Darwinian and Hegelian collectivism that they imported from Europe. Then it moves onto make the claim that the French Revolution was a fascist revolution, and it explains how Napoleon and Robespierre were dictators. I would question whether the French revolution was a fascist revolution, I would honestly call it a socialist revolution and closer to the Russian revolution than say Mussolini’s Italy. In any case, Jonah continues and talks about how the differences in the types of Fascist states—for instance Nazi state hunted down Jews, while in Italy Jews were in the fascist party and many survived. In contrast to ‘liberal’ countries like France where they were all to happy to hand over Jews to the Nazi state, which is very weird when you think about it. But he does make a clear distinction that the Americans that cheered on Mussolini can’t be held responsible for what happened in Germany in the same way that modern day progressives can’t be held responsible for those that pushed eugenics. There comes a point though where it becomes very intellectually dishonest where he tries to link healthy eating values from the state and organic foods as fascism and a social justice issue. I don’t think that’s correct. I think the state pushing healthy values such as eating healthy or strong family traditions is not fascism. He also uses the examples of banning cigarettes as a way of fascism, making the nation healthier at the expense of the people’s good, however with all these forms there’s not been an invasion of private property rights such as houses where people can still smoke. If people were banned from smoking at all, and in their homes then that would be fascism or hard totalitarianism. However I do believe that there have been plenty of states have upheld values that make their nation whether it is the rule of law, virtues, justice and so on, so for a state to be projecting some kind of values on the people within the nation would make every state since the Babylonian Empire being fascist but that is nowhere near true. Jonah finally on page 23 brings up a definition, at least in his eyes, for fascism, which is, “Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and wellbeing, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism.” The overall description does fit other descriptions of Fascism that it is linked to controlling the economy and every other part of life. While people might find the rest of it disgusting the thought of people controlling which religion they can be and the idea of uniformity, they may well be open to the idea of central economic planning, that rampant free market economies are destroying society and that there needs to be more ways in which people restrain the idea of profit. Unfortunately, this is the gateway and slippery slope into a fascist state. Economist and philosopher, F.A Hayek in his book, in his chapter about economic control is linked to totalitarianism. that while people often find the idea of having a political dictator abhorrent but control in an economic sense as being a good thing allowing people to pursue higher things and people generally see these two concepts as separate and that money can be restrictive. Hayek refutes this idea, by saying that money actually grants us more freedom, that if it incentives and rewards were non-economic gains such as privileges like travel, food or housing, and the reward was fixed, people would no longer be able to choose how to spend the reward. Hayek goes onto say that it is a severely wrong conclusion that it is wrong to think that more economic planning won’t interfere with the basic necessities of life such as food. Central planning rather than be solved by the individual, is now solved by the “community” and someone must then decide the relative importance of each needs, which may end up with rationing or shortages or long waiting queues. By directing our consumption and food like this, it also effects what food we can enjoy and how much there is available. An example is that in Britain if Morrisons don’t have what we need, there’s always Sainsbury’s or Tesco with their own products that are available, if Britain were to become fascist, not only would it be that most of the competition would die out leaving with just the monopoly it would also be directing what types of food is available on a particular day and you would be at their mercy. All or nothing.
While Hayek gives a far more precise description in terms of economic control, in stark contrast to that, the general public don’t have a good understanding since the news associate any kind of extremist violence with fascism, whether it’s protests, burning things down and so on when it is not exactly correct. A. James Gregor, another historianand writer on the topic in his book, The Faces of Janus Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century references the European Parliament who did an inquiry on fascism on the continent and the reports continued anything from arson on refugee hostels, violence at soccer matches and even instances of “hate speech.” These are all incredibly broad definitions yet when you compare to Nazi Germany, or Soviet Union, the red terror and violence were directed by the state. So in order for those attacks to qualify as "facism" or "totalitarianism" they would have to be directed by the state. Moving on from that, Jonah makes a brief weird brief connection between Mussolini and Teddy Roosevelt (who was a progressive conservative) who was a Christian president of the USA and was in no way shape or form a fascist. The book then discusses in detail the French revolution which I have little knowledge on, as well as few other topics, returning once more to Germany and USA. Jonah does give some insight shedding light on the aims of Mussolini and the fascist state, which is something that can be easily missed. Jonah gives a direct quote, “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State,” and they didn’t set out for it to be a totalitarian society to mean something evil but rather a humane society where everyone was a part of the whole. Mussolini according to Jonah coined the word totalitarian to encompass the whole of society. Giovanni Gentile’s work mentions it as well on page 7, that the idea is that humans can’t be free until they identify with the whole community and its expression in the state and while humans are restricted and unfree otherwise. It again feels weird looking at something like that as you would not automatically assume totalitarian meant something evil.
