The Bus Will Get You There Yet. Oy, I know I've been dragging my feet, but in my defense, Jonah Goldberg's book is very, very boring, and I keep finding more interesting things to do with my time than think about it. Stuff like clipping my toenails, deleting spam from my inbox, or peering into the toaster watching the bread turn crispy.
Oddly enough, this tedium is inflicted deliberately. There is no meaningful difference between Goldberg and Ann Coulter except how much nauseating junk they're willing to show over the knee. But Goldberg is heavily invested in coming across as "serious" and "scholarly," despite his ridiculous and obnoxious title and cover art. Since he's not capable of serious scholarship, though, what that boils down to is an expressive interest in translating "fuck you, fascist liberal swine" into 400+ pages of flatulent doublespeak -- a silly, unconvincing attempt at plausible deniability that he's not saying what he's obviously saying. Namely, that liberals are Evil and conservatives are Good.
Ergo, in an curious way Goldberg was shooting for dull... and in that, at least, he's succeeded.
Coulter just sticks up the middle finger, which is yawn-provoking enough. Goldberg has to stick up the two fingers on each side of the middle one in order to fake that he's not merely telling you to read between the lines (in the ancient junior high idiom). His book makes you feel like you just drank Nyquil to help out with your coma while a 13 year old tries to make fun of your sneakers.
But still, I suppose there are reasons to examine Liberal Fascism, just as there are reasons to examine the contents of a petri dish. John Emerson says, "Jonah Goldberg's book has no importance at all from a scholarly point of view, but the Jonah Goldberg phenomenon is extremely important." After thinking about this in a vague, distracted, and crabby fashion for a long while, however, I'm not sure I agree. Not with the part about how the book isn't scholarship, of course, but the "Goldberg phenomenon" bit. It's just another stupid wingnut book, in the end. All Goldberg's doing is spewing out the strictures of Homo Wingnuticus in excruciatingly pompous, thick-browed detail. And who cares about that sort of nonsense? I barely do, and I like to make fun of it.
A Very Different and Very Spoiled World. The academic worthlessness of the book is obvious: it stinks. Only Jonah himself or his email sycophants would disagree. If you doubt (and I don't see why you would), feel free to read through the approved reviews, where Vox Day, Scourge of Toddlers, rubs elbows with the rather bemused Jack S. Blanton chair in history at the University of Texas. These notices do not suggest LF is about to be assigned in graduate seminars in any accredited institution anytime soon. And of course the unapproved reviews are even worse. The book is gibberish.
Which doesn't mean LF won't remain significant on Earth-W. After all, the book merely fleshes out at excruciating length an ancient wingnut article of faith. As Roy puts it, we've all "heard the 'Why do you think they called it National Socialism?' routine for decades." Goldberg's "research" will seem at best an odd form of ax-grinding to those informed about his ostensible subject and who don't pay attention to 21st century "conservative" obsessions, and as just so much dumb, petulant culture war mud-flinging to anyone else in the general public unlucky enough to notice it (Jon Stewart saw to that pretty effectively).
See, the thing is, Liberal Fascism is, fundamentally, not about "fascism" or "liberals" at all. It's about reifying 21st century movement conservative identity politics, bluntly. Nothing else.
The prime analytic directive when examining wingnut cultural production may be stated, so: whatever they're most stridently accusing "Liberals" of is something they're themselves doing or have already done, only ten times worse. And the bug that's really up Goldberg's ass is this idea of his that liberalism is a "secular religion." He fails to prove that, in no small part because it is a completely unprovable hypothesis, which makes it useless, from an academic point of view. But what it does do is sloppily paper over the fact that the "conservatism" Goldberg is defending is intellectually vapid: it's no more nor less than a desperate attempt to construct and reinforce a particular social and cultural group identity predicated on doxa.
Nothing wrong with that. "Giants fandom" or "Yankees fandom" or "Oasis fandom" would constitute a similar structure. The problem though is that Greater Wingnuttia is a lot more noxious. Well, maybe not a lot more so in respect to "Yankees fandom," but you get the idea.
The Flying Party is Here. Spencer Ackerman is right about Goldberg's curious definition of fascism, which I'll quote:
Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve that common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy.
As Ackerman points out:
Fascist regimes do not impose their wills by force "or" through regulation and social pressure. They systematize violence. There isn't anything at all fascist about a neighborhood noise ordinance, and nothing at all fascist about scrunching up your noise in discomfort when someone lights a cigarette. But this is how distinctions between statism and fascism collapse, a necessary move when redefining fascism to include liberalism.
Goldberg omits the most glaringly obvious feature of fascist regimes as they have historically existed: the thuggery. You cannot have fascism without violence; you cannot have fascism without a willingness to ignore established law and governance in order to impose political will backed by violence. No Blackshirts? No fascism. No SA, no SS? No fascism.
As Goldberg gleefully hollers out like he understands why, scholars have a hard time defining "fascism" -- but this is because the historical, self-identified fascists themselves were remarkably inconsistent, since all they really cared about was attaining and extending power by any means they could. But this only means that the responsible thing to do is to come up with as many concrete things that fascists really did if you're going to to try to define them (to the extent that a legitimate definition is what you are, in fact, after). Thus a definition of fascism, as of other historical phenomena, should be exclusive more so than it's inclusive. You want to disqualify something as "fascist" if it isn't "fascist" -- in other words, if the people everyone says, damn, them's fuckin' fascists!, didn't do it. Because otherwise, dammit, what the hell is the point of the exercise? A definition is a definition because it explains what is unique. A table may be defined as a table because it isn't a chair, even if you can, like Potsie Weber, sit on it.
