Who They Can’t Outthink, They Ridicule
Jonah Goldberg’s extensively-researched book on the historical cuddling between the left and fascism isn’t even out yet and already the leftist are having themselves a few nervous yuks. Shame they can’t be bothered to actually address the book on an intellectual level. Say what you will about Goldberg, but he’s not going to put his name on a book that’s shoddily researched. It’s just not going to happen. At some point, someone on the left is going to use their brains to criticize his book (which I’ve not read but very much plan on buying as soon as I can get it). It ought to be a good debate, if it ever happens.
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Category: Free Speech (?), Moonbat Nonsense
Are you aware that in comparison to what historians–professional, often academic, historians–think about fascism, Jonah Goldberg's argument is sheer nonsense?
"Jonah Goldberg’s extensively-researched book…"
You are kidding, right?
Without his Mommy, he'd be in the basement eating Cheetos.
Oh come on Jimmie.
Sometimes you just gotta take a deep breath and admit that sometimes it just happens that someone on your side has just totally lost it and gone off the deep end.
And chuckle about it.
This book would be a great parody of some of the nuttiness on the left – y'know, take your average Kos comment and then flip it over and run it out to an absurd extreme.
But gee,,,I think he is actually trying to be serious here.
You gotta admit that this line:
"The quintessential liberal fascist isn’t an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore."
is probably going to go down in history as one of the funniest examples of political derangement ever produced. And it comes from your side!
I think you should sieze the opportunity to have a little Sister Souljah moment here. Defending this as serious stuff is not. the. way. to. go.
That is nervous laughter by some and ignorant laughter by the rest. Most of the Leftists are sheep, the rest are just dressed like sheep.
The Left has been trying to re-writer history with the same ardor that the holocaust deniers have. The Left does not want us to remember that their Eugenics and all the "science" behind it probably facilitated the extermination of millions of Jews.
They don't want people to remember that their elitist thoughts about who should do our manual labor was responsible for most of the impetus for the civil war – which cost America some 700,000 souls.
They don't want people to remember that their elitist ideas about a person's place in society is the reason for apartheid lasting into the 1960's in the US – continuing the deaths of so many Americans.
They don't want people to realize that today, their policies are designed to make most Americans dependent upon them for everything from health care to holidays. No absolutes exist other than the over-arching government.
Leftists LOL nervously – they don't want you to know.
Ed Deuce – The guy spent a whole year on the book. If you were interested, you could see some of the things he was finding and many of the sources he was using for the entire time he was writing the book. He showed a lot of his work already on NRO's The Corner. Saying he didn't do the hard work of meticulous research is just silly.
If nothing else, he knew he'd be catching flak from the left, so he had better be sure he showed his work.
Joe Citizen – Consider that a teacher, over the course of her career, can indoctrinate thousands of yong minds. An SS Stormtrooper influenced far fewer minds.
Joel – I'm with you, man.
"The guy spent a whole year on the book."
No doubt. I suspect it would take a whole year, if not longer, to find support for an absurd thesis. Cherry-picking takes a really long time when there ain't many cherries.
"Consider that a teacher, over the course of her career, can indoctrinate thousands of yong minds. An SS Stormtrooper influenced far fewer minds."
Consider that every person, over the course of their lives, have dozens of teachers (not to mention parents, friends, and other mentors), and that no single teacher (or even a small handful) can indoctrinate anybody.
Seriously, some of you people need to beam back to the planet.
But seriously, Golderg's too late, movement conservatives jumped the shark yet two years ago.
Its interesting that not one of the attacks on Jonah was based on logic or fact. Even in our own country, the "party of the workingman", the democrats, was in effective alliance with the Ku Klux Klan ( see Senator Byrd) until the late 1960's. Liberals only differ from other fascists in who they think the all powerful state should favor.
Consider that a teacher, over the course of her career, wouldn't butcher Jonah "Doughbob Loadpants" Goldberg the way an SS Stormtrooper would just because Loadpants was ga… er, Jewish.
"Even in our own country, the “party of the workingman”, the democrats, was in effective alliance with the Ku Klux Klan ( see Senator Byrd) until the late 1960’s."
Simply untrue. Most of the state parties actively opposed the Klan by the time WWII hit, and the national party actively disavowed Klan ties well before that. But then, one expects conservative twits to spew these factually flawed strawmen in the hope that someone will buy into their intellectual dishonesty.
tcd99
Jonah's book isn't out yet, so no one can offer a point by point refutation. But that doesn't matter because his hypothesis is so absurd, so obviously nonsense on stilts, and so obviously ahistorical, that it really doesn't warrant serious consideration as an intellectual product.
Heh. Looks like the very notion of this books' existence has struck a nerve. I'm taking bets on how long it takes before the nervous, defensive laughter turns into…well…fascist behavior.
So…any factual rebuttals coming on a book youhave yet to read or should I just let you guys foam at the mouth in peace?
Jimmie-
Oh yes. Fascist behavior. Next think you know, liberals will be changing the laws to make it legal to torture American citizens, they will suspend habeus corpus, they will wire-tap phones without warrants, and they may even expand presidential authority.
binky –
So the democrats in the South( along with many northern unions ) did not support segregation? Now who's spewing factually flawed strawmen?
Sorry if I failed to check what the state parties were saying. I guess I thought spawning off movements like the Dixiecrats and George Wallace were enough.
"Simply untrue. Most of the state parties actively opposed the Klan by the time WWII hit, and the national party actively disavowed Klan ties well before that. But then, one expects conservative twits to spew these factually flawed strawmen in the hope that someone will buy into their intellectual dishonesty."
tcd99-
Did you know that the Nazi's accused interlocutors of setting up strawmen? Jimmie, did you know that some fat saxophone players in tuxedo's joined the Nazi party?
tcd99 blurted:
"So the democrats in the South( along with many northern unions ) did not support segregation?"
That's not what I said. That's also a strawman.
I won't post again, since the level of historical knowledge evidenced by liberals here is insufficient to mount any arguments other than the ad hominem or ill informed rants. If anything, you provide good ammunition for Jonah's thesis by demonstrating the retreat from reason by the left.
To Rickm – if its too early for me to ask for reasoned responses, isn't it too early to attack his book as well?
"The Left does not want us to remember that their Eugenics and all the “science” behind it probably facilitated the extermination of millions of Jews."
Wow.
Yes, when I vote progressive to expand public health care, the reason I do so is because in the back of my mind I am remembering how great it was to help exterminate millions of Jews due to principles (eugenics) that I have barely any knowledge of.
You're fun at parties, aren't you?
"No absolutes exist other than the over-arching government."
Indeed, no leftists/progressives/democrats work for private enterprise or *gasp* own businesses. Those things are staffed *entirely* by conservatives.
"Heh. Looks like the very notion of this books’ existence has struck a nerve. I’m taking bets on how long it takes before the nervous, defensive laughter turns into…well…fascist behavior."
When did you stop beating your wife?
tdc99
Um, no. I probably know more about the historiography of Fascism than most people, including Jonah. To date, he is the only one arguing that modern liberalism/progressivism is fascism.
I won't post again, since I need to go and furtively masturbate to gay kiddieporn and then fall asleep crying and thinking about how mean and irrational the libruls are.
Y'know guys, I hear holding your breath and kicking your feet on the floor helps.
Facts? Anyone?
Rickm – Oddly enough, I've never played the saxoophone in a tux. But, hey, you're the first one to the ad hominem well tonight. Good on you! How long did you have to hold that one back?
Okay, folks, the book's not officially out for a cople more weeks, at least. Why don't you go do a little Christmas shopping for your loved ones and relax a bit.
"Facts? Anyone?"
Fact: liberalism has nothing to do with fascism.