Jonah offers more insight when he comes back around to America W. E. B. DuBois, Charles Beard, Walter Weyl, Richard Ely, Nicholas Murray Butler, and countless other founders of modern American liberalism were among the nine thousand Americans who studied in German universities during the nineteenth century and these figures drew inspiration by Bismarck in Germany. Including prominent figures like Richard Ely. The big kicker comes when Jonah says, “The key concept for rationalizing progressive utopianism was "experimentation," justified in the language of Nietzschean authenticity, Darwinian evolution, and Hegelian historicism and explained in the argot of William James's pragmatism. Scientific knowledge advanced by trial and error. Human evolution advanced by trial and error. History, according to Hegel, progressed through the interplay of thesis and antithesis. These experiments were the same process on a vast scale. So, what if Mussolini cracked skulls or Lenin lined up dissident socialists? The progressives believed they were participating in a process of ascendance to a more modern, more "evolved" way of organizing society, replete with modern machines, modern medicine, modern politics.’ I think that is a remarkably interesting connection between all these different ideologies melding together to form a socio-political movement. These ideas are the driving force for Fascism, Nazism and Progressivism in the 20th century. After all, the eugenics that was pushed by the progressives which was then picked up by the Nazis. Often people associate silencing opposition as something being in Nazi Germany, but it also happened in the USA, on top of the fact that militarism was seen as progressive in much the same way as patriotism. They were all progressive ideas under the same banner. Under progressive president Woodrow Wilson, had thousands arrested for being unpatriotic but he also passed a sedition act banning papers that were disloyal to the government or state. It’s only beyond the world wars that the connection between progressivism and militarism has been lost. Jonah slowly moves forward in time to Franklyn D Roosevelt, who was born a year before Mussolini and grew up in the same progressive era, growing up with the sedition acts and espionage acts and according to Jonah, that FDR was supportive of seeing dissidents being silenced while he was in his younger years, which was a surprise seeing there is this view that FDR was just this great hero. Jonah describes some of FDR’s politics, and moves towards the period of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. It is under these two that there is a massive shift from many of the old ways of progressivism, through psychiatry and psychology. Jonah shows a lot of good insight and historical knowledge about the radicals in the 60s but more importantly the push through psychology from the Frankfurt School teachings, to psychologise progressivism. So instead of looking through the lens of eugenics, that opponents were physically unfit and needed to be weeded out, it became about psychologically unfit. So there was Barry Goldwater who ran against LBJ, but the press and around 1,000 psychiatrists made him out to be unfit to lead because he wasn’t a progressive. It worked since LBJ won in a landslide. Goldwater according to Jonah was the last non-progressive Republican since Calvin Coolidge in the 20s. By then however the connection between eugenics and progressivism has been lost and most people on the left are unaware that their ideology was intwined with eugenics. Jonah makes a large case of illustrating many useful examples of how different people who were leftists, socialists, newspapers that were also into eugenics. He even mentions a particularly disturbing case of in the 20s where they even tried to get eugenics written into the constitution as well as bringing up the KKK. The KKK had Democrat ties, and Jonah mentions one member in particular Robert Byrd. I researched him, and indeed Robert Byrd was a part of the KKK, yet he was also apart of the Democratic party. Equally as surprising he was also in all the right circles such as JFK and LBJ. He discusses in great detail how the idea of fascism changes from being this evil totalitarianism towards the totalitarianism of the “benevolent” kind and he uses examples from Christopher Lasch, who was a psychologist and former Marxist who wrote books like the cult of Narcissism but according to Jonah he did an article analysing Hilary Clinton’s language that she would use gospel like terms in regards to the government as would her husband but also draws comparisons to their obsession with the state being like “a part of the family”. It’s some fascinating insight into the mindset of some of the most recent leaders that have dominated the world stage and also quite disturbing. Jonah finally reaches the end and draws a conclusion drawing everything together that even though the current USA system is different to the one set out by the progressives in the early 20th century, that built the foundations towards this God-state, despite the current system being quite different to the one in the 1920s. The progressives set out to make heaven on earth as a social gospel, that it should be the state to deal with sin, and that sin should be dealt with collectively rather than individually. Currently the leaders use similar language as much do the media when talking about them but without it being a Christian movement, but still very pseudo-religious.
As a history graduate, who has studied world war history quite frequently there was certainly some surprises within the book, that I was not aware off such as how the language changed of leaders in trying to achieve their aims, but also this idea of “collective” sin. Even as a Christian, I have never heard of that term before, and I find it quite jarring, that there is this concept of individual sin being not important but rather it is collective sin. The book does jump up and down a lot from different periods of time, whether it’s the 1920s, the 1940s, the 1960s, or as recent as the 90s and 00s, so you have to have some understanding of each period to understand what is happening as there are a lot of names being mentioned throughout the book. I think the book is very useful for someone trying to understand the topic and certainly there are some good comparisons between fascism and Marxism that matches other writers. For instance, The Faces of Janus Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century by A. James Gregor mentions that both Marxism and Fascism systems mirror each other in that individuals should submit to the authority of the state in “pursuit of the greater national destiny” which is the same type of language Mussolini used, but it also mirrors language used by the progressives as well as the Clintons, FDR, and so on to try and build the “Greater society”. The book by Goldberg while perhaps not the best on the topic, certainly helps in understanding what has been happening in the last hundred years and may offer a glimpse of what is coming.