Fascism, Fascism, Fascism

How bad did Jonah want to say “a black female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore”?

4: Probably a lot, given that it’s alluded to on the jacket flap. That and organic farming.

Well, the people who should be embarrassed about this – but won’t be – are over at the New Republic. They feature this clown in Bloggerheads style debate with his mirror image, Peter Beinart, every week – in a quest to make every dead contributor to the New Republic for the last eighty years turn in his or her grave. I guess it must be a parapsychology science experiment.

The center-right has turned into the moronic inferno of Saul Bellow’s nightmares.

You also gotta love how the cover art for LF‘s a dead-ringer for the Prussian Blue logo. Compare:

[LF cover]

to

[the cutest neo-nazis evar]

I can’t be the first to have noticed. There’s no way this was unintentional.

What percentage of the Hitler chapter will be about his vegetarianism, I wonder?

At least twice as much as will be given over to his mentioning Hitler’s conservative Catholic faith and all the fun God talk littering his speeches.

I’d bet money that he goes so far as to paint Hitler as an Atheist.

I thought Kant was a nihilist, not a fascist. It’s all so confusing.

This sentence,
“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.”,
may in fact be the greatest sentence ever crafted in the English language. It tops the previous best sentence, which occurred when Schwarzenegger was on a USO tour and told US troops that they were the real terminators.

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.

They came first for the paste eaters. And I didn’t speak up, largely because my mouth was full of paste.

See, that’s why i check in here occasionally: the comments regarding this witty little book are very… witty. Especially the last (17). Unfortunately, all this makes me want to go to the library and check out the book– for which curiosity i will surely be arrested.

A female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore. Shudder! Just shows what happens when you let girls learn how to read.

Well, it’s–hmmm–debatable, shall we say–whether Fascism was a movement of the left or the right. Whether National Socialism was a movement of the Left seems to have a pretty obvious answer.

Organic honey is fascist? Wow, that almost makes me curious enough to want to read how he makes that case. But as I said, that would be impolite.

Check out the right-wing blogs reaction to the left’s reaction here!.

Its priceless: “Consider that a teacher, over the course of her career, can indoctrinate thousands of yong (sic) minds. An SS Stormtrooper influenced far fewer minds.”

Ah, crap. This is how it should’ve been done:

You might be a fascist if…you a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

The guy got no talent.

Why does the Monty Python image of the ladies society reenacting famous battles in a mud puddle leap to mind?

Swarthmore tea as means of genocide. got it.

27: if you look at the “about” section on that guys blog, the photo shows exactly why he’s a Jonah Goldberg fan.

@18: Whenever I hear the words “Jonah Goldberg,” I flip the safety on my clown wig.

“Dachau hosted the world’s largest alternative and organic medicine research lab and produced its own organic honey.” p19.

Really? No. You made that up.

RickM,

Thanks, but I meant Kieran made up the business about it being in Goldberg’s book.

(I don’t really think he did, but I find it an amazing thing for Goldberg to mention, even if true.)

danny-

That depends. Are you for or against cancer?

Can an immoral regime promote and produce morally responsible science?”

“Morally responsible”? Probably not. Can an immoral regime do good science? Of course they can. Wolves are very loving and caring with their own, but if you’re not a member of the pack they’ll rip your throat out.

The anti-breast cancer business convinced me. “Race for the Cure”. Pink ribbons. I bet the Nazi Strength Through Joy chicks wore pink ribbons. Feminists complain about every goddamn thing, even God’s will. There’s a reason why ladies get breast cancer and guys don’t. It’s right there in the Bible.

The organic honey thing is just great. I hear the Nazis wore shoes, too. And on their feet, just like many liberals do today! Will they never learn?

P.S. In case you’re uncertain: there are no existing photographs of Hitler’s bare feet! And yes, I made that fact up. But it is plausible.

I guess they go tired of us calling them fascists, so they have to turn it around. I’m sure Faux News will do their part to push the idea across. I can’t wait for my parents to start calling me a fascist.

Here’s a link to a stoush that played out in Australia in 2003. Politician George Brandis and newspaper commentator Andrew Bolt (he’s our local version of Rush Limbaugh) sought to make political hay out of a comparison between the Green party and the German fascists. They drew on the work of two “scholars”, Professor Raymond Dominick (The Environmental Movement in Germany) and Professor Peter Staudenmaier (Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience.)

So, it seems Jonah Goldberg isn’t even very original.

Speaking of not very original, the bookcover appears to be a direct ripoff of Mark Davis’s Gangland. I realise the book cover is black in the Amazon version, but the hard copy I own is red.

