[MD] Babylonian intellectuals

Mon Jul 19 13:35:17 PDT 2010

Goldberg is a hack that nobody takes seriously, except other hacks. There is no shortage of negative reviews...

Austin W. Bramwell wrote in The American Conservative:Repeatedly, Goldberg fails to recognize a reductio ad absurdum. ... In no case does Goldberg uncover anything more ominous than a coincidence. ... In elaborating liberalism’s similarities to fascism, Goldberg shows a near superstitious belief in the power of taxonomy. ... Goldberg falsely saddles liberalism not just with relativism but with all manner of alleged errors having nothing to do with liberalism. ... Not only does Goldberg misunderstand liberalism, but he refuses to see it simply as liberalism... Liberal Fascism reads less like an extended argument than as a catalogue of conservative intellectual clichés, often irrelevant to the supposed point of the book. ... Liberal Fascism completes Goldberg’s transformation from chipper humorist into humorless ideologue.

In The Nation, Eric Alterman wrote:The book reads like a Google search gone gaga. Some Fascists were vegetarians; some liberals are vegetarians; ergo... Some Fascists were gay; some liberals are gay... Fascists cared about educating children; Hillary Clinton cares about educating children. Aha! ... Like Coulter, he's got a bunch of footnotes. And for all I know, they check out. But they are put in the service of an argument that no one with any knowledge of the topic would take seriously.

Journalist David Neiwert, wrote in The American Prospect that Goldberghas drawn a kind of history in absurdly broad and comically wrongheaded strokes. It is not just history done badly, or mere revisionism. It’s a caricature of reality, like something from a comic-book alternative universe: Bizarro history. ... Goldberg isn't content to simply create an oxymoron; this entire enterprise, in fact, is classic Newspeak. ... Along the way, he grotesquely misrepresents the state of academia regarding the study of fascism...

David Oshinsky of The New York Times wrote: "Liberal Fascism is less an exposé of left-wing hypocrisy than a chance to exact political revenge. Yet the title of his book aside, what distinguishes Goldberg from the Sean Hannitys and Michael Savages is a witty intelