Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah
Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse
to read it, which will be their loss -- and a major loss.

Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book
a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and
brilliant analysis.

This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions
of its time -- and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned
rather than criticized.

Because the word "fascist" is often thrown around loosely these days,
as a general term of abuse, it is good that "Liberal Fascism" begins
by discussing the real Fascism, introduced into Italy after the First
World War by Benito Mussolini.

The Fascists were completely against individualism in general and
especially against individualism in a free market economy. Their
agenda included minimum wage laws, government restrictions on profit-
making, progressive taxation of capital, and "rigidly secular"
schools.

Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership
of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call
the shots as to how businesses would be run.

They were for "industrial policy," long before liberals coined that
phrase in the United States.

Indeed, the whole Fascist economic agenda bears a remarkable
resemblance to what liberals would later advocate.

Moreover, during the 1920s "progressives" in the United States and
Britain recognized the kinship of their ideas with those of Mussolini,
who was widely lionized by the left.

Famed British novelist and prominent Fabian socialist H.G. Wells
called for "Liberal Fascism," saying "the world is sick of
parliamentary politics."

Another literary giant and Fabian socialist, George Bernard Shaw, also
expressed his admiration for Mussolini -- as well as for Hitler and
Stalin, because they "did things," instead of just talk. In Germany,
the Nazis followed in the wake of the Italian Fascists, adding racism
in general and anti-semitism in particular, neither of which was part
of Fascism in Italy or in Franco's Spain.

Even the Nazi variant of Fascism found favor on the left when it was
only a movement seeking power in the 1920s.

W.E.B. DuBois was so taken with the Nazi movement that he put
swastikas on the cover of a magazine he edited, despite complaints
from Jewish readers.

Even after Hitler achieved dictatorial power in Germany in 1933,
DuBois declared that the Nazi dictatorship was "absolutely necessary
in order to get the state in order."

As late as 1937 he said in a speech in Harlem that "there is today, in
some respects, more democracy in Germany than there has been in years
past."

In short, during the 1920s and the early 1930s, Fascism was not only
looked on favorably by the left but recognized as having kindred
ideas, agendas and assumptions.

Only after Hitler and Mussolini disgraced themselves, mainly by their
brutal military aggressions in the 1930s, did the left distance
themselves from these international pariahs.

Fascism, initially recognized as a kindred ideology of the left, has
since come down to us defined as being on "the right" -- indeed, as
representing the farthest right, supposedly further extensions of
conservatism.

If by conservatism you mean belief in free markets, limited
government, and traditional morality, including religious influences,
then these are all things that the Fascists opposed just as much as
the left does today.

The left may say that they are not racists or anti-semites, like
Hitler, but neither was Mussolini or Franco. Hitler, incidentally, got
some of his racist ideology from the writings of American
"progressives" in the eugenics movement.

Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism"
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascis...dp/0767917189/
is too rich a book to be summarized in a newspaper column. Get a copy
and start re-thinking the received notions about who is on "the left"
and who is on "the right." It is a book for people who want to think,
rather than repeat rhetoric.

http://townhall.com/columnists/Thoma...who_is_fascist
http://www.tsowell.com/

http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com