Sorry, link didn’t work. Here it is-

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/29/1067233222840.html

“Introduction: Everything You Know About Fascism Is Wrong”

I think the title of his introduction actually originated in a marginal note from his editor, written on the manuscript, that just sort of got mindlessly incorporated as he revised it . . .

I smoke, I eat meat, and I don’t insist on organic foods. I guess that means I’m not a fascist!

There definitely are books that can reduce your IQ, at least briefly, just by immersing you in the workings of a stunted mind. A chapter of Ann Coulter’s Godless did this to me.

Boy, talk about missing the point…

This book represents, first and foremost, the spectacular triumph of William F. Buckley’s wholesale reform of the American conservative movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps by 2051 someone will have performed the same service for the American left, and it will be perfectly natural for leftist humorists to sardonically deride all their political opponents as “communist”.

Meanwhile, this simple query gives at least a bit of a hint as to who is routinely labeling whom, “fascist”, out there.

It occurs to me that taking this book together with Horowitz’s “Discover the Networks” and D’Souza’s The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, we now have in place the basic elements of a Grand Unifying Theory of Wingnut Mixed Political Metaphors. Clearly we can now see that 9/11 is best viewed as the tragic result of a doctrinal squabble between the Liberal Fascist Mensheviks and the Islamofascist Bolsheviks over how to best achieve the Fascist Internationale.

‘Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place.
The fascist internationale
Shall be the human race

Dan Simon, if I correctly understand your “leftist humorists” line, it means you assume Jonah’s book is four hundred pages worth of deliberately absurd arguments, parodying all the sincere-but-absurd arguments leftists make nowadays to link contemporary conservativsm with fascism. And Jonah’s legendary claim that his was going to be a “very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care” was of course part of the spoof.

It’s an interesting theory. Is there any right-wing book of the last dozen years or so which we should not assume to have been written in a similar spirit?

Those Gates of Vienna lunatics sure seem to do it a lot. Did you even read the page you linked to?

Did you? “Those Gates of Vienna lunatics” aren’t calling anyone fascist–they’re European far-right nativists defending themselves against accusations that they’re fascist. And those accusations are coming from…Little Green Footballs.

Of course, apart from those few examples of LGF (not unreasonably, I think) calling European far-right nativists fascists, most of the top few dozen hits point to…well, you’re obviously well aware of what they point to:

Dave Neiwert’s piece, BTW, the top result, is serious and well-done in exactly the same way that Goldberg’s book obviously isn’t.

Well, I’m glad that you came right out and admitted that you don’t actually object to Goldberg’s tactics at all, and are happy to see the label, “fascist”, applied to obvious non-fascists such as Rush Limbaugh–as long as the targets are people whose politics you really, really dislike.

Dan Simon, if I correctly understand your “leftist humorists” line, it means you assume Jonah’s book is four hundred pages worth of deliberately absurd arguments, parodying all the sincere-but-absurd arguments leftists make nowadays to link contemporary conservativsm with fascism.

No, I assume Goldberg’s book is four hundred pages worth of serious partisan arguments deliberately exaggerated to the point of absurdity. (That’s his schtick, after all.) If he were parodying leftists’ misuse of the label, “fascist” against conservatives, then he would have to label all those liberals he lambastes “communist”, not “fascist”.

And that’s what’s so striking about this whole business–can you imagine, say, a Molly Ivins type writing a whole book about how conservatives are, at heart, despicable commie pinkos, and meaning it only as exaggeration, not sarcasm?

Dan Simon said:
“they’re European far-right nativists defending themselves against accusations that they’re fascist.”

Jonah Goldberg:
“The nativist Ku Klux Klan — ironically, often called “American fascists” by liberals.”

After which, irony finally and irrevocably died.

@69: What, ‘anti-cancer’ is not there on the list? That’s the missing piece that lead him to the wrong conclusion. Everyone knows that being anti-cancer is a sure sign of a racist genocidal maniac.

I’m not so sure about the US, but the European far left has a long history of imprecisely branding everybody and their dog a ‘fascist’. The neocon right is trying to turn the tables by appropriating the word and turning it against those who have used it traditionally – they’re doing the same with the word ‘bigot’.

I thought you lost the argument when you called someone a fascist, now I know it is only left wingers who lose. Those on the right can obviously better discern who is a fascist.

I, for one, welcome our Fascist Swarthmore Obergruppenführer

A pedant writes…
“Obergruppenführerin” – she’s a girl.

