What's the book about?

It's a revisionist history.

And that pretty much tells you everything you need to know. If you liked David Irving, you'll love Jonah.

I think what Goldberg was saying is something like this: in Switzerland, they eat a kind of cereal called muesli. Switzerland borders Austria, where Hitler was born. Muesli is also kind of like granola, which a lot of hippies liked to eat. Hippies are leftwing, and Hitler may very well have eaten muesli and by extension would have probably liked granola. Therefore hippies and by extension the entire left are just like Hitler!

Not a bad interview-- Koppelman gave him quite a bit of rope to hang himself with, especially on Mussolini-- but I'm still disappointed to see this hack in Salon. I also wish Goldberg had been challenged more on his odd views on sexuality-- in addition to the 'environmental condoms' bullshit, he's something of a Holocaust denier who's claimed gays were relatively safe in Nazi Germany.

...And everybody has it wrong. The Communists really were a right wing movement.

No need to go pass the cover.

Goldberg cleverly wants to dissociate right-wing from fascism the same way evangelicals did with religion and creationism. Just invent a new definition (liberal fascist, intelligent design), bang it hard into their zombie-like constituent and voilá: It is the truth.

Next revisionism: KKK is really a pro-African-American movement...

Give me a freaking break!

Goldberg got where he is because his mother runs in influential conservative circles, not because of any innate intellect or talent. He's never actually achieved anything on his own merit. No wonder he loves fascism and war. Chickenhawks like him always worship strong men, perhaps because they sense that they themselves are hollow.

After all, he displayed a distressingly Nazi-like regard for other people.

Alexander Hamilton was pro-tariff, East Coast elitist. Was he a fascist too? Or is it only fascism if you give a damn about the middle class? I guess George Bush isn't a fascist because he seems to care more about creating jobs overseas than in the US. But Obama is a fascist because he doesn't wear a flag pin and we all know that No Pin = Anti-American = fascist.

But you learn something new every day. Today I learned that Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Salazaar, Peron, the Colonels in Greece, et al were a bunch of left-wing pinko, crypto-Commies.

Of course, if

...it's very hard to come up with a definition of fascism

then fascism is just a meaningless insult, which appears to be Goldberg's goal. After all, his argument appears to be nothing more than

Everything bad is Fascism

Liberalism is bad, therefore,

Liberalism is Fascism

Which is about what you would expect from someone who also argues that

Smoking = Cancer = Freedom, and

Anti-smoking = Anti-cancer = Fascism

Of course, God forbid that people be concerned with second-hand smoke, or for that matter, their health at all.

Perhaps we should change Niemöller's poem so that it starts

In Germany, they came first for the cigarettes,

And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a smoker

First the cigarettes, next the Jews. I see it now.

This guy is nothing but an extremist right wing Jewish Ann Coulter. Guys like this invoke Hitler whenever and whereever they can because they think they own the rights to the Holocaust. I'm sick of it. Other people died too, they just don't exploit it over and over for cheap shots.

...when you push them this far. Right-wing pundits and, presumably, Jonah Goldberg do so because it sells books and ad time. He basically admits as much near the end of the interview.

Nothing he's saying is insightful or new. Fascism is, to me, the ultimate political flowering of the authoritarian impulse married to nationalism. There are and have been authoritarian strains in political thought across the spectrum. To assign fascism to one end or another is ridiculous.

And who cares, anyway? The only way this argument really matters is if you assume that people identify strongly with these shorthand labels we use. If somebody says something stupid -- or even something critically astute -- about "liberals", I couldn't care less. I will consider valid criticism if it applies to me personally, but I don't assume it will just because somebody address "liberals" in general.

is the fact that so many right wing whack jobs will actually swallow this tripe, much like they do that of Limbaugh, Coulter, O'Reilly, et al. Look for this "impressive" book to be at your local Wal-Mart soon, much like books by the above mentioned assholes.

Why? Why are conservatives so fucking stupid, clueless & ignorant? What impairs their ability to reason & have actual thinking processes? Are they dropped on their heads as children? Are they secretly lobotomized after birth? What causes their lack of intelligence?

Oh BTW, good to see a couple of Ron Paul groupies blathering on again. I thought after that whack-a-loon had come out in favor of intelligent design, (thus proving, along with his feelings regarding keeping racist's contributions, & his own racial beliefs, & his feelings regarding everyone's rights, except women that want abortions, that he's just another right wing shill, merely cloaking it in a different way), that you had given up on him. After all, aren't many libertarians supposedly highly intellectual, & thus able to see the fallicies in intelligent design? Good to see that you will still drink the Kool-Aid if Ron Paul, (aka the spirit reincarnation of Jim Jones), ever offers it to you.

"That is a much more benign dystopia than '1984,' but for me at least, it's still a dystopia."

Oh, thank you, professor. My liberal education had me thinking that "Brave New World" was a novel about an anti-hero in the utopian near-future of GlaxoSmithKlein. Now I see. It's a dystopia!

But what do I do with my mandatory hacky-sack?

I agree.

But if Nixon were running for office today, he'd still be portrayed as a tree hugging freak who cozied up to Mao, and whose Quaker background meant he couldn't be trusted to obliterate enough foreigners to defend America.