Letters to the Editor
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Tool Time
So this is going to go into the great conservative library to sit aside the works of the great Ann Coulter and the brilliance of Rush Limbaugh to be trotted out as fact? That's just great.
From the interview, it looks like this ass hat just cherry picked a few items and calls it an argument.
Besides, doesn't the American Left predate facism?
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Slackie
I can't entirely object to what Goldberg is talking about, although I think he's writing this as a bludgeon to attack liberalism in general (even as he, paradoxically, touts liberal free-market-driven societies). But isn't the Market as totalitarian as any other abstraction? Seems like any time you subordinate living people to some abstraction, be it God, State, Party, Race, Gender, Market -- you end up in a totalitarian mess, and people get hurt.
The 21st century's battlefront will be between human rights and property rights. Given the state of the world, I think property rights are winning -- torture, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, suspension of habeas corpus, permanent war -- these things are destroying human rights, and yet they're in place. But property rights are safer than ever. You can see where the priorities are. The friendly fascist will be gung-ho on property rights, and won't give a rat's ass about human rights.
-- Slackie Onassis
Thursday, January 10, 2008 06:56 PM
The whole thing is brilliant, as usual. Thank you.
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Having your cake (and eating it too)
It's interesting, most of what he's trying to say is not hyperbolic, and yet all of his non-hyperbolic statements lead into attacks at liberals, making them hyperbolic.
It's like he's telling everybody "Hey, let's all chill out and discuss this, and not be a bunch of little Eichmens."
Yes, they're are similarities between the Nazi's, Stalin's and the far left. Simply because each of these group become radicalized and saw their opponents as fodder that must be paved to build the nation. The same thing happens in the radical right as well. How many times have we heard that democrats are "terrorist-lovers" or that secular America is "less moral" than those of the Judeo-Christian faith? Guess what? That's a not so different from the tactics the nazi's used to make jews second-class citizens.
Am I saying Christians are Nazis? No, of course not. I'm saying all hyperbole has gross similarities: accusations, beliteling, and out-of-context labeling.
I have no trouble labeling that tactics as facist elements in the left or the right, as long as an author is seeing past their own political filter. Goldberg, however, is not capable of this.
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Not Revisionist History, Delusional History
OK I read the whole interview. Goldberg does a pretty good job of showing himself to be the sophist we all knew he was anyways. (My fave, "You don't have conservative groups talking about what kind of condoms you should use or what positions you can be in. That kind of thing doesn't really go on." Really, Jonah?!)
As many other posters here are demonstrating, this is not revisionist history based on objective analysis. This is cherry-picking quotations in order to build up an hallucinatory history that serves the power structure that Goldberg has been propping up his entire career - the same power structure that his momma serves and into which she inculcated him ...
... Which, after reading the stuff about HRC, left me thinking "What a freakin' momma's boy!" I think that he is still trying to cut the apron strings to Momma Lucienne.
Jonah, show Momma what a big strong boy you are now and enlist in that war that Momma and her big strong man friends are always cheering about!
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Kind liberal fascists
[O]ne of the biggest distinctions between what I'm calling liberal fascism ... and classical fascism, is that classical fascism was masculine and violently oppressive and today's liberalism is feminine and not oppressive but smothering with kindness.
Here's a clue for Goldberg and anyone else confused about the definition of fascism:
If "kindness" is one of its descriptors, it's not fascism.
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Hmmmm!?
I think he sort of was trying to make a point that all these new laws which will be inforced by men wearing guns ie the police are a form of fascism. Although all these new rules are not just the work of liberals but of conservative agenda as well,so he makes no sense and is either ignoring the facts or is stupid. Also, the war on drugs is a war as people die and last I looked the pigs have lots of fancy military weapons at their disposal and so do the drug lords and their ilk!
About new laws making it a fascist world... In California alone we had 750 new ones in the New Year. Personelly, I wish to believe a law is something like gravity not a manmade wish to control the rest of us. I do think however he(author) is just trying to give the real fascist in this country(the conservatives) an excuse to call the liberals fascist and nazi types. Like the term feminazi. He cannot and did not argue the fact that the men with the guns were real fascist,concerning Nazi Germany and Italy-Spain but was more inclined to rant on how all the new life governing rules will become defacto controling devices of our daily lives. Can you argue with that? I think that,
Bush and Cheney are the real fascist as they live by the sword and gun and cannot seem to deal with anyone or anything any other way then that. We can feel safe to call them corporate fascists. Since we are in the middle of an election I will add that Hillary is just a skirt wearing corporate fascist in cahoots with those other scum. She must lose at all cost.
Back to the subject...
Just ignor this guy and when that big fat lying bootlicking corporate rat scum Rush Limbaugh and others like him begins to quote this neocon{s book be ready to have your counter facts ready. Although the right wingers will not listen and never do so why bother? Peace.
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Fascism has been a misused term for many years.
As Goldberg himself acknowledges, Fascism is difficult to define, and he's not helping any. Using the term Fascism, which is pretty specific to Spain, Italy, and Germany of the 30's and 40's, when someone actually means totalitarianism is pretty common. Too often people have used the specific term of Fascism for totalitarianism. It's true that Fascism is a subset of totalitarianism, but that does not make all totalitarians Fascists. Sure, there are liberal and conservative totalitarians because of what is known as the "horseshoe effect." Essentially, both extremes tend to look similarly totalitarian. Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia for example. Even if Goldberg were to use totalitarianism instead of Fascism, his case would be pretty weak, and he would obviously sacrifice book sales. Anyway, all he is doing is contributing to the difficulty people have in defining an already muddled term.