I assume Goldberg’s book is four hundred pages worth of serious partisan arguments deliberately exaggerated to the point of absurdity. (That’s his schtick, after all.)

You might argue that was Limbaugh’s schtick, or Coulter’s (if you wanted to be obscenely indulgent towards Limbaugh or Coulter), but Goldberg? Goldberg isn’t an “exaggerator,” he’s an ignorant fool. This is the guy who said the Cold War might have been over “decades earlier” (i.e., before 1969) if we hadn’t lost the Vietnam war (in 1975). This is the guy who said the rebellions of 1968 showed what happens when a bunch of rich kids are spoiled by too much freedom and leisure, and then cited the uprisings in Prague and Mexico City as examples. So now when he talks about the fascist roots of the French Revolution, and the Swarthmore grads teaching grade school fascism, and the fascistiness of organic honey, etc., etc., I’m not motivated to search earnestly for the serious point lurking behind his hyperbolic humor; it’s simpler to assume he’s just being an imbecile as usual.

The right blogosphere’s reaction to the release of this book reminds me of nothing so much as the old SNL skit where Adam Sandler tries to convince us to let Chris Farley mow our lawns, walk our dogs, etc. “He worked on the book for like a year. Just read it!”

Jonah Goldberg: The Herlihy Boy of the Blogosphere.

Need we say more?

Well, yes we do. What about Roderick Spode and the Brownshorts? Wasn’t that a ‘great fascist movement of the twentieth century’?

Liberal fascists are fascist because they are intolerant of bullshit.

“After all, in 1942, despite the ongoing war, they still found time to convert thousands of vehicles to run on organic fuels like peat-moss:”

Um, this is kinda small beer compared to their main alternative energy source: Jews.

Jonah calls hippies “the third great fascist movement of the twentieth century.”

1) Really? I’m not sure the first two were all that great.

2) “Ein Volkswagen Bus, ein Moosewood Cookbook, ein Hacky Sack!”

I don’t see how this is “trying to turn the tables”; he is not calling the far left ‘fascist’, he is calling the liberals ‘fascist’.

Well, I’m not saying that their usage has any merit. But since they have managed to shift the political landscape so far to the right that from a US point of view most of Europe would appear to be on the far left there is some logic to it. It’s all a bit scary, really.

The (tortured) logic in this and similar arguments seems to be fairly transparent:

1) The notable thing about the fascists is they told people what to do: they were authoritarians
2) Therefore anyone that tells me to do something I don’t want to is a fascist

Hence there are only two ways not to be called a fascist by this type of thinker:

1) Believe everything they tell you to
2) Never say anything in public

That really can’t be the table of contents. It just can’t be.

What does the actual text look like if it is?

“Fascist fascism fascistically fascist! Nazi nazi nazi! Fascism fascist! Liberalfascism. In 1965, fascism. Policies: fascist! Then: book fascist. Fascist people! In 1973, fascist clothes and fascist sex. Fascism!”

The more I think about it, the more I think TBogg’s onto something:

But what you really have to appreciate is the marketing plan that will initially sell Jonah as the American Jacques Barzun only to later admit that they were only kidding and that he’s P.J. O’Rourke via Mad Magazine.

A stunt worthy of the Situationists!

But hey, whether sincere or parody, the real entertainment isn’t going to be the book itself so much as its earnest defenders. And on that note: Please do go on, Dan Simon, this is most interesting.

I think what he needs to do is make like “Where’s Waldo?” and hide words which are not some grammatical form of fascist inside the text, to see if you can spot them all.

One was that American conservatives have so thoroughly rejected their own extreme wing that they’re comfortable using a label associated with it as a strongly pejorative term….To repeat my previous rhetorical question: how many liberals use “communist” as a term of sincere opprobrium?

Yes, conservatives use a term associated with the extreme left wing to denigrate the non-extreme left wing more often than liberals use a term associated with the extreme left wing to denigrate the non-extreme right wing. This is apparently a failure of liberals.

My second point was that leftists denigrate George W. Bush and other conservatives as “fascist” much more often than conservatives use the term to denigrate liberals.

Yes, liberals use a term associated with the extreme right wing to denigrate the non-extreme right wing more often than conservatives use a term associated with the extreme right wing to denigrate the non-extreme left wing. This is apparently a failure of liberals.

…deeply committed to a bullying reaction to people less powerful than themselves, and a disregard for truth…

This is the nub of the matter, isn’t it? Is there a handy term for such people, or can someone suggest one?

Is there a handy term for such people

Asshole.