Fact: anyone who makes such a tendentious argument should go out of his or her way to not appear clownish ('Hegel to Whole Foods'), deluded ('Hillary Clinton and the Meaning of Liberal Fascism'), or downright crazy ('Woodrow Wilson and the birth of liberal fascism').
Fact: trying to defend an idea that is prima facie laughable isn't wise.
Anyone have any facts to rebut my very serious argument that all conservatives are fascists? anyone?
Oooh, more facts!
"In this sense, both the Wilson and the FDR administrations were descendents – albeit distant ones – of the first fascist movement: the French Revolution."
Fact: this book is bound to be HILARIOUS.
Jonah Goldberg:
1/5/01: "Nazism and the Holocaust are hardly joking matters. So let me be very careful in how I talk about this.
"If you honestly think John Ashcroft or elected Republicans in general are Nazis, then you are either a moron of ground-shaking proportions or you are so daft that you shouldn't be allowed to play with grown-up scissors."
…"Calling someone a Nazi is as bad as calling them a "nigger" or a "kike" or anything else you can think of. It's not cute. It's not funny. And it's certainly not clever. If you're too stupid to understand that a philosophy that favors a federally structured republic, with numerous restraints on the scope and power of government to interfere with individual rights or the free market, is a lot different from an ethnic-nationalist, atheistic, and socialist program of genocide and international aggression, you should use this rule of thumb: If someone isn't advocating the murder of millions of people in gas chambers and a global Reich for the White Man you shouldn't assume he's a Nazi and you should know it's pretty damn evil to call him one."
6/19/02: "[T]he use and abuse of Nazi analogies has been a major peeve of mine for quite some time."
9/4/03: "Suffice it to say that the Nazis weren't simply generically bad, they were uniquely and monumentally evil, not just in their hearts but also in literally billions of intentional, well-planned, and bureaucratized decisions they made every day.
"And yet, in polite and supposedly sophisticated circles in America today it is acceptable to say George Bush is akin to a Nazi and that America is becoming Nazi-like. Indeed, in certain corners of the globe to disagree with this assertion is the more outlandish position than to agree with it."
…"When you say that anything George Bush has done is akin to what Hitler did, you make the Holocaust into nothing more than an example of partisan excess. Tax cuts are not genocide, as so many Democrats have suggested over the years…
"Darn those Republicans" does not equal "Darn those Nazis." The Patriot Act is not the final solution. The handful of men in Guantanamo may not all be guilty of terrorism, but it's more than reasonable to assume they are. And no matter how you try to contort it, Gitmo is not the same thing as Auschwitz or Dachau. There are no children there. You don't get carted off to Cuba and gassed if you criticize the president or if you are one-quarter Muslim. And, inversely, there was no reasonable justification for throwing the Jews and the Gypsies and all the others into the death camps. The Jews weren't terrorists or members of a terrorist organization. To say that the men in Guantanamo — or any of the Muslims being politely interviewed by appointment — are akin to the Jews of Germany is to trivialize the experiences of the millions who were slaughtered. Even if you think Muslims are being unfairly inconvenienced, when you say they are the Jews of Nazified America you are in essence saying the worst crime of the Holocaust was to unfairly inconvenience the Jews.
Sorry if I failed to check what the state parties were saying. I guess I thought spawning off movements like the Dixiecrats and George Wallace were enough.
Yes, because that the Dixiecrats no longer felt welcome within the Democratic party obviously makes the Democrats more responsible for the Dixiecrats.
The simple fact is, the Democratic party disowned its white supremacists. Who were then gleefully adopted (see: Thurmond, Strom; Helms, Jesse) and then imitated (see: Lott, Trent; Allen, George) by the Republicans.
By the way, I recommend you read about the history of fascism and consider the Republican positions on Habeus and on torture.
Fact: when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, it was opposed by bigoted Southern Democrats. These men were so upset that LBJ (a democrat) signed the bill into law, that they left the democratic party and joined the republican ranks.
Fact: on the political scale, Fascism is on the right, not the left. Communism and Socialism are on the left.
