...I'd like to hear his definition of "liberal."

This is stupid, offensive, ignorant and a waste of bandwidth. nazis and fascists always like to put the onus on those they intend to attack and there is no excuse for spreading their lies, hate and propaganda.

I am not fan of the left or liberalism, but you night as well be hyping Prussian Blue.

I realize that a large percentage of the population gets off on naziporn, but please leave salon out of it.

Have you folks been reading LaRouche or something?

I loved this quote which I think says it all about his posse of neoliberal wordbenders and propagandists:

"Well, I'm saying you can draw a line, but it's not a straight one."

A line as mathematically defined *is* straight:

def.: MathWorld.Wolfram.com

LINE:

A line is a straight one-dimensional figure having no thickness and extending infinitely in both directions. A line is sometimes called a straight line or, more archaically, a right line (Casey 1893), to emphasize that it has no "wiggles" anywhere along its length.

so his jagged line that runs from Mussolini then loops into absurdity and finally comes to rest on Obama is indicative of the sorts of blurred hindsight used to dazzle and persuade the sheeple masses

if you read today's interview with Goldberg in Salon by Alex Koppelman you'll see Mr Koppelman goes in heavily armed and not afraid to use it...there are many times during the interview he politely calls bullshit on Goldberg

I won't click on this article, not because I don't want to hear opposing views, but because Salon (inadvertently) seems to be advertising a book that by its cover is disingenuous and sensationalistic.

This seems quite unfair to conservatives. Did Andrew Sullivan's recent book get this kind of attention in Salon? Mr. Sullivan is an incisive thinker who represents a conservatism of intellectual honesty.

But he doesn't put smiley faces with Hitler mustaches on his covers, so perhaps that makes him less newsworthy.

Anyway, in the Newspeak of our times, I am probably being fascist for not wanting to spend my time reading Mr. Golberg's specious philosophy. (I didn't even go to Swarthmore!)

After all, Peace = War (Mr. Goldberg recently attended a "Give War a Chance" rally from my understanding.)

Slavery=Freedom

Love=Hate

Goldberg's writing=reasoned conservatism

All those who don't want to read Goldberg or adhere to the narrow views of his neoconservative collective = fascists

As one of Orwell's character's might query, "How many fingers am I holding up?"

I read this interview quickly just in case Goldberg had a valid point that wasn't obvious. I became very skeptical when he gave his own definition of fascism. He complains that fascism has become a meaningless synonym for evil - which is true - yet he doesn't bother to research the correct definition. So thank you, thornwolf, for finding two definitions and posting them for us. I can't respect Goldberg as any kind of intellectual when a spur-of-the-moment letter writer does better research than him.

I don't think you have to read any farther than this --

"[Liberalism] is definitely totalitarian -- or 'holistic,' if you prefer -- in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outer appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists."

-- to see that we have here a mind blissfully unmoored from any sense of obligation to speak truly or meaningfully. Never mind the absurdity of implying that conservatives haven't politicized sex. What exactly does it mean to say that something has "political salience?" It doesn't exactly mean anything. It's a way of asserting something false in a manner that defies refutation only by defying any kind of logical analysis.

Beyond that, the passage is transparent blather. Fascism is a political term referring most broadly to the extreme concentration of power. "Holism" is first a concept of human health, and by extension perhaps of metaphysics, which posits the universal connectedness of things -- and by extension, perhaps, people. Any connection between the two concepts is about as abstract as the connection between bombing civilian homes and eating dinner. Well, both involve destruction, don't they?

This conflation is, however, unintentionally revealing, for through it Goldberg illustrates one of the primordial motives of the conservative mind, which is to escape the deep fear that one really doesn't matter. A character in Arthur Miller's Incident at Vichy says of the Nazis, "The less you exist, the more you have to make an impression." This is the driving emotive force behind the conservative obsession with individualism and separateness -- and the concomitant phobia toward anything smacking of, as Goldberg calls it, "unity." Goldberg's professed fear that liberalism leads to some kind of utopian somnambulism is the rationalized outgrowth of the underlying fear that his very Self may disappear if he does not vigilantly defend his individual boundaries. In equating fascism with liberalism Goldberg notices only the strain of fascism that emphasizes collective action. He overlooks the apotheosis of individuality reflected in the Leader, in whose godlike powers all citizens in good standing vicariously partake.

The Editor’s Choice letters already posted on this interview make some excellent points: Goldberg does seem to cherrypick his definitions and his examples (dmnels); he uses words very loosely (Sandy Yago) and relabels things to suit his overall thesis (jontv). Steve Kelner Ph.D. also raised a point worth repeating—namely, the disjuncture between Goldberg’s cover illustration and his mental gymnastics to distance himself from it. Goldberg himself says, “But I think the problem is you get into one of these sort of overly doctrinal, ‘let's go to the text’ approaches where words get confused for things. . . . Saying that you still believe in the dialectic and the cold impersonal forces of history found in ‘Das Kapital’ or ‘The Communist Manifesto’ isn't an abracadabra thing where all of a sudden that means Stalin was really a Marxist or wasn't a fascist in terms of how he actually operated.” If Goldberg didn’t really like the cover, shouldn’t he have acted differently?

I’m still chewing on Goldberg’s methodology. I’m a medieval historian with a Ph.D. and tenure; if he majored in history as an undergrad, he didn’t go on to get advanced degrees. This doesn’t mean I’m right and he’s wrong. It means that I spend my time thinking about how I engage in historical research. Texts are my bread and butter, since they’re my only link to the actions people took in the twelfth century. Again, Goldberg seems to cherrypick, or rather mix and match, chosen actions to the relevant quotes so that he can make his point. While I’m completely ignorant of twentieth-century historical interpretations, I can say that methodologically, Goldberg’s very sloppy definitions can’t stand up to this sort of treatment.

Finally, I want to take issue with his labels of fascism as “feminine” and “masculine.” First, these definitions strike me as overly essentialist. Second, how can he really claim a straight line between old- and new-style fascism if it’s undergone such a fundamental gender change? Finally, Goldberg may not realize it, but his terminology implies that he’s not comfortable with feminine power. If this was intentional, he’s just slapped every American feminist in the face. If it wasn’t, was it a Freudian slip?