Yes, conservatives use a term associated with the extreme left wing to denigrate the non-extreme left wing more often than liberals use a term associated with the extreme left wing to denigrate the non-extreme right wing. This is apparently a failure of liberals.

You’ve missed my point. In my experience–though perhaps not in yours–liberals never use the term “communist” as a pejorative. Indeed, many liberals and leftists consider it morally repugnant “McCarthyism” to use the term “communist” as a pejorative, even to describe bona fide, self-described communists. In contrast, conservatives such as Goldberg and Limbaugh have gone so far as make “fascist” a salient pejorative label in their rhetoric. I find that difference striking.

I don’t think Limbaugh is a fascist. But [emphasis added]…They are genuinely vile human beings…Maybe it is a slur to imagine they would be fascists but not much of one

In other words, if you were a columnist given to flippancy, instead of a sober academic, it would hardly be a stretch to imagine you calling Limbaugh a fascist–and presumably, many more conservative writers and politicians as well, since Limbaugh is surely hardly the worst of them. Indeed, you could probably fill a book this way. But then they’d be people you consider “genuinely vile human beings”, so what would be wrong, really, with calling them all fascist?

Goldberg, on the other hand, calls some people you really like and admire “fascist”. How on earth could he misuse the term so risibly?

Using “fascist” as a slur is not, in fact, an indication that one has dissociated oneself from fascism (similarly “racist” or, for that matter, “Stalinist” which where some of us come from is the most vicious slur of all).

It’s true that the dissociation can sometimes be over differences that outsiders might find negligible, as in the case of Trotskyites who use “Stalinist” as an insult, or racists who denigrate members of the group they abhor as (among other things) “racist”. But that only highlights the bizarre refusal of even fairly moderate liberals to dissociate themselves in this way from communists. How do you explain it?

#81: You got Adam Sandler and Chris Farley reversed (what an image!).

#108: How far back are we going for this? Certainly Scoop Jackson, Thomas Dodd, and their ideological kin well into the Eighties were liberals who called communists communists and indeed used the label for people and governments who weren’t anti-communist enough for their taste. As for people who are loath to call self-styled communists communists, I guess maybe you can find someone who denied Helen Keller’s or Pete Seeger’s political loyalties, but that’s about it.

I went to Swarthmore, and my sister went to Brown, does that mean my mother qualifies for a “Medal of Motherhood?”

On a more serious note, I feel that the right throws around terms like “fascist” and “racist,” not because they understand the pejorative meanings of the words, but because they see them as some sort of magic epithet that makes leftists cringe. It’s like when small children use bad words as a way to upset their parents. I would find it funny (if I didn’t find it so horrifying) that the sorts of people who condone torture because it was effective for the Gestapo would call the moderate left fascist.

Straining so much with great fascist movements must have given JG hemmorhoids.

Rash will be the result of watered down great fascist movements.

Liberals are the suppository of great fascist movements.

Um, Dan,
This book represents, first and foremost, the spectacular triumph of William F. Buckley’s wholesale reform of the American conservative movement during the 1950s and 1960s.

In that case, could you address this William F. Buckley’s quote, please:

October 26, 1957: General Franco is an authentic national hero… [with the] talents, the perseverance, and the sense of the righteousness of his cause, that were required to wrest Spain from the hands of the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists, and nihilists that were imposing… a regime so grotesque as to do violence to the Spanish soul, to deny, even, Spain’s historical destiny. He saved the day…. The need was imperative… for a national policy [to]… make this concession to Churchill this morning, that one to Hitler this afternoon…. Franco reigns… supreme. He is not an oppressive dictator…. only as oppressive as is necessary to maintain total power…

March 9, 1957: Franco is a part, and an integral part, of Western civilization… [the] convergence of the multifarious political philosophical, religious, and cultural tendencies that have shaped Spanish history… the man to whom the Spanish people look–as the Chinese have looked to Chiang [Kaishek], for all his faults–for leadership.

Do these conservatives label other conservatives as fascists, or do they just label liberals as fascists?

Does the word, “Islamofascism”, ring a bell?

Certainly Scoop Jackson, Thomas Dodd, and their ideological kin well into the Eighties were liberals who called communists communists and indeed used the label for people and governments who weren’t anti-communist enough for their taste.

Point taken–the anti-communist faction of liberalism was once quite vigorous. The rise of the radical left during the 1960s pretty much killed it, though, and it doesn’t seem to have revived since.

As for people who are loath to call self-styled communists communists, I guess maybe you can find someone who denied Helen Keller’s or Pete Seeger’s political loyalties, but that’s about it.