In this sense, both the Wilson and the FDR administrations were descendents – albeit distant ones – of the first fascist movement: the French Revolution.
that was my favorite line too, the French revolution was fascist. if I didn't know any better, I would have assumed old Pantload was being sarcastic.
RickM
And no matter how you try to contort it, Gitmo is not the same thing as Auschwitz or Dachau. There are no children there.
Right you are Rick. They're all grown up now.
Close the italics:-)
(Got it – Jimmie)
This book demands ridicule. No serious person thinks otherwise.
Lovely. I've been reading studies of Nazi Germany since I cut my teeth on Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in junior high, and I know perfectly well that the temptation succumbed to by some 20th-century liberals was communism, not fascism. Nazism was almost entirely a creature of the Right.
But some bozos on a conservative comment thread think I should disregard dozens of books written by lifelong students of the subject, because some guy who got a job b/c of who his mom was, and who's notorious for his pathetic blegs for people to do his research for him, wrote a ridiculous book.
I dunno, Anderson. I think your mighty expertise could probably wait until the book comes out to render an informed opinion on it. That's what I would expect an intelligent person to do.
Or you could read one of the couple advance reviews that have already been done on the book. If you were really interested in intellectual honesty, that is.
"I dunno, Anderson. I think your mighty expertise could probably wait until the book comes out to render an informed opinion on it. That’s what I would expect an intelligent person to do."
Thing is, Jimmie, I think we do have an informed opinion about the book's premise. And it's the premise we're objecting to. It's deeply flawed. As I said above – if you're going to make an unlikely and difficult argument (a worthwhile thing to do), you should adopt the posture of someone worthy of making such an argument, which Goldberg isn't even trying to do.
I just cannot imagine a universe in which this book would somehow surprise me. I think it's extremely naive to believe that, after the circus of the changing, ever-sillier subtitles and this recent revelation of the absolutely risible errors of fact and informal logic contained within the few hundred words of the book we've seen so far, that this book would be worth reading.
I mean, would you listen to a guy who could claim to prove, once and for all, in a very serious, reasoned, and well researched way, that the French revolution had something to do with fascism? You're better off – indeed, you're even being wise – not to waste your time listening at all.
Jimmi:
Speaking as an independent conservative, I can say this: you're not helping. I haven't read the damn book, and neither have you. At least I will with hold judgement until I do.
"Looks like the very notion of this books’ existence has struck a nerve. I’m taking bets on how long it takes before the nervous, defensive laughter turns into…well…fascist behavior."
What sort of "fascist behaviour"? You are aware, are you not, that the burning of books they didn't like was a Nazi pass time? Have you seen any liberals fueling bonfires with books like _Treason_, or _Godless_, or any of the other screeds wtitten by Coulter, O'Reilley, or Limbaugh? Because *I* sure haven't.
You can find authoritarianism on the left, and you can find it on the right. And I am sick and tired of these self-anointed ones who would drag the rest of us into their "Promised Land", kicking and screaming. I don't give a *rat's ass* whether that "Promised Land" is the Workers' Paradise or Jesusland. And I am equally sick and tired of political catfights over who gets to pull the levers of State Power when the question should be if we should be putting that much power in the hands of the state in the first place.
Wow, x_eleven, you said a lot.
First, let me say that, contrary to what's been said in this thread, the Nazis were not a right-wing organization. That wasn't their intellectual underpinnings and it certainly wasn't their goals afterwards. Eugenics, one of the Nazis' big goals, has long been a staple of the left. Same for the outlawing of religion – something the Nazis were very big on. Just read the stuff that Hitler was saying and doing on the matter.
Now you're right. The left hasn't burned any books. But they have intimidated speakers off of many stages often using physical violence. You mentioned Ann Counter and I'm reminded of how she had something hurled at her by a leftist protester. David Horowitz has been assaulted as well. You could Google up plenty of other examples of speakers on the right being attacked or intimidated physically. That's nearly textbook fascist behavior through and through. What you won't find are a corresponding number of attacks from the right on the left.
