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30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific look at the realities of facism - not today's misrememberances, 4 Mar 2009
This is a terrific book that I almost missed. Frankly, I was going to pass on it because I had viewed Jonah Goldberg as a bit of a wise acre and didn't realize he had a book like this in him. And the title and the cover art, while attention getting, contribute to the idea that this is going to be a lightweight attack piece. I guess the title and cover art got a lot of attention and helped the book sell well, but I only read it because a friend told me I shouldn't miss it. I am glad my friend brought it to my attention because it is a valuable book and will provide great information to anyone who is willing to actually read it rather than surmise what it says one way or the other.
If you have doubts or objections to what you think the book might be saying, I encourage you to start with the Afterword in which he anticipates many of the likely criticisms of the book and also shows where he believes conservatism can run off the rails. This is not the one sided or wild-eyed attack piece some have claimed it to be. Goldberg shows us what an imprecise and slippery epithet fascism has become. He then takes us back to the father of fascism, Mussolini, and shows how it grew out of the Progressive movements alive in American and Europe and uses the writings of intellectuals of that movement to show the linkage and their praise of Pre-Hitler Mussolini.
Goldberg then demonstrates how Hitler was a man of the Left and how the accusations of his being "right wing" have to be understood as accusations against a nationalist socialist movement from the USSR's internationalist (read Moscow dominated) communist-socialist movement. The author is CLEAR and says many times that he is not saying that the left wing in general and especially that the left of today is NOT guilty of the holocaust nor is he saying that their policies would lead to such a monstrous outcome.
We next move to Woodrow Wilson through to Franklin Roosevelt and the ways in which they introduced fascist policies within America and in our foreign policy. The kind of public suppression of individual liberty and thought under Wilson is swept under the rug today and I hope the events Goldberg describes in this book get brought back into popular awareness. We would be horrified at someone being shot for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance, but in that time it was seen as a justifiable and heroic act!
Franklin Roosevelt's true history is getting broader play today and the all but universal praise he received in my youth is justly being reconsidered. This book does a fine job in setting those policies in a clear context of the worldwide progressive and fascist movements. Remember, you cannot use your present suppositions about what fascism means to judge this use of the term. It was a term that was used with praise prior to World War II and the holocaust.
Chapter 5 takes us through the 1960s and the cultural revolution that revived many of the fascist notions and spread them into the radical youth who are now striving for power in our political (and economic) institutions today. Chapters 7 reviews how eugenics was originally stated and how its echoes remain in present left-progressive policies (without their advocating the kind of eugenics policies that seemed so useful to intellectual advocating social and racial hygiene a century ago). Chapter 8 tours the economic bargains the participants in various progressive economies were willing to strike with fascism. Goldberg shows clearly why big companies are no longer capitalist and why they work for state protection from competition, for tax breaks and subsidies, and end up supporting progressive-left state policies.
Chapter 9 is a useful and clear headed analysis of the kinds of policies Hillary Clinton and her progressive compatriots advocate and how they have changed the techniques of persuasion in order to sell the old progressive nostrums in the name of "the children". We see clearly our own acceptance of these old fascist notions and how the old-time religion of individual liberty and limited government is weakening under the administrations of BOTH the Democrats and Republicans, especially George W. Bush.
This is a very useful book and I hope it is widely read and discussed seriously. We don't need any shouting down, spitting, or claims about what the books says or proves that it doesn't say for itself. In any case, Goldberg has my sincerest praise for his accomplishment. Superbly done. Thanks, Jonah.
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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seminal work, 4 Mar 2009
Mr. Goldberg makes an excellent case exposing the progressive roots of both classical fascism and Nazism (aka National Socialism) and their connection to contemporary and later "liberal" and left wing ideology. In particular, he draws on the American progressive movement of the early twentieth century. Much is startling (though historically well attested and no historian has disproved Goldberg's facts) and shows that mid century fascism is not some "far right" perversion, but well in keeping with the ideals of the left at the time. One wonders why, since most of this information is quite easily assessible, and the obvious socialist leanings of the Nazis and fascists generally, it has remained obscure for so long. (Conservatives would say the leftist runnings of universities)
Goldberg does focus largely on a great deal of American characters who may be more well known to his US readers than those on this side of the pond. This may be problematic to some British readers. It would be interesting to trace the British connection to all this.
However, the book is full of invaluable information. Goldberg divides up the 20th century into 3 American 'fascist' (by which he means authoritarian/statist) periods. The first (and nastiest) was under Woodrow Wilson, the racist Aryanist Democrat president (he happily segregated the White House after years of blacks made inroads there, for example) who Goldberg considers the father of the modern Left/Liberal/progressive thinking. Next is FDR, whose New Deal (admired by the Left to this day) is strikingly similar to Nazi economics. Finally he looks at the youth movement of the 60s which founded the modern obsession (shared by fascist states) with environmentalism, identity politics, health living etc. The similarity between the 'new left' and National Socialism has been observed by many people even on the left itself.
Finally Goldberg has some fun critiquing Hollywood's 'Liberal' films for fascist themes (and not the obvious ones) and having a laugh at modern health food fads, anti-smoking campaigns (pioneered by the Nazis) and leaves us in no doubt as to what side of the political divide Hitler would fit on if alive today.
Although many academics have been brought forward to try to disprove Goldberg's facts, none has been able to do so.
Highly recommended.
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20 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I had no idea how much I didn't know, 5 Feb 2009
First off, what I already knew: Equating the American Conservative with Fascism is nonsensical on many levels.
What I didn't know: The backdrop of American fascism in the 20th Century that makes the history books suddenly make sense. I even understand my grandparents better.
A great read and well-researched, but not just researched -- I am impressed by how well Mr. Goldberg has digested the facts and presented them without much ideology attached.
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