Controversy over Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism"

From Thomas Sowell: Who Is "Fascist"?

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...



Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" 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.

Over at the History News Network, a few serious historians and a few pretend ones launched a bizarre and at times delusionally paranoid attack on my book — two years after it came out...

Here is an except from Jonah Goldberg's rebuttal:

For those who don’t know: I contend that in America (unlike Europe in important respects) “the right” is defined by two pillars: religious and cultural traditionalism on the one side and classical liberalism or economic libertarianism on the other. We can get hung up on the labels, but it is fair to say that people who are very culturally conservative are usually identified as “right-wing” and those who are very libertarian on economic matters are dubbed right-wing as well. Modern conservatives, for the most part, adhere to the “fusionist” school which tries to marry both traditionalism and laissez-faire in one coherent vision. Meanwhile, the Nazis – and, to a lesser extent, the Italian Fascists – rejected both of these worldviews while embracing statism. In my book (literally and figuratively) that puts you on the left. To date no one has successfully rebutted this argument.

Read the whole rebuttal...