You should also take note that I haven't expounded on the goodness or badness of the book. What I have said is that Goldberg has spent quite a lot of time researching the book. I know because he's shown his work for well over a year right out where anyone who wanted to read it could do so. In fact, he's written several blog posts and columns on the subject of fascism and the left in varying degrees of detail and specificity as his book progressed. So it's not like he's pulling all this stuff out of thin air and it's definitely not true that this is some lazy, fly-by-night book that was dashed off in a fortnight to take advantage of the hot political issue.
I am intensely interested by the kneejerk, anti-intellectual responses that this post generally has garnered. It seems typical of the behavior I've seen from the left for at least the past decade which is that if you can't make an intellectual point, try to rip out the speaker's throat. That is as anti-democratic and – yes, fascist – a behavior as I can imagine in a discussion.
OK, so fill me in.
What's so intellectual about calling people Nazis and rewriting history? And if something IS ridiculous, what is the PC thing to say?
"How..interesting.."?
First, let me say that, contrary to what’s been said in this thread, the Nazis were not a right-wing organization.
Which of course explains their aversion to communism, trade unions, and "internationalism" of all kinds; their golden age fantasies of a German greatness spoiled by decadence and weakness of national will; their revanchist territorial claims and the racist "Aryan" anthropology upon which those claims were built; and their assertion of "traditional" sexual morality and gender norms within the family.
No, no — there's nothing right wing about that in the least.
" It seems typical of the behavior I’ve seen from the left for at least the past decade which is that if you can’t make an intellectual point, try to rip out the speaker’s throat."
Actually, it seems far more typical of the behavior that when someone on the right makes a patent stupid/offensive/hateful remark, they immediately dismiss any counterpoint that doesn't admit they're largely right by claiming some sort of victimization.
Liberal media is our sterling case in point – when Republicans do poorly, get bad coverage, or don't succeed in smearing an opponent, it's because of liberal media bias. When a Republican has a mistake or a lie pointed out, it's the liberal media taking them down.
When Republican ideas like creationism, supply-side economics and American exceptionalism uber alles fail to take hold at institutions of higher learning, it's not because the ideas are bad, weak, or unsupported by evidence – it's because liberals can't stand up to the inevitable and all-consuming force of your "facts", however they shift and wriggle.
When a Republican writes a book declaring that the defining ideological movement of the previous century (and the one they're opposed to) is the exact same as an ideology of evil based on evidence that's A.) not at all in sync with the historical record B.) desperately trying to mash all bad thoughts into a single liberal-based ideology and C.) just plain wrong…it can't possibly be true. Liberals are the true heretics – burn, burn!
Movement conservatism seems to have lost all moorings with what it is liberalism stands for. Any more, it's just a random boogeyman to be shouted from every rooftop – godless atheist traitor eugenecist communist fascists!
If you ever wonder why the left is so "extreme" and "rabid", maybe it's because you enter into every possible situation believing that they're the inspiration for and cause of every evil imaginable.
[...] Matthew Yglesias, Brendan Nyhan, Left in the West, Lawyers, Guns and Money, The Sundries Shack and Discourse.net SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Jonah Goldbergs New Book”, url: [...]
"First, let me say that, contrary to what’s been said in this thread, the Nazis were not a right-wing organization. That wasn’t their intellectual underpinnings and it certainly wasn’t their goals afterwards. Eugenics, one of the Nazis’ big goals, has long been a staple of the left. Same for the outlawing of religion – something the Nazis were very big on. Just read the stuff that Hitler was saying and doing on the matter."
You keep saying "Facts?" How about demonstrating that the Nazis were left-wing? You could do this by listing some defining left-wing characteristics, then listing some defining characteristics of Naziism, then showing where they match up.
Next, you could demonstrate that eugenics has been a staple of the left. You would need to define eugenics first; then you could give some examples of liberal policies that sought to practice eugenics.
