Neiwert on "Liberal Fascism"

by: Jay Stevens

Sun Jan 13, 2008 at 22:10:45 PM MST

Here is some free advice for liberals who don't care much for Jonah Goldberg or his (bestselling) new volume: Either confine yourself to dismissive snark, of the sort perfected by my colleague Matt, or buckle down and actually read the damn thing.

Of course, the premise is patently ludicrous, and shouldn't have earned a publisher, let alone an audience, but, hey, fair enough.

David Neiwert:

Liberal Fascism is like a number of other recent attempts at historical revisionism by popular right-wing pundits -- including, notably, Michelle Malkin's attempt to justify the Japanese-American internment in her book In Defense of Internment, and Ann Coulter's attempt to rehabilitate McCarthy's reputation in her book Treason -- in that it employs the same historical methodology used by Holocaust deniers and other right-wing revanchists: namely, it selects a narrow band of often unrepresentative facts, distorts their meaning, and simultaneously elides and ignores whole mountains of contravening evidence and broader context. These are simply theses in search of support, not anything like serious history.

What goes missing from Goldberg's account of fascism is that, while he describes nearly every kind of liberal enterprise or ideology as representing American fascism, he wipes from the pages of history the fact that there have been fascists operating within the nation's culture for the better part of the past century....[C]ompletely missing from the pages of Goldberg's book is any mention of the Silver Shirts, the American Nazi Party, the Posse Comitatus, the Aryan Nations, or the National Alliance -- all of them openly fascist organizations, many of them involved in some of the nation's most horrific historical events....Goldberg sees fit to declare people like Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and Hillary Clinton "American fascists," but he makes no mention of William Dudley Pelley, Gerald L.K. Smith, George Lincoln Rockwell, William Potter Gale, Richard Butler, or David Duke -- all of them bona fide fascists: the real thing.

This is a telling omission, because the continuing existence of these groups makes clear what an absurd and nakedly self-serving thing Goldberg's alternate version of reality is. Why dream up fascists on the left when the reality is that real American fascists have been lurking in the right's closet for lo these many years? Well, maybe because it's a handy way of getting everyone to forget that fact.

(Neiwert on Goldberg's methodology.)

Goldberg's thesis is political, not historical or academic. It's the same kind of creepy, selective revisionism found in David Irving's Holocaust denial books and from the folks that come up with arguments that say -- I dunno -- liberal progressivism is really a form of Hobbesian government, or that Social Darwinism was an early manifestation of the welfare state.

Still, the media will call Goldberg "controversial," and give him the airtime to spout his ridiculous theories.

Reminds me of this clip from the Jon Stewart show (oh, how we rue the writer's strike!):

CORDDRY: I'm sorry, my opinion? No, I don't have 'o-pin-i-ons'. I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called 'objectivity' - might wanna look it up some day.

STEWART: Doesn't objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what's credible and what isn't?

CORDDRY: Whoa-ho! Well, well, well - sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! [high-pitched, effeminate] 'Ooh, this allegation is spurious! Upon investigation this claim lacks any basis in reality! Mmm, mmm, mmm.' Listen buddy: not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the media examines Goldberg's claims. That way we all learn something about fascism, Goldberg, and the conservative push to inject revisionist fallacies into the public discourse, accusing their political opponents of the things very much alive in their own movement. A fella can dream, can't he?