Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!
|
 Syle
Stranger
 
Registered: 10/16/05
Posts: 6,486
Loc: PNW/USA
Last seen: 29 days, 2 hours
|
 Liberalism = Fascism 
#7858320 - 01/10/08 08:26 AM (4 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DanielPipes/2008/01/08/fascisms_legacy_liberalism
Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron – or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really.
People raise their fists during an anti-fascism demonstration at the Puerta del Sol in downtown Madrid November 17, 2007. Anti-fascists gathered to protest against the November 12 death of a 16-year-old boy during clashes between anti-fascists and neo-Nazis. REUTERS/Susana Vera(SPAIN)
Related Media:
David Aikman: Putin's Jugend
VIDEO: Islamo-Fascism Week
His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.
These facts jar because they contradict the political spectrum that has shaped our worldview since the late 1930s, which places communism at the far left, followed by socialism, liberalism in the center, conservatism, and then fascism on the far right. But this spectrum, Jonah Goldberg points out in his brilliant, profound, and original new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday), reflects Stalin's use of fascist as an epithet to discredit anyone he wished – Trotsky, Churchill, Russian peasants – and distorts reality. Already in 1946, George Orwell noted that fascism had degenerated to signify "something not desirable."
To understand fascism in its full expression requires putting aside Stalin's misrepresentation of the term and also look beyond the Holocaust, and instead return to the period Goldberg terms the "fascist moment," roughly 1910-35. A statist ideology, fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism. It is totalitarian in Mussolini's original meaning of the term, of "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Fascism's message boils down to "Enough talk, more action!" Its lasting appeal is getting things done.
In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government, individualism, democratic debate, and capitalism. Its appeal is liberty and leaving citizens alone.
Goldberg's triumph is establishing the kinship between communism, fascism, and liberalism. All derive from the same tradition that goes back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution. His revised political spectrum would focus on the role of the state and go from libertarianism to conservatism to fascism in its many guises – American, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and so on.
As this listing suggests, fascism is flexible; different iterations differ in specifics but they share "emotional or instinctual impulses." Mussolini tweaked the socialist agenda to emphasize the state; Lenin made workers the vanguard party; Hitler added race. If the German version was militaristic, the American one (which Goldberg calls liberal fascism) is nearly pacifist. Goldberg quotes historian Richard Pipes on this point: "Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism." He proves this confluence in two ways.
First, he offers a "secret history of the American left"
* Woodrow Wilson's Progressivism featured a "militaristic, fanatically nationalist, imperialist, racist" program, enabled by the exigencies of World War I.
* Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fascist New Deal" built on and extended Wilson's government.
* Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society established the modern welfare state, "the ultimate fruition" (so far) of this statist tradition.
* The youthful New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s brought about "an Americanized updating" of the European Old Right.
* Hillary Clinton hopes "to insert the state deep into family life," an essential step of the totalitarian project.
To sum up a near-century of history, if the American political system traditionally encouraged the pursuit of happiness, "more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered."
Second, Goldberg dissects American liberal programs – racial, economic, environmental, even the "cult of the organic" – and shows their affinities to those of Mussolini and Hitler.
If this summary sounds mind-numbingly implausible, read Liberal Fascism in full for its colorful quotes and convincing documentation. The author, hitherto known as a smart, sharp-elbowed polemicist, has proven himself a major political thinker.
Beyond offering a radically different way to understand modern politics, in which fascist is no more a slander than socialist, Goldberg's extraordinary book provides conservatives with the tools to reply to their liberal tormentors and eventually go on the offensive. If liberals can eternally raise the specter of Joseph McCarthy, conservatives can counter with that of Benito Mussolini.
|
zappaisgod
horrid asshole
Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 34,509
Last seen: 16 hours, 43 minutes
|
Re: Liberalism = Fascism [Re: Syle]
#7858638 - 01/10/08 09:47 AM (4 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
I have always believed that the nanny state is de facto fascist.
--------------------
|
gluke bastid
Stinky Bum
Registered: 12/20/00
Posts: 2,931
Loc: Charm City
Last seen: 10 days, 15 hours
|
Re: Liberalism = Fascism [Re: Syle]
#7858698 - 01/10/08 10:00 AM (4 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Great. Another half-assed article with a 3rd grader's understanding of history.
I am so tired of people comparing contemporary politcal movements that they don't agree with with the Third Reich. This is retarded partisan crap at its worst.
Yes. Liberals often support tax dollars going to state-funded social programs. Everything from public school and highways to universal health care. It depends on what sort of liberal you are.
However if you can't tell the difference between such programs, and the dismantling of free speech, the creation of a secret police that breaks down your door in the middle of the night to ship you to a concentration camp because you are jewish/black/retarded/whatever, institutionalized genocide, and a campaign to conquer the entire world by force in order to assert your Nation's dominance over every other one, than you lack perspective.