The question is not whether acknowledged communists have ever been identified as communists. The question is whether anyone on the left ever uses the term “communist” as a pejorative description, even when unquestionably accurate. I’d be genuinely interested to see examples of current-day left-of-center Americans identifying anyone, including actual communists, as communist, with even the slightest trace of disapproval. For example, does anyone on the left ever criticize Thabo Mbeki, Fidel Castro, Hu Jintao, Angela Davis, or Eric Hobsbawm for being communist?

In a world where even conservatives use the label “fascist” as a pejorative, and where liberals and leftists feel free to use it to smear people like Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush, it’s striking how liberals so consistently shy away from using the word “communist” as a criticism.

the anti-communist faction of liberalism was once quite vigorous. The rise of the radical left during the 1960s pretty much killed it, though, and it doesn’t seem to have revived since

Not true at all. There is scarcely a liberal in the United States, from Dissent rightward through the New Republic through the New York Times and, of course, the entire Democratic Party, who has any but unkind words for the 1960s, the radical left, or communism. From the Nation leftward, it’s a different story, but not quite such a simple one as you imply.

I’d be genuinely interested to see examples of current-day left-of-center Americans identifying anyone, including actual communists, as communist, with even the slightest trace of disapproval. For example, does anyone on the left ever criticize Thabo Mbeki, Fidel Castro, Hu Jintao, Angela Davis, or Eric Hobsbawm for being communist?

Again, Dan, this is off-base. For one thing, you consistently conflate “liberals” and “the left.” No, liberals are those people between the right and the left. But plenty of leftists, including the Nation and In These Times, routinely and rightly criticize Castro and Hu Jintao. (I suspect even Angela Davis and Eric Hobsbawm) criticize Castro and Hu Jintao. And plenty of liberals criticize Angela Davis and Eric Hobsbawm (if they notice their existence at all).

And maybe (just speculating) there’s another reason for the differing valence of “fascist” and “communist” in public discourse. A lot of admirable people have called themselves communists in consequence of espousing certain ideals, only to find that those ideals were traduced by the political institutions that professed them. That doesn’t seem quite so true of fascism. Are there a lot of admirable people who’ve embraced fascist ideals and then dissociated themselves from fascism when they found their ideals betrayed?

Oh, and there is another thing about communists. Sure, I critcise people for being communists. The big difference between communists and fascists is that in the West communists have, for all their many faults, and the obnoxious devotion to the Soviet Union of many (but not all) of them, been on the right side of most domestic political conflicts, and in many cases have contributed considerably to improving the condition of people who were vicitms of injustice. Not so fascists. Not so Jonah Goldberg for that matter.

The left usually doesn’t use communist negatively, but we don’t use it positively either. The word is too vague to use as a pejorative.

“Fascism” evokes the hate of the other, authoritarianism, repression, and so on. “Communism” is much less clear. It just doesn’t have the same kind of inherent negatives. It was mentioned earlier in the thread that the left tends to use terms like “Stalinist” or “Maoist” instead, which bring to mind the tactics and horrors of those regimes.

“After 1989…they have been shown to be on the losing side of the argument”

What happened in 1989 to make them lose the argument, a really big rhetorical push by the conservatives?

Was it the goosestepping that tipped him off, or the tanks?

I think it was their refusal to call all of their opponents “communists.”

Amazing the things I’ve learned on this thread. Did you know that the American right has disavowed its radical wing? Considering the thinly (if at all) veiled monarchism, racism, theocracy and jingoism that have characterized their hegemony over the last few decades, I shudder to think what their more radical members must have looked like.

And, for the record, I hereby denounce derek as a communist.
.

There is scarcely a liberal in the United States, from Dissent rightward through the New Republic through the New York Times and, of course, the entire Democratic Party, who has any but unkind words for the 1960s, the radical left, or communism.

Tell me more. I know of a few isolated examples–Paul Berman comes to mind. But my impression is that, say, the New York Times’ attitude is more typified by the famous article about Sunset Hall Retirement Home–the one with the headline, “Political Idealists Trying to Hold Back the Night”. (See http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE6D71139F931A25757C0A966958260)

But plenty of leftists, including the Nation and In These Times, routinely and rightly criticize Castro and Hu Jintao. (I suspect even Angela Davis and Eric Hobsbawm) criticize Castro and Hu Jintao.

Of course–but for being communist? If conservatives only criticized Hitler for, say, not being a true fascist…

A lot of admirable people have called themselves communists in consequence of espousing certain ideals, only to find that those ideals were traduced by the political institutions that professed them. That doesn’t seem quite so true of fascism. Are there a lot of admirable people who’ve embraced fascist ideals and then dissociated themselves from fascism when they found their ideals betrayed?