But look at Goldberg's flatulent effort. Leave out the "by the state" part (or not, and point to what American "conservatives" do when in power as opposed to what they say in their bulk-sale books), that definition can be stretched to any goddamn political
position you like, since the whole starting point of political agency is to say
"this is my vision of how the world ought to be arranged because I
think it's better that way for everybody." It's hopelessly abstract and thus academically useless. An actual historian, see, looks first for the tangible: squadristi, Brownshirts, and so on, and finds them or not. But look for a political movement that you can't tag with some variety of notion of acting for "the common good" in the name of "the people," and you won't get anywhere. Take any presidential candidate's stump speech and see if you can't find someone selling herself or himself a "national leader attuned to the will of the public." Perhaps this Goldberg stuff is all fart for fart's sake.
Cover Them All in Black. Or not quite.
Because what, you ask, could ever be the purpose of a definition that rejects the discernible for the endlessly capacious -- the Brownshirt Burger for the Liberal Fascist All U Can Eat historical salad bar? A definition that leaves thuggery out of a definition of fascism? A definition that attempts to describe the face of something and leaves out the nose?
Well, obviously enough, this nose has been lopped off to spite "liberals." "Liberalism," you see, springs from an Impure Source and is therefore Inevitably Tainted.
And of course there's a flip side, a good side of the Force to the Dark Side of Liberalism. Because for Goldberg, when it comes to the Modern American Conservative, ah, all impurities have been washed away, by the magic of an imaginary origin myth, and all sins are forgiven.
I mean, get a load of this: "If we maintain our
understanding of political conservatism as the heir of classical
liberal individualism, it is almost impossible for a fair-minded
person to call it racist." Right. If we accept the abstract categorization as opposed to, oh, the record of what people have actually done and said, well, that's a pretty neat fucking trick, Amen.
And that's the point: to legitimize a quite contemporary American notion of The
Conservative, or Classical Liberal, or whatever, as a public identity
with its own distinct modes of thought and modes of social being --
complete with its own history and invented traditions and a whitewashed etiology.
The Unspeakable Must Settle. Hence it's worth pointing out that when Goldberg attempts to explain just who the hell modern "liberals" or "progressives" are, he is predictably all-inclusively imprecise, at various moments pointing the finger at Hillary Clinton, the guy at Columbia calling for "a million Mogadishus," Wilson, FDR, Derrida, Father Coughlin, Foucault, The Black Panthers, and health food enthusiasts. To the anyone who isn't a wingnut initiate, for all his footnotes, Goldberg's account of what The Left actually thinks is pretty, well, astonishing. For those of us who, to our eternal mortification, are versed in this shit, it's just the Ballad of the Sad Cliché:
Again, it is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion, but not necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not bullying. But it is definitely totalitarian – or "holistic," if you prefer – in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outward appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists. Liberals place their faith in priestly experts who know better, who plan, exhort, badger and scold. They try to use science to discredit traditional notions of religion and faith, but they speak the language of pluralism and spirituality to defend "nontraditional" beliefs. Just as with classical fascism, liberal fascists speak of a "Third Way" between right and left where all good things go together and all hard choices are "false choices."
David Broder, by this calculus, is Mussolini. Of course though that's not true. Mussolini's thought was far more coherent.
I kid. Honestly, when I first read this, my reaction was, dude, at least we don't tell you who you should fuck, or with what particular implements of adult joy. Honestly. I don't myself care what you smoke, and indeed believe you ought to be able to smoke more substances than are currently allowed (due to largely conservative agitation, natch). I'm not sure you should have the right to make other people breathe the stuff you exhale, though, which is a different issue.
I do see pretty much all areas of human life as political, as do most liberals -- and indeed, as do all conservatives and even libertarians, if sufficiently prodded. How you take a dump is a political issue: waste treatment is intensely political, as is the amount of water that you should flush with, what you wipe with, and so on. Fucking? If you want to argue that's not political, well, I'm not of the party proposing constitutional amendments in this regard. Goldberg is mostly angered at the idea that "liberals" suggest that scientists might be listened to in the area of science, doctors in medicine, or French philosophers in French philosophy.
It's an aggravating but ancient and banal stunt Goldberg is trying to pull off. There are issues: these are dealt with, or not, by some means or other, as best they can. Sane people try to address these on the merits. Goldberg plays that there's some abstract level on which the "liberal" position on these always comes out "fascist." But this is dishonest, and it's just a silly game. Here, let me demonstrate. Take for instance domestic abuse. I don't believe that wives should be beaten and I believe that there is a legitimate role to be played by the state in ensuring this is prevented. I even think tax money ought to go to women's shelters. Eeek. Conservatives though do not believe in government interference in the family unit, though... So, Mr Goldberg, do you... support beating your wife? As do all conservatives generally? Shocking!
In his last chapter Goldberg rather plaintively insists that he's arrived at his conservative positions honestly and because he believes they're he best solutions for the country, and why can't Liberals just accept that? But all throughout the book he also insists that whenever liberals invoke "pragmatism" it's just a cover for their inner hippie Brownshirt:
In a society where the government is supposed to do everything "good" that makes "pragmatic" sense, in a society where the refusal to validate someone's self-esteem borders on a hate crime, in a society where the personal is political, there is a constant danger that one cult or another will be imbued with political power.
To which the only proper response is: fuck you, hypocrite. What other response might be delivered to someone who is able to sadly intone "already it is becoming difficult to question the pagan assumptions behind environmentalism without seeming like a crackpot"? In reference to, say, global warming, Goldberg is a crackpot. All this guff about how liberalism is a "secular religion" is a sham, just Goldberg putting a lab coat over his alb.
And, you know, fuck that. It just looks stupid.