Liberal/Facism comparisons are ludicrous. Conservative/Facism comparisons are ludicrous, although I would argue that the Neo-Conservative concept of pre-emptive unilateral warfare has a lot more in common with the Axis powers' agenda than does the contemporary liberal approach to foreign affairs.
And why doesn't anyone point out that the Third Reich was a CHRISTIAN regime? People cherry pick the fact that Hitler relied on social programs to get his country's crippled economy going again (which worked, by the way) so they can attack social programs en masse. There are much more significant factors in Hitler's rise to and use of power that identify precisely what facism is/was.
--------------------
Society in every form is a blessing,
but government at its best is but a necessary evil
- Thomas Paine
|
 Arp
roving mycophagist
Registered: 04/20/98
Posts: 2,191
Loc: in a van by the river
|
|
liberalism: an economic theory advocating free competition and a self-regulating market
|
Annapurna1
liberal pussy
Registered: 05/21/02
Posts: 5,368
Loc: innsmouth..MA
|
|
Quote:
gluke bastid said:
Great. Another half-assed article with a 3rd grader's understanding of history.
--------------------
"anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...
|
Syle
Stranger
Registered: 10/16/05
Posts: 6,486
Loc: PNW/USA
Last seen: 29 days, 2 hours
|
Re: Liberalism = Fascism [Re: Annapurna1]
#7860274 - 01/10/08 02:51 PM (4 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Annapurna1 said:
Quote:
gluke bastid said:
Great. Another half-assed article with a 3rd grader's understanding of history.
LOL, anna is one to talk 
|
Annapurna1
liberal pussy
Registered: 05/21/02
Posts: 5,368
Loc: innsmouth..MA
|
Re: Liberalism = Fascism [Re: Syle]
#7861446 - 01/10/08 07:22 PM (4 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
id be surprised if you even made it to third grade...but OTOH..thats not too surprising given your kinds' idea of an education...
--------------------
"anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...
|
Syle
Stranger
Registered: 10/16/05
Posts: 6,486
Loc: PNW/USA
Last seen: 29 days, 2 hours
|
Re: Liberalism = Fascism [Re: Annapurna1]
#7861465 - 01/10/08 07:26 PM (4 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Annapurna1 said:
id be surprised if you even made it to third grade...but OTOH..thats not too surprising given your kinds' idea of an education...
again,
|
EntheogenicPeace
Scholar
Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 3,448
|
Re: Liberalism = Fascism [Re: Syle]
#7861849 - 01/10/08 08:21 PM (4 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government... Its appeal is liberty and leaving citizens alone.
Going by what this article states above, a more appropriate title for this thread would be:
Bush administration = Fascism
Quote:
Goldberg's extraordinary book provides conservatives with the tools to reply to their liberal tormentors and eventually go on the offensive.
The only problem with that is... there are only a handful of actual conservatives left in the U.S. Almost all right-wingers have put on brownshirts to fight the righteous "War on Terror"... not to mention those who've already sported them to fight the "War on Drugs" in order to rid our society of this evil scourge. An actual conservative is a fringe extremist within the modern Republican Party.
--------------------
Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe.
Even the rocks... as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore in solemn grandeur thrill with memories of past events... and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among white men shall have become a myth, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe.
- Chief Seattle
|
Smackshadow
It's Time for Wild Speculation
Registered: 09/27/05
Posts: 575
Last seen: 3 months, 13 days
|
|
Quote:
Great. Another half-assed article with a 3rd grader's understanding of history.
I am so tired of people comparing contemporary politcal movements that they don't agree with with the Third Reich. This is retarded partisan crap at its worst.
Yes. Liberals often support tax dollars going to state-funded social programs. Everything from public school and highways to universal health care. It depends on what sort of liberal you are.
However if you can't tell the difference between such programs, and the dismantling of free speech, the creation of a secret police that breaks down your door in the middle of the night to ship you to a concentration camp because you are jewish/black/retarded/whatever, institutionalized genocide, and a campaign to conquer the entire world by force in order to assert your Nation's dominance over every other one, than you lack perspective.
--------------------
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
~H. L. Mencken~
|
rexmundi
Stranger
Registered: 08/10/07
Posts: 314
Last seen: 2 years, 6 months
|
Re: Liberalism = Fascism [Re: Smackshadow]
#7868342 - 01/12/08 07:38 AM (4 years, 4 months ago) |
|
|
I believe Mussolini called fascism in his book the "third way" which was an alternative to the dehumanizing "levelling" of society in communist countries, but avoided the equally dehumanizing polarized, consumption oriented fat cat liberal democracy countries. Fascism was more of a spirit than a philosophy. If anything it grew out of corporate syndicalist movements in Italy at the time.
That is my understanding of the Italian Fascist movement.
--------------------
"I Love Democracy"
-Emporer Palpatine
Fuck the system.
| |
|
|
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Phred, Prisoner#1
422 topic views. 0 members, 1 guests and 1 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Toggle Favorite | Print Topic ]
| | |
|
|
|
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Shop for: 
Edit 
Reply 
