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“Liberal Fascism”

The biggest problem with discussions of Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism, isn’t that critics nit-pick, fight him on his own terrain, or engage in Berubean mockery. The problem with critics – and, indeed, with their object of criticism itself – is that they reify the idea of a “political spectrum” and attempt to objectively define “political ideologies” in relation to one another. Hence, what was “conservative” a hundred years ago is “conservative” today – it is eternal. However, it is very much the case that demands are made on a particular terrain, in relation to a particular field of forces, in a particular strategic game: for instance, the famous tenth demand of the Communist Manifesto – free public education and an end to child labour in factories reads a comically naive in the present context. The point being, of course, is that “liberals” and “conservatives” (which are, in the present conjecture, but variations upon the same theme – state power, capitalism, free trade, income disparity, etc) are equally willing – and nothing more – to stick to the party line; to stick to the talking points. While it is often said that academic politics are vicious because the stakes are so small, it can just as reasonably said that “real” politics (which is anything but, of course) is so vicious because the differences between positions are so small.

This was written by Craig. Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008, at 3:15 pm. Filed under Commentary. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

One Comment

  1. John wrote:

    Hi, Im from Melbourne.
    To me its completely obvious that when fascism comes to America it will come from the “right”.
    Why?
    Its quite simple the “right” is very much into and supportive of the “culture” of guns via the NRA for example.
    Even. or perhaps especially Christians.
    How many, and what kind of guns would Jesus recommend?
    At what age would Jesus recommend that children be given their first gun?
    I believe that guns are given to children as young as five or six.
    All the gun-toting militias are on the right.
    The “right” essentially controls access to, and the use of guns via the state, whether it be via the local police, the National Guard, or the military.

    There is a mega reservoir of anger and frustration in the psyche of the USA body politic.
    And some groups are just looking for someone to blame, and itching to get rid of the various “cancers” that are destroying the “purity” of the body politic—so that everything will be hunky dory in downtown god-fearing white Christian America again.

    The unspeakably dreadful applied politics of mass scapegoating.

    The cancers of liberals, humanists, liberal Christian religionists, religious groups that arent Christian, atheists, cultural relativists (especially in the academy), anyone that looks like an Arab, etc etc

    Generally those on the left of the culture wars divide and most of the above categories, arent much interested in guns.
    They will thus be easy SCAPEGOAT targets

    Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 4:27 am | Permalink

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  1. Reviews of Liberal Fascism - The City That Breeds on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 7:06 am

    [...] addition, a few incendiary reviews in Salon.com, Sadly, No!, Acephalous, and Theoria. From the bit of the book I skimmed through–and as a grad student I am an expert [...]

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