comments on Jonah Goldberg on the Daily Show and his book, Liberal Fascism

I just saw the online version of Jon Stewart's Daily Show interview with John Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, published in January 2008. It portrays a smiley face with a Hitler-esque mustache on the front and a big red cover.

Now, if I had seen that book on the shelves, I probably would've written it off as yet another liberal-bashing book and lumped it with books by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and others. (Al Franken could go there, but he's got some wit, and some street cred from his stint at SNL and the book Why Not Me? The Making and Unmaking of the Al Franken Presidency.)

The Daily Show interview was interesting because it tried to grapple with the genuine ideological origins of fascism. If you'll bear with me, I did take a course at Claremont McKenna as an undergraduate titled, The Philosophical Roots of European Fascism, which, depending on my memory (oh, the ravages of age), my ability as a student (questionable in the best of times), and Myra Moss' ability as a teacher (which I have no reason to question), might make me more qualified to comment on this than the average blogger.

As a further selling point, I care a hell of a lot less about precise definitions and historical forensics about who communicated what where, which should make this work punchier and clearer than the average (political) philosophy student's comments.

Jonah's argument goes something like this:

Progressivism is intimately connected to fascism in its origins and goals.

Hillary Clinton has recently tried to reidentify herself as a progressive, not a liberal.

Therefore, Hillary Clinton, Whole Foods, and the American Left are fascists (or neo-fascists, or post-modern fascists, or fascists-lite.)

One problem I have with this is that Jonah makes abundantly clear that while he is attempting to prove an important historical connection (or at least get people to avoid using "fascist" so casually, thereby broadcasting their ignorance in stereo), he fails to carry this over to being careful with his language.

An example serves to illustrate the none-too-strong argument that Goldberg abuses language when it is convenient for his cause. Hegel spoke of the organic unity or "whole" that is created when the State embodies both the desire for an individual to be free as well as the means for achieving that freedom. (We can go off on a tangent about the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic, whether it belongs to Hegel at all or to Fichte, but Wikipedia exists for a reason.)

This "organic unity" does not mean that the modern organic movement is Fascist. Jonah Goldberg seems to think so. One of his working titles for Liberal Fascism was The Totalitarian Temptation: From Hegel to Whole Foods .

I think he's gone a bridge too far. Hell, maybe an interstate too far.

In our class, we covered a number of thinkers whose contributions to Fascism as an ideology are not always obvious, are always complex, and often are the result of the genie getting out of the bottle long after its master had died. We covered Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Gentile, Mussolini, and Hitler. I think it's fair to say (even based on a brief Wikipedia survey) that many of these thinkers/writers did not intend for the rise of the Fascist state, or if they did, that it should be one that would appeal specifically to racial superiority and exhibit the brutality, excesses, and incompetence of Hitler and the Third Reich.

I'm annoyed by anyone who tells me that there's only one way to do things - whether it's a local hippie trying to convince me to "buy local" and organic, even when I am well aware of the New Zealand economic study that showed that globalization (and the transport of goods from overseas) can, in fact, have a lower carbon footprint. And I also know that "buy local" is motivated as much by protectionism on the part of small farmers as much as socially conscious living. I'm annoyed by people who believe that America needs to increase the size of its armed forces, because they believe in the potential for absolute security through a bloody path through Tehran, Pyongyang, and Lahore.

Groupthink, from any quarter, is dangerous. This should be obvious, but I think expedience and convenience dilutes this message, especially since those who have the most responsibility to communicate it (parents, teachers) stand to lose the most control, authority, and power if they do successfully instill the idea of independent thought. (sigh)

Why am I bothering? I don't know - I admit it might be a way to stay up, or to increase viewership of my blog/FB profile by attaching a photo of his book, which is controversial enough not to be ignored. I'm not above pandering. But neither is he, and Jon Stewart (rightly) rips him a new one on cable TV for his book cover.

But I do know that Progressivism deserves better, even if some of its intellectual/institutional offshoots supported American Fascism.

More importantly, I think it's also important to realize that America was not all that far from Fascism during that great trial of the Republic in the 1930s.

Our history books do not teach us that Mussolini and Hitler were looked upon with tremendous respect from America during the 1930s, in no small part because of their use of centralized authority and Military Keynesianism to improve their national economies. The Military Keynesianism discussion will have to wait for another post. But I will mention that the Business Plot (aka the White House Putsch) appeared real enough to warrant Congressional testimony from Gen. Smedley Butler, in which he testified that bankers and financiers had approached him about leading a coup, promising an army of 500,000 men for a march on Washington DC, $30 million in financial backing, and media spin control.

One final point about Mr. Goldberg - he is being wildly, perhaps willfully blind, if he believes that the American Empire can be maintained, much less expanded, without a large government offering security as a substitute good for liberty, and providing expansionism as a source of profits, jobs, and escape from domestic issues.

(Disclaimer: I am basing my understanding of Goldberg's claims exclusively on his Wikipedia entry, which is currently closed to edits until Jan. 30, 2008 due to vandalism. It's not good scholarship, but this is Facebook, not Foreign Affairs.)

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Goldberg is a supporter of the Iraq war, has advocated for American military intervention elsewhere. There are other items on his record (notably serving as an apologist for colonialism in Africa) that could be brought up, but would only serve to distract from the point. He has admitted in 2006 that it was a mistake to go in [to Iraq], but a noble mistake.

He rightly brings up the point that some liberals do have flimsy anti-war arguments. ' "In other words, the relation isn't to war per se; it's to wars that advance U.S. interests.... I must confess, one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the iraq war was a mistake was my distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side.' "

But he neglects that regardless of whether there is "just war" or "war that serves interests", all war, save defensive wars against an opponent bent on total destruction of the nation-state, requires a construction of an organic whole where identity and capacity meet to defend or spread a set of values, or defeat a contrary value system.

Perhaps, then, all wars require Fascism.

There may be just wars. There may be humanitarian interventions that do far more good than harm. But in these cases, and all cases, Americans must be honest about the infrastructure and ideology that is thus mobilized in order to fight a war. And based on my admittedly layman's understanding of philosophical terms, that may qualify as fascism (small "f" intended to distinguish from European flavor associated with 20th century, and NOT to diminish the importance of the concept).

Separating the functional terms from the historical and popular associations might - in spite of objections from the very metaphysicists mentioned in this post - provide access to a more objective reality and reason that can better guide choice.

Mr. Goldberg, if THAT was your goal, I think you've failed miserably.

On the other hand, if you are illustrating the time-tested truth (I believe best said by Oscar Wilde), that "The only thing worse than being talked about than not talked about," then congratulations. You've made a buck by exploiting sensationalism and capitalism, which maybe means that America is better than you or I might think. :)