Mr. Goldberg uses many illogical arguments in his book to prove that National Socialism was a leftist movement which are contrary to the facts. WEB Dubois was never inspired by Hitler. After he visited Nazi Germany he wrote that he was disgusted by the discrimination against the Jews and the oppression toward women although he did make some bad predictions about the Nazis abandoning their racist in favor of an alliance with Japan which didn't turn out to be correct.

Saying that Fascism was a left wing socialist movement because Mussolini was once a left wing socialist is like saying that Neoconservatism is a form of Maoism since David Horowitz used to be a Maoist. By the time the Fascists came to power they had clearly identified themselves a right wing party. The name National Socialism was a misnomer and does not reflect Nazisms true ideological orientation. At the end of World War One right wing military groups called Freikorps helped to suppress uprisings by left wing socialists and Communists and many Freikorps members such as Reinhard Heydrich became staunch Nazis. Here is an article that helps to prove that Hitler was not a left winger. http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-hitler.htm

Also it is absurd to compare the Terri Schiavo case to Nazi Euthanasia. Terri Schiavo had lost most of her brain and was never going to recover. Pulling her plug was not the same as the murder of the disabled under Hitler. Their are many good books that show the differences between Fascism and Socialism such as Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti, Fascism and Social Revolution by British Communist R Dutt, and many of th writings of famed journalist George Seldes.

As soon as I read that Mussolini was a socialist, I knew I was in for a real treat. Jonah Goldberg is yet another ignoramus from the far-right whose calculated lies and revisionist distortions do not belong on the pages of a respected on-line publication like Salon.com. Please, no more of this ridiculous drivel. Your readers deserve better. I don't need to waste my precious time and and money reading the likes of Lucianne Goldberg's son. The apple has definitely not fallen far from the tree.

I agree with others who have commented on the non-biased methodology of the interview. Although the interviewer clearly didn’t agree with Goldberg’s argument, his criticisms/questions were certainly justifiable and relevant. Nicely done, Salon.

Having said that, since I tend to agree more often with Goldberg politically than with Salon (and most Salon readers), I was disappointed by Goldberg’s inability to make his case in the interview. Goldberg seemed to be hung up on labels, and his responses gave the impression that his entire argument is nothing more than a redefinition of who we consider fascist and socialist and what those terms mean. I wish he had been able to more clearly outline his argument because there’s certainly a case to be made that laws prohibiting smoking in one’s own home or required seatbelt usage are examples of nanny-state fascism.

What is it they used to say about James Joyce? “There’s no sense in trying to fight the English language because you can’t win”? I think the book would have sounded more appealing and his argument more convincing if Goldberg had concentrated on the meat of the argument and less on the technical term for what Mussolini considered himself in 1937.

Just my 2 cents. Interesting interview in any case.

Far right and far left are not the same thing.

Goldberg uses the deceptive tactic of merging fascism into the left to make the right look good. The "circular spectrum" uses the equally deceptive tactic of equating radicalism with totalitarianism to make reformism and the status quo look good.

Some people take these deceptions at face value. I am an anarchist, and have been accused of favoring totalitarianism because I am a socialist and of favoring feudalism because I am opposed to statism.

You know what? I'm not even going to bother to read this article.

Usually I will force myself to read an article even if I might not like what it will say, jsut in case it points out something I am wrong about or didn't know.

But liberals as fascists?

Give me a break!

Fascism is the melding of corporatoihs and the state. Liberals do not support large corporations. Conservative do.

'Nuff said.

Another article Salon put on just to rile us up.

Why do you print this garbage?

How come you have not done any reviews or interviews about this book:

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf

Link is:

http://www.amazon.com/End-America-Letter-Warning-Patriot/dp/1933392797

I agree completely that Goldberg is just redefining things as fascistic to make a point--and a facile point at that.

The Autobahn is fascistic because Fascists built it? Is the Volkswagen Beetle?

So does that make Dwight Eisenhower a fascist because he thought the interstate system was a great idea? Who knew?

I would have been interested in bringing up the Nazi's strident opposition to abortion. Goldberg made the "pro-life" point in the Terri Schiavo response but euthanasia is such a small portion of the overall pro-life canon, that the abortion issue would have been a good follow up query.

but I bet if Salon ran a column by this guy once a month, some praise would start dribbling in for his "fresh views" and "non-echo-chamber opinions", and pretty soon you'd have a small but loud minority writing letters saying "Yeah! Contrarianism! You tell em Jonah! Left is right! Hitler was a hippie! All those climate change scientists are wrong! Madonna is a real artist!"

And then guess who you'd have?

Then Salon would say well, SOME of our readers don't like him, but some do! because clearly they've never been very good at math.

And he'd be here for good.

Sound familiar?

one of the big differences between totallitarian governments, both communist and fascist, and liberal, democratic governemnts in all their flavors is that totalitarians are essentially idealists. They promise their constitutents a glorious new future that will be unlike anything that humanity's ever witnessed before. A thousand-year reich. A new socialist man. A humanity cleansed of "impure" Jewish blood. They're fired up by visions of a perfectable universe just as much as they are by nationalism or any of the thrown-together pseudo-intellecutal junk fascist philosophers left behind.

Liberalism, which vouchsafes the individual a large measure of financial and personal freedom, does not believe in a perfectable universe. It recognizes that humans are prone to making their own decisions, which are often unexplainable and turn out very badly. The creation of a "nanny state" that might cushion these effects of some of these decisions does not, by itself, constitute a fascist impulse and Mr. Goldberg should know it.

He should also know that while many liberals have campaigned for social and environmental policies they hope will make the world a better place, their optimism that we might "join together now" on this or that issue is not a wish that all humans might be made exactly alike or that all our problems might be conquered forever. The fuzzy feelings of optimism you often encounter in the leftist camp that seems to alarm the excitable Mr. Goldberg is nothing more than an expressed hope that their chosen cause (saving the whales, building low-cost housing, raising the minimum wage, whatever) will succeed. Nobody wants to back a loser, after all, and even sound political positions need slogans these days. People who spend time on political causes know that they're not always destined to succeed, and most people will probably remain indifferent to them. I'd be willing to bet that most self-described libeals who work for social justice know this. It takes takes a character of exceptional personal or intellectual limitations to misread "Work Now to End Hunger" as "This way to the gas, ladies and gentlemen." Mr. Goldberg seems to have managed it, though.