If you've got the time, you can list all the liberal laws that prevent the practice of religion.
You might also want to wave your arms and say that just because the Nazis were racist, nativist, authoritarian warmongers, and such people today are generally classed as belonging on the right, the Nazis were liberals because "socialism" is right there in the name. And claim that allowing abortion is the same as eugenics, even though the whole point of legalized abortion is to prevent the state from being the arbiter of who is fit to breed.
Don't forget to conflate "Democrats" with "liberals," so that you can use the pervasive presence of southern racists in the Democratic party before 1965 to prove that liberals really are racist after all.
Eugenics, one of the Nazis’ big goals, has long been a staple of the left.
Wait, I thought the left was in favor of enforced diversity — affirmative action, hate crime legislation, etc. Now I find out we're in favor of eugenics? I'm so confused.
You mentioned Ann Counter and I’m reminded of how she had something hurled at her by a leftist protester.
Yes, a pie.
You could Google up plenty of other examples of speakers on the right being attacked or intimidated physically.
Yes, like that poor conservative at Princeton.
(OK, I realize that's not entirely fair; just because some recent alleged attacks on people for being right-wingers were exaggerated or outright fabricated, that doesn't mean they all have been.)
I am intensely interested by the kneejerk, anti-intellectual responses that this post generally has garnered.
Anti-Jonah Goldberg is not the same as anti-intellectual, not at all. Really, it doesn't matter how often you assert that he has put time into it; the history of the book has been absurd and anything but scholarly. If someone with a record of careful thinking had written a book with original arguments from a clinical, nonpartisan perspective to support the idea that fascistic groups or beliefs had connections to modern left-wing groups and/or liberal thought that were stronger and more influential than previously believed, I might laugh, but I'd also try to address the points of it. But that's not what we have. Noted bloviator Jonah Goldberg wrote a book which has, at various times, been subtitled "The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning," "From Hegel to Whole Foods," and if I'm not very much mistaken, "… from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton." This is anything but a serious argument that deserves to be treated as such.
It seems typical of the behavior I’ve seen from the left for at least the past decade which is that if you can’t make an intellectual point, try to rip out the speaker’s throat. That is as anti-democratic and – yes, fascist – a behavior as I can imagine in a discussion.
Then either you have a very limited imagination, or a very overactive one. If you mean that the comments like this thread are as fascist a behavior as you can imagine, then that's ridiculous. There are far, far worse things than mockery. On the other hand, if you think that Teh Left (TM) actually tries to literally rip out peoples' throats for expressing ideas that they disagree with, yes, that would be fascistic, but I'm having a hard time thinking of examples of that off the top of my head.
"You could Google up plenty of other examples of speakers on the right being attacked or intimidated physically. That’s nearly textbook fascist behavior through and through. What you won’t find are a corresponding number of attacks from the right on the left."
So you're saying there have been NO attacks on the lefties since 9-11? And no peaceful protesters have been pepper-sprayed or shot with rubber bullets or hit with batons? Because they have. And that is state-fascism.
[...] We Americans love to yak it up. Maybe instead of whinging about inconsequential things such as books that have yet to be released or whether a Presidential candidate’s photo disqualifies them from office, we could bend our [...]
[Sorry, Ken. That was off-limits - Jimmie]
"They don’t want people to remember that their elitist ideas about a person’s place in society is the reason for apartheid lasting into the 1960’s in the US – continuing the deaths of so many Americans."
That's right, kids! The Republicans were all for integration! The Democrats fought against it! That's why Lyndon B. Johnson signed…
ah, shit.
Anni – Look up the voting record. Look also at which party's Senators filibustered the bill. Look at which party's Senators fought like hell to break that filibuster.
I know that it is hard for right-wing hacks to make subtle distinctions, but there is a difference between the belief that the state has a role to play in society, and fascism.
I can't wait to read this book and assign it to my students as how *not* to make an argument.
- A historian who actually had to study fascism to pass his field exams.