[Mr. Siegel is a professor at The Cooper Union in New York.]

In 1932, H.G. Wells, the British socialist, gave a speech at Oxford urging the progressives of his time to become "liberal fascists." As the phrase suggests, Wells favored, to say the least, an authoritarian solution to society's problems. Not surprisingly, he admired both Mussolini and Stalin. He was also an intellectual hero for American liberals, including Franklin Roosevelt. Jonah Goldberg cites Wells's speech as the origin of his own book's provocative title [Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning]. In "Liberal Fascists," Mr. Goldberg argues that American liberalism -- dating from the Progressive era of the early 20th century to the present -- can be best understood as a softer, smiling version of European fascism. Modern liberalism, in Mr. Goldberg's view, prefers a bullying, moralistic, oppressive statism to individual freedom.

Mr. Goldberg rightly notes that American liberals have long been aggressively uninterested in the darker elements of their own tradition. One purpose of his book, he says, is to make them interested again. All well and good. But he confesses that he also wants to pay back all those "know nothing" liberals who have tried to smear conservatives as fascists in recent years and who have likened the Bush administration to an evil dictatorship. ("Bushitler" is one of the kinder epithets.) Alas, Mr. Goldberg's second purpose -- a kind of counter-smear -- undermines his first.

Mr. Goldberg begins his argument by noting that Mussolini -- who brought fascism to power in Italy in 1922 -- emerged from a militant socialist background. Such a background was not untypical of European fascists, who understood themselves to be nationalists rather than internationalists (of the Bolshevik variety). Though avowed enemies, Brown and Red socialism -- the national and international types -- had far more in common with each other, in their grim statism, than with liberal democratic capitalism. They were both organized around the principle that parliamentary democracy was a fraud -- that the working class, unable to grasp its own predicament, was best served by an elite that knew what was best for it.

For Mr. Goldberg, this socialist pedigree is important to understanding the kind of "liberal fascism" that made its way to America. He claims that for American progressives -- including Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson -- Bismarck's Prussia was a lodestar: It featured a welfare-state apparatus and authoritarian control over society and culture. "Progressives," Mr. Goldberg argues -- self-consciously borrowing the rhetoric of Marxists -- "did many things that we would today call objectively fascist, and fascists did many things they would today call objectively progressive."

Thus Mr. Goldberg sees in the progressive impulse a presumptive right to ensure the overall well-being of the populace -- with intrusive and potentially dangerous results. He observes that Hugh Johnson, the head of FDR's ill-fated 1934 National Recovery Administration -- which proposed a corporatist solution to the ills of the Depression -- was an ardent admirer of Mussolini and hung a looming picture of Il Duce in his NRA office. Going back to the late 1920s, Mr. Goldberg notes that Herbert Croly of The New Republic, whose book "The Promise of American Life" was a founding document of modern statist liberalism, defended Mussolini by comparing fascist violence to the (implicitly justified) martial means by which Lincoln preserved the Union.

Croly was also something of a eugenicist, saying that the state needed to "interfere on behalf of the really fittest." And indeed, American liberalism once had a strong eugenicist strain. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a close ally of the white supremacist Lothrop Stoddard, the author of "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy." Eugenics was at the time the natural expression of the Progressives' public-health movement. Mr. Goldberg does not hesitate to note that it proved to be an inspiration for the Nazi Party.

There is some truth to Mr. Goldberg's comparisons, but it is limited. By cherry-picking liberal transgressions -- or noting continuities between unappealing statist regimes and Progressive agendas -- he demonizes American liberalism unfairly and ignores a counter-history. The social safety-net reforms of David Lloyd George, during the Liberal Party governments in Britain from 1906 to 1914, mattered more to American Progressives and New Dealers, as a model, than Bismarck ever did. But Lloyd George goes unmentioned in "Liberal Fascism," as does a key political moment.

The term "liberal" came into common use following World War I, in reaction to the postwar Red Scare and to Wilson's wartime conscription and autocratic measures (e.g., jailing people for their antiwar sentiments). In his seminal book, "Liberalism in America" (1919), Harold Stearns defined the new liberal creed by its "hatred of compulsion," its "tolerance" and its "respect for the individual." It was from this anti-Progressive strain of liberalism that we get both the modern First Amendment, rightly beloved by liberals and conservatives alike, and (perhaps to Mr. Goldberg's chagrin) the American Civil Liberties Union.

In short, liberalism in America is an unstable mix of statist and libertarian tendencies. ...

Iridescent Cuttlefish - 1/18/2008

As a first-time responder, and an uneducated hooligan to boot, I should probably be more circumspect in the comment I'm offering for your perusal, more deferential toward my hosts, as it were...but, Guys, c'mon!

I don't begrudge the attention you lavish on a personality as vapid as Jonah Goldberg, nor even on his laughably narrow perpsective, but this is the best you could do in response?!

Here's the source of my astonishment: history is not supposed to be a lesson in forgetting, now is it? Sure, you can talk about the "dark side" of progressivism's roots--go to town with Fighting Bob LaFollete's flirtation with the Eugenicists, even. But does this convey either the context in which this happened (the extremely widely held belief in the righteousness of the eugenics movement in the US and Great Britain during this period among political leaders on both sides of the "aisle") or the other face of socialism in America?