Once again, I think you’ve missed the point. For most people, having been a fascist–even a subsequently disillusioned one–generally disqualifies one from being thought of as “admirable”, even on the right. There are lots of people who would almost certainly have been viewed in at least some respectable circles as admirable, had they not been tainted by their association with fascism. Take Ezra Pound, for instance, or Charles Lindbergh–to say nothing of Paul de Man or Kurt Waldheim.

When communists meet that same fate, then we will know that the left will have cleaned up its act the way the right has (in America, at least).

The issue is not who I like and admir, but who actually merits admriation given reasonable moral standards.

Yes, of course. And most people–including, apparently, conservatives such as Jonah Goldberg and Rush Limbaugh–agree that reasonable moral standards preclude admiring fascists. When are we going to see the same consensus regarding admiring commnunists?

But calling the tiny handful of elemntary school teachers with degrees from elite unviersities fascists is, yes, silly and, frankly, contemptible. You must, surely, agree with that. And it must, surely, influence your judgment of Goldberg, right? And Limbaugh.

Frankly, it’s so silly that it’s hard for me to take it seriously enough to find it contemptible. Indeed, it’s hard for me to take either of these two characters terribly seriously–one is a self-described entertainer, and the other writes about his conversations with his couch about his own fondness for cured meats. If you want to get outraged about people flagrantly misusing the word, “fascist”, shouldn’t you choose someone whose pronouncements are a bit less intentionally goofy? As I pointed out, examples aren’t exactly difficult to find.

in the West communists have, for all their many faults, and the obnoxious devotion to the Soviet Union of many (but not all) of them, been on the right side of most domestic political conflicts

Ah, but did they make the trains run on time?

Come on, Harry–this sort of say-what-you-will-they-were-right-about-a-lot-of-things apologia for dedicated supporters of monstrous evil is no less ugly when deployed in defense of communists than when deployed in defense of fascists. It’s been thankfully banished from the conservative repertoire–isnt’ it time the left followed suit?

Saying that a right-wing buffoon who calls random people “fascist!” is evidence of the right’s dedication to avoiding political extremism is like saying that the left’s dedication to moral seriousness is shown by the example of a left-wing buffoon who ends every comment with “f*ck off, clown!” The fact that r.w.b’s say “fascist!” a lot doesn’t mean they have renounced anything. It doesn’t mean they have principled objections to leader-worship or ethnic cleansing or aggressive war. It just means they know that their audience considers “fascist” a bad word.

Let me suggest a different (though still crude) way of measuring which side is furthest from its extremes. In American politics, so far as I know, never in my lifetime has any elected representative of the “liberal” party suggested any measure which would cause any reasonable person in the top percentile to shed one drop of sweat about his prospects for continuing to enjoy the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. Meanwhile, elected representatives of the “conservative” party have suggested, among other things, nuking Mecca and hanging war protestors (including their fellow congressmen).

Dan,

The New York Times link was pretty feeble evidence that American liberals are soft on communism. It was a mildly amused article about an attempt to preserve housing for elderly ex-communists and “political activists.” Maybe if they’d been Stalinist apparatchiks and the article had been some sort of agitprop, you’d have a point.

The ex-communists I had in mind were people like Orwell, Silone, Koestler, Spender, Gide, Howe, Eastman, and many others who renounced institutional Communism but continued to profess the ideals of solidarity and radical democracy that the communists also, but hypocritically professed. My point was that there aren’t any correspondingly admirable fascist ideals that actually existing fascist movements and governments betrayed, thereby producing many honorable and disillusioned ex-fascists.

And you can’t get away with merely scoffing at Harry’s point. American Communists were very wrong to deny the totalitarian character of the Soviet Union (not that that was the reason for the American government’s opposition to Communism), but they were right to support racial equality, labor unions, poor relief, etc. And American conservatives — even non-fascist ones — opposed all those things.

Oh, give it up, Harry. It’s common knowledge that The New York Times treats Stalinists like teddy bears and that The American Prospect holds a Gulag Appreciation Month every October. Only the American right has the intellectual honesty to repudiate its radical fringe — by (a) electing it to office or (b) associating it with liberals.

I’m with Dan. The fact that a right-wing, nationally syndicated columnist at the Los Angeles Times has written a book calling Hillary Clinton a fascist clearly shows that the left needs to clean up its act.

Uncle Kvetch, please keep doing the good work.

