Letters to the Editor
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The "Goldberg Principle"
You can prove any thesis to be true if you make up your own definitions of words.
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-- JackHughes
And don't forget that fascist FDR was in league with the liberal fascist Republicans who held the majority in Congress at the time and decided with the blessing of the liberal fascist press to appease that liberal fascist Franco by not selling military arms to the liberal fascists fighting against Franco, thus handing a certain victory to Franco and by extension his liberal fascist backers, Hitler and Mussolini, emboldening them on their quest for liberal fascist domination and thus allowing the rest of the liberal fascist world to join in that great war against the liberal fascists Hitler and Mussolini, which we won, ensuring our freedom to choose our current ideology, liberal fascism.
Is it any wonder that the liberal fascist Picasso painted such obviously schizophrenic paintings such as Guernica what with liberal fascists being bombed to smithereens by liberal fascists?
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We care, jontv, because
Language matters. The meaning of words matter. This book was not written in a vacuum. It is part of a push by the right to affect the way a new generation perceives the Third Reich and the lessons we supposedly learned from it. Loftily ignoring people like Goldberg, allowing their lies to go unanswered does not diminish their credibility. On the contrary, it allows them to mainstream a self-serving revisionist history.
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Really?
That's today's lead? Really? I have to stare at this thing all fucking day?
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An unwanted hug vs. being stomped in the face -
If Mr. Goldberg can't tell the difference - he should have gone to my grade school.
What a maroon.
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@hoopster
but that just proves that his definition of the term is so broad that it can include anyone. The only possible purpose of stretching the term "fascist" to that point is propaganda.
I think that's correct, Hoopster, and I think that, along with slandering liberals and liberalism in general, is what Goldberg's after.
Ironically, to proceed successfully with post-WWII fascism properly (e.g., "friendly fascism"), you first have to banish the F-word from public discourse, get rid of the ability of people to criticize the ideas, or at least of the ability to call them out for what they are. And by deliberately muddying the waters at least in some credulous people's minds about what fascism was, is, and will be, it makes the dirty work of actual fascism that much easier.
Propaganda is something fascists have always been good at. The Big Lie is their calling card, and Goldberg's Big Lie is that liberalism is fascism. I'll be curious to see if it sticks (although he's clearly not a master of the art of propaganda, because this book is a pretty ham-handed enterprise). Then again, the bigger the lie, the easier it is to accept.
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I'm sure Robert Proctor will be thrilled
. . . to see his excellent "The Nazi War on Cancer" characterized as equating whole-grain bread with anti-Semitism in terms of their centrality to Nazi ideology.
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Meaning revisionism
Goldberg describes his screed as a revisionist history, but in actuality it is nothing less than a purposely misleading revision of the core meaning of facism. Absent in his revised meaning is the principal nationalistic component. This is not surprising since liberals/progressives abhor nationalism.
Likewise, he ommits the crucial role of the ultimate athoritarian/dictator in the facist society, also abhored by liberals but seemingly tolerated if not advocated by conservatives of late (see Bush 01-07, GOP 2007 debates.
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isn't Goldberg preaching relativism?
As I understand it, the left is fascistic because its members believe there is a "right way" to do things. It does not seem that liberals are only fascistic when they codify the "right way" into a proscriptive law. He calls an environmental group fascistic because it puts out a list of pc sex positions, but I am sure they did not mandate them. So really, it seems like he condemns the left for thinking they know the "right way" to do things. It's kind of like another right wing attack on the pc machine.
But wait! I thought the problem with the left is that we were anything goes cultural relativists! And I thought the right was -- er -- right because it was willing to dictate appropriate behavior.
Now I am really confused.
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Mussolini
The Communist-led partisans in Italy hung Mussolini and his mistress. 'Nuff said. I think they could tell what national 'socialism' really was.
By the way, every big capitalist in Italy supported Mussolini. The corporate state is nothing but a face for 'free' enterprise.
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A Serious Pantload
It sounds like Mr. Goldberg wants to be taken seriously, very seriously. Revisionist history! My God stop the presses, no one's ever done that before! That is unless you count every other right wing crank trying to fluff their credentials in the Very Serious Club. The interview was quite well done and not confrontational, allowing Jonah to hang himself with his own delusional wet dream.
Unsurprisingly the cover reminds me of Wal Mart where I suspect it will be found shortly, in the bargain bin.
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Why are you giving this dishonest clown free publicity?
I'm looking forward to his next book, The Sweet Smell of Nepotism: How I Owe My Entire Media Career to My Mother's Connections. His arguments are not being made in good faith and deserve to languish in obscurity instead of being on Salon's front page. I'm very disappointed.
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goldberg re: the war on drugs: he's right (correct)
Nixon's war on drugs may have started us down the road to mass incarceration, but rehabilitation and allowing scientific research that questioned long-held assumptions were on the agenda. What's important to remember about the Reagan-Bush years is that while the law and order, punish the criminal, approach was largely initiated by the executive branch, Congress and the media were as much to blame for stoking hysteria and passing the extraordinarily punitive 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts -- Democrats tried to out-tough Republicans in this regard. And under Clinton, rates of incarceration and federal funding for the drug war continued to rise, PLUS Clinton used the previous administration's certification process to turn the screws on highly indebted countries for whom "drugs" were the least of their problems, and the drug war among the biggest of their problems (prohibition economics + massive poverty + huge inequality + trade liberalization = corruption at evey level of government).
I disagree with Jonah on pretty much everything in this interview, but with respect to the war on drugs he is dead on. It's fascism in the name of liberalism (biopolitical "freedom"), war in the name of health, and it's done far more damage to the idea and practice of democracy than most realize. And Democrats are to blame for not just rolling over but drinking the Kool-aid, just as with the war on terror.