A great many of the American and European left-wing intelligentsia showered Stalin and Mao with undeserved praise, back in the day. The shame of this is, apparently, insufficient. Now the left must also bear the burden of Hitler and Mussolini. Thanks for that addition to the argument.

I remember back in the eighties when punk rock bands would tar Reagan (or John Wayne) with a big Hitler brush. Looks like the Conservatives have finally gotten their own punk rock.

This clowns whole argument seems to boil down to "Fascism is anything I don't agree with and I don't agree with liberalism, so liberals must be fascists."

This book is proof positive that any crackpot can find a publisher.

Where was this interview conducted? In an asylum?

Anyone who doesn't understand that fascism is a merger of corporate and state power is either being deliberately dishonest or has believed too much of what Goldberg has written.

Jonah's mother, Lucianne Goldberg, "friend" of Linda Tripp and literary agent for Mark Fuhrman, worked as a dirty tricks artist back in 1972 to spy on the McGovern presidential campaign for Murray Chotiner, Nixon's dirty tricks pal. It turns out that her cover, the Women's News Service which was a subsidiary of the North American Newspaper Alliance, was a CIA cover. Josh's dad Sidney worked for NANA too, eventually becoming its President. He is also suspected of being a CIA asset (hard to be the President of a CIA company and not be an asset).

In short, it's hard to believe that Jonah doesn't really know what fascism is. Since both of his parents have had long and storied relationships with the CIA how can this be anything but another piece of disinformation generated by fascists?

Ignorance is strength.

It is scandalous, utterly scandalous, that a "serious" discussion of this topic could occur (and in SALON, of all places) without making reference to the astute and widely disseminated political commentary of Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedys. "California Uber Alles" hit this nail on the head decades ago, and hit it hard. In the tightly constructed lyrics of that song we have a compelling, and damning, analysis of liberal fascism, launched from the left.

Judging from the interview, and my personal biases, I do not think that Goldberg argues convincingly that conservativism is free from the taint of "fascism", (a problematic and laden term, as others have noted). But for liberalism's defenders to blithely (and venomously) insist that liberalism is everything that is good, and nothing that is not good, is a bit silly.

One other thing I do find amusing is how, to the American Right, "liberal" is even an evil word, and a tool like Goldberg picks up an old line of attack to try to spot-weld "liberal" to "fascist" -- so much nonsense.

But what I find interesting is that their choice of wicked words is something as comparatively benign as "liberal," and how successful they've been in demonizing that word, so much that many people are afraid to use it (along with, say, "feminist" and "environmentalist"). Just as "fascist" is a political dirty word in general, so has the Right put "socialist," "liberal," "feminist," and "environmentalist" in there, too. And seeing them in a row, I can't help but think that "fascist" is way, way worse than the others. I mean, we're not even that far from Limbaugh's disgraceful "feminazi."

It reveals just how far down the reactionary rabbit hole they've traveled over the decades that even being liberal is synonymous to the right-wing with "evil" -- and how much they've come to control language and discourse with their shrill culture wars, how hysterical and hateful they are.

Whereas, among progressives, we use the F-word, "fascist," for what we really don't like, and even then, there's some discomfort with it, because it's a dirty word, an evil word, a fighting word.

If they sneered that anybody left of them were "communists," it would at least be an equivalently inflammatory slur. But the US and the Right crushed communism in the country, so with that bugbear slain, the next in their gunsights is liberalism itself. It's symptomatic of the venomous nature of American reactionary thought, how far to the right they've traveled, that "liberal" is their dirty word. Once they destroy all the liberals, then who's next? I guess "moderate" would then be the new dirty word. And then "conservative" -- there is a reactionary nihilism inherent in fascism, like the snake eating its own tail. Everything to the left of them is evil. End of story. That's how they escalate partisanship and kill public discourse, and how fascism destroys a free and democratic society. They demonize "wrongthink" and go after it until they kill it.

The usual thing, like people saying "well, I'm not a communist. I'm not a socialist. I'm not an environmentalist. I'm not a feminist. I'm not a liberal. So, what do I care?" It won't matter. They'll come for you eventually. They always do.

It's incredible what an idiot can get away with if his father is a book agent. As long as the "writer" has a "high profile" he can make anything he wants up and the mob will beat a path to their door. I wonder who at Random House is responsible for this piece of trash.

So this is the guy I long held in contempt when I used to live in LA and regularly read the LA Times op-ed. No wonder he gets published now that you've informed me of his literary agent mom, Lucianne Goldberg. Why do you bother giving him the publicity? He has no credentials in political theory, and clearly is just out to make money with provocative titles aimed at those whose minds are predisposed.

A lot of the Republican vs. Democratic arguments have been about "labels". The term "liberal media" comes to mind, misused and abused. "Only Conservatives can bring change" is another oxymoron.

How is a book that takes a term like "fascism", well understood and used consistently for 60 years, and attempts to equate it to modern American liberalism by redefining it, not by defining what American liberalism may be, useful or helpful in anyway to those who want to understand the big ideological differences between American political parties and ideologies?

I think the book should be ignored.

Why spend energy on revising history and historic terminology?

How about defining new words for the future, rather than keep morphing words from the past to fit the needs of those that seek power?

Let us be us, without any labels.