Is there anyone outside the circle of rightwing wingnuttery that takes this crap seriously?

Oh, and if you could respond to geo’s #138 I’d enjoy that too.

do you really think that the communists who composed a large proportion of the small number of whites to suport the civil rights movement were as bad as the fascists who composed a small proportion of the large number of whites who opposed it?

Harry, my answer is exactly the same as it would be if a fascist sympathizer self-righteously demanded to know how I dare lump mid-to-late-20th-century fascists, who were nearly alone in their staunch defense of the victims of Soviet aggression and oppression in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, with the dupes, fellow travellers and outright allies of their oppressors:

“Your question contains an implicit whitewash of a morally despicable movement. You grossly exaggerate both the role of that movement in the noble cause you cite, and the centrality of that cause in the movement’s agenda. And you thereby grossly underplay the many monstrously immoral elements of that agenda. I have no idea why you choose to distort the history of this movement so egregiously, but until your depiction of it bears a closer resemblance to reality, you’ve forfeited all entitlement to be taken seriously on the matter of the relative morality of political movements.”

Harry b or anyone that generally agrees with him on moral matters,

Here’s what I can’t figure out and keep coming here to find out.

If you are a member of the reality-based community then you notice that injustice, vileness, assholes, fascists, racists, imperialists, warmongers, etc. exist. They are real.

But can one be part of the reality-based community and not think the fight against the list above is the top moral priority in the world?

I can see why people have the preference for morals that treat injustice as wrong, it just seems to me that that attitude has more in common with non-reality-based thinking – its infected by a certain amount of quaintly naive “the world just shouldn’t be this way” hopefulness.

To put my point in an extreme and unflattering way, uttering the word “ought” seems to entail the desire to take a little departure from reality.

Moreover, it would seem to me that if one desired that there be fewer assholes in the world, a thoroughgoing, painstaking understanding of the causes of assholedom would be required.

Again, I’m probably pushing the point too far, but can you really fight injustice, if you don’t “get” the unjust.

Not to go all Freudian at this late stage but if you can’t sublimate the causes of being an asshole, if you can’t offer me a fix, then you just have to put up with that many more assholes.

Thanks harry,

What I’m asking is more like do you think that the moral positions you hold and your sense of justice are so obvious and that those that don’t hold them are likely to be “perpetrators of injustice”?

But it would be nice if you could also write about why you aren’t a moral relativist.

And most people—including, apparently, conservatives such as Jonah Goldberg and Rush Limbaugh—agree that reasonable moral standards preclude admiring fascists.

No, you’ve got your use-mention distinction messed up. The right-wing is perfectly fine with objecting to “fascism” — the word — but that doesn’t preclude them from supporting fascism — the ideology. The fact that it’s now known in the US as “movement conservatism” just goes to show you that the label is not the thing.

Dan,

The Communist parties of Spain, Italy, France, and the Scandinavian countries have generally been as committed to democracy as liberal or conservative parties in those countries. As for your shocked surprise that conservatives should be accused of opposing legislative sovereignty over the executive, I’m afraid I have to ask in turn, are you joking? The contemporary Republican Party has been entirely unprincipled about this matter since the beginning of the Bush administration, and was not particularly principled about it during the Reagan administration either.

But it seems to me you’re trying to change the subject. You’ve been all along suggesting a kind of moral equivalence between professed communist ideals and professed fascist ideals. Harry (I think) and I have answered that, on the contrary, communist ideals were betrayed by those who seized state power in their name, while fascist ideals were in fact implemented by those who seized state power in their name; that many honorable people affirm communist ideals (equality, worker control, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” etc) while repudiating Stalinist and Maoist practice, while few if any honorable people affirm fascist ideals while claiming to have been betrayed by Hitler, Mussolini, Franco etc. You haven’t squarely addressed this argument.

Nah, Geo, you’re not being fair here, you’re contrasting communist ideals (equality, no exploitation, class-less society) with manifestations of radical fascism.

Fascist ideals are: unity, greatness and prosperity of the nation. Class conflict is mitigated or eliminated by national unity, that’s the main point.

If national-greatness, unity and prosperity can be achieved without militarism, authoritarianism, etc. – they’ll gladly take it too, they don’t require these things.

It’s a common concept, often practiced and successful, in Japan, for example, or (to a degree) Scandinavia. Switzerland is like that too. The businesses agree to take care of the population (hire local citizens, high minimum wage, pensions, benefits, etc.) and in return they get protection against imports, some sort of price control, artificially weakened competition. In economy, at least, it’s a legitimate concept, I think; works surprisingly well.

Of course it’s not universal like the communist ideal, that’s why many people (myself included) don’t like it much.

You’re exactly as dogmatic as Dan Simon, engels, you know that? You’re his exact counterpart, mirror image. Think about it.

Well, Dan Simon thinks I’m an ass too, so there you go.

abb1: Fascist ideals are: unity, greatness and prosperity of the nation.

Isn’t that a bit too general? After all, pretty much everyone is in favor of unity, greatness and prosperity. Isn’t the point of fascism that these things are to be attained through racial and cultural homogeneity, political and ideological conformity, sexual subordination, and military assertiveness?

many honorable people affirm communist ideals (equality, worker control, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” etc) while repudiating Stalinist and Maoist practice, while few if any honorable people affirm fascist ideals while claiming to have been betrayed by Hitler, Mussolini, Franco etc.

We need a bit more precision here. The goals you specify are socialist goals. Communism adds the twist that they are to be achieved through violent revolution, led by a politically conscious vanguard that establishes a “dictatorship of the proletariat” in order to completely re-engineer society in the socialist mold. If you believe in establishing a socialist economy through purely democratic processes, then you’re a democratic socialist, and I have no more quarrel with you than I do with anyone else whose political goals I consider silly (and there are an awful lot of those all over the spectrum, I can assure you).

Now, there are communists who believe (or at least make a show of believing) that Stalin betrayed communism, but embrace Mao’s, or Castro’s, or Enver Hoxta’s, or their own as-yet-powerless party’s, revolution and dictatorship wholeheartedly. There are also fascists who repudiate (or at least make a show of repudiating) Hitler’s fascism, but embrace Mussolini’s, or Franco’s, or their own as-yet-powerless party’s, iron fascist rule wholeheartedly. Note, though, that most of the latter use various euphemisms for fascism–usually some combination of “people’s”, “national”, and the name of their home country or ethnicity–fascism itself having been so discredited. The former, on the other hand, are typically quite comfortable using communist, or perhaps Marxist-Leninist, or Trotskyite, to describe themselves, knowing that at least left-of-center people will retain respect for them. One wonders what more the world’s communist regimes have to do before the left finally recognizes that they’re not just “socialists in a hurry”.

I think, geo, that Dan uses communism in the way that traditional anti-communists have always done, to refer to Leninism-as-practiced-by-Stalin, but to tar everyone else in from the second international on with the same brush. Even me, in fact, who despite clearly disassociating myself from Leninism-as-practiced-by-Stalin, and clearly identifying communists (like the eurocommunists) who did the same thing themselves, am beyond his pale. He is either startlingly unaware of the role of the Italian and Spanish eurocommunists, for example, in their respective countries (silly Spanish communists, trying to ensure that the transition from fascism would actually work to produce a stable liberal democracy) or he is just dishonest. Its hard to tell.

martin james — I’ll answer both your questions in good time, I promise, but not in this thread and not before Christmas!

I apologize Harry–when you referred to “the communists who composed a large proportion of the small number of whites to suport the civil rights movement” I assumed you were referring to the Communist Party members, Trotskyites, Maoists, and other proponents of capital-R-Revolution who made up the overwhelming majority of self-professed communists in America at the time. But since you have such a grossly distorted view of the representation of communists among whites in the civil rights movement, I should have guessed that you might also have a grossly distorted view of the number of self-professed American communists who were neither Stalinists nor Maoists nor Trotskyites nor members of any of the other anti-democratic factions, but were in fact social democrats who happened to find the word “communist” so much more mellifluous than “social democrat” that they stuck with the former label despite its ugly connotations.

I hope you’ll forgive my misstep–I think it’s a minor one, but since all the folks around here are always so incredibly meticulous about drawing the fine line between “conservative” and “fascist”, I should have been similarly careful about the line between, uh, “communist” and, well, you know, “communist”.

Communism adds the twist that they are to be achieved through violent revolution, led by a politically conscious vanguard that establishes a “dictatorship of the proletariat” in order to completely re-engineer society in the socialist mold.
…says Dan Simon who just a couple of years ago lamented about Amnesty International

…dickering about the treatment of a few hundred suspected terrorists captured during the overthrow of a brutal theocratic tyranny. How far they [Amnesty International] have fallen….

Note the unmistakenly revolutionary rhetoric: what’s a few hundred suspected terrorists (probably bad people anyway) compare to the glorious goal? Felix Dzerzhinsky couldn’t have said it better.

engels, I just logged on to continue, but I bow, as I sometimes do and probably should more often, to your gentle chiding. Thanks.