I am about halfway through Jonah Goldberg's 'Liberal Fascism', and it's truly a fascinating set of ideas. Goldberg has given me quite a bit to think about considering what I did and did not know about American history. But in many ways this is exactly the book I have been needing to know.
As I mentioned before, or probably never said it this way before, the most difficult think about being a black conservative is that you haven't inherited it. Which means, like any bounder on the ascent, you know very well what you don't like but you're not sure exactly if getting what you do like gets you into. We are all aware of the rhetorical catfights that certain conservatives like to get into and there is a great risk of falling into blatant demogoguery. It is difficult to unlearn progressivism without being slavish.
What is not said often enough is that blackfolks who bother to do battle as conservative specifically with progressive blackfolks are often motivated by the same premises as progressives - that some intellectual vanguard pointing in the proper direction is going to lift all boats. I think that in divesting myself of the prerogatives of the Talented Tenth, that I have avoided that trap - but it does consequently leave me wondering why I talk to or about blackfolks at all.
These are some of the interesting consequences of transcribing my journey as I get through towards more contemporary histories in Goldberg, especially with regard to the role of the Black Panthers and the Black Power Movement. You see in assigning the dichotomy necessary to make his point clear, there is no question but that black politics in significant components lie directly in the scheme of fascism. For what it's worth, a great deal of American politics does, but I suppose that I will have some responsibility to deal with the black part. In some ways that will be quite easy as my record on the Fifty Page Book Men and the Coalition of the Damned is fairly clear. But the premises of unity and collectivism, very deeply imbedded in Progressivism and in black identity itself - well, smacking that with a stick is going to be costly in terms of the noise I will have to suffer for doing so.
Be all that as it may, this book is the antidote to Howard Zinn. It is absolute required reading for anyone who cares to understand what conservatives are NOT. That is because it makes for the first honest accounting of how exactly to view that period in world history when the context of the evil of the 20th century can be explained in American terms.
Goldberg does a damning good job, but perhaps not as persuasive as possible (yet the first time I've heard it) accounting for the intellectual tenor of the 20th century with regard to the reconception of government. Although his book is complete with a fairly robust accounting of the intellectual leaders and concepts of the century, he decides rather to concentrate his focus on the great men. That is the single weakness of the book aside from some variously scattershot factoids that are often thrown in for effect. (For example, Malcolm X is only mentioned once for 'by any means necessary') which he paints as nihilist, and then left alone. I suspect that as he loads down his book with such references it becomes overwrought with nitpicky and debatable talking points rather than tracing a smooth inevitable arc and consequences of the philosophical ends of Progressivism. The difficulty is thus with justifications of cramming everything under fascism which is not the sum of all evils that in my view totalitarianism actually is. The question I think would be better answered is how to rescue the world from dictatorship through the application of classic liberalism and the separation of powers inherent in the American system. But maybe that's just me.
But what remains the unquestionable strength of the book is how Goldberg illustrates what the Left has done to spin treachery of its own design onto the shoulders of the Right. He demonstrates case after case of how liberalisms of the 'third way' are drawn to fascistic themes.
It should be instructive to understand the very basics of fascism which have basically everything to do with the origin of the word from the Roman fasces in which a set of slim, individually weak sticks, are bound tightly together to form a weapon. The premises of fascism always subordinate the individual towards a nationalist scheme of group identity and meaning. Goldberg sees fascism as essentially an organizing methodology with consistent themes in Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Wilson's warsocialist America. He then traces these themes through FDR's New Deal, and Progressives on the Left from Dewey to current thinkers and politicians on the Left from Hillary Clinton to Michael Lerner.
The book is an armory of ammo showing the excesses of the Left and their efforts to conceal their errors, and it essentially breaks the stranglehold liberals claim to the moral high ground. Extraordinary book.
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