Take Wisconsin, for example. The home of Bob LaFollete's progressive movement. What about the German socialism centered in Milwaukee at that time which was even stronger, more popular and more effectice? Does the name Victor Berger ring any bells? (The man who inspired Eugene Debs...)

Tell you what. Give the following link--an undergrad history paper--5 minutes of your time and then tell your readership something about fascism (hello, Mr. Wilson!)

http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/bios/html/berger.html

Strange than an unknown, unpublished undergrad has more of a grasp on this period and its implications for today's circus than an esteemed confabulation of historians. (That Mr. Goldberg is made to put his dunce cap on is no great surprise, but, guys! Please redeem my faith!)

Arnold Shcherban - 1/15/2008

to acquire intimate understanding of the US socio-political and economic
phenomena.

Arnold Shcherban - 1/14/2008

I've heard Jonah Goldberg's presentation of his book and answers to conservative public questions in full.
Let me make some brief comments on those.
The main sin of his book and the speach is a distortion, obvious to any
person who is familiar with principal ideas of Marxism, national-socialism/fascism, and American liberalism.
Socialism is a socialism is a socialism. (Sweden, Finland, Denmark, etc. are socialist countries from the point of view of American Right.)
Thus, when people
claim to be socialists (one of the major "evidential" pieces provided by Goldberg) it does not mean they actually are. As it's well-known, except perhaps to babies and biased propagandists, politicians of all races, colors, and types would lie about anything to get ahead in public opinion.
Secondly, the main premise of Marxist socialism is workers' control of means of production and elimination of private capital. The rest, as they say, is just objective or subjective consequence. However, no fascist (in difference with marxist) type regime
has never taken away all means of production from the private hands and never eliminated private capital!
Moreover, every historian of fascist
regimes, be it in Germany, in Italy,
in Spain, in Portugal, in Greece, in Brazil, in Argentina, in Chili, etc.
knows too well that the major force
behind the establishment and support of those regimes was a Big Business, private capital, both domestic and foreign. The same Big Business was/is simultaneously is the main source of the industrial/military production in those countries.
Therefore, the main features of Marxist or, as Goldberg calls it, Bolsheviks' socialism, as they are stated in that theory, were absent in fascist regimes, in sharp contrast to marxist regimes.
It is true that Nazi and Mussolini, managed to fool working class in their countries by resorting
to a slew of slogans very similar to
marxist ones, but it is also true that for them (as it clearly follows
from their internal communications) those slogans were just effective means of propaganda they never intended to implement, employed to win a majority support in their
respective countries.
At the same time, Hitler, Mussolini and other national "socialists" unambigiously and continiously would announce their hatred not only to marxist socialist theory, but to socialists and communists as social persons. And they treated them accordingly by imprisoning and, in many cases physically eliminating those along with the Jews, Gypsies, and others. Moreover, to provoke hatred towards Jews, Nazis would frequently use the term "Judo- Bolshevism", introduced into Nazi
"socialist" thought by Hitler himself
in "Mein Kamph".
Goldberg also stresses such similarity
between national and marxist socialism as their common anti-religious views. There is, however, a huge and principal difference between
the origins of those views in those two ideologies. If marxist ideology
based its anti-religious stance on the primacy of natural science (against all all religions and quasi-scientific myths), the Nazis based their rejection of (primarily) Christianity on utilitarian/socio-political grounds (along traditions originated by Nitsche and other German philosophers) considered necessary for creating and managing the Arian nation.
In "Mein Kamph", Hitler calls
Bolshevism "the Christianity's illegitimate child", placing Bolshevism on equal foot with
Nazi's sworn enemy - Christianity.
Obviously he (contrary to Goldberg, who strategically cite some of his his allegedly pro-socialist statements) has no doubts about principal differences between theory
and practice of Marxist and national socialism the differences that outweigh similarities, if existed, to a great degree.


Thirdly, regardless how much anti-Left honest historians can be, they cannot help acknowledging the fact that international Marxists/Bolsheviks/Socialists were among the most, if not the most firm and consistent adversaries of fascism, in general, and Nazis with Black shirts, in particular.
Again, in sharp contrast to international Right, in general, and
far right, in particular, who are the Fascists, on the first place!

In conclusion, of this very short and
far from thorough review, I would like to mention one peculiar fact that
in my view beats the Left-Fascist identity into the ground.
No Republican/conservative (or Democrat for that matter) American government has never supported and sponsored any Leftist regime in the world (on the contrary: it would do everything to overthrow them), while doing it for numerous
Right/fascist ones against the Left: in Greece, in Spain, in Portugal,
in South Africa, in Haiti, in Salvador, in Nicaragua, in Chili, in
Vietnam, in Korea, in Brasil, Paraguay, Argentina, Indonesia, etc.

Carol Hamilton - 1/14/2008

Does Goldberg ever acknowledge that that many on the American Right, from Ezra Pound to David Duke, admired, and still admire, Mussolini & Hitler?

If not, if he represents fascism as having only liberal and leftist admirers, his sins of omission outweigh his examples.

Gregory Canellis - 1/12/2008

Asside from the books mentioned in the above article, does anyone have ideas for a "Libralism in America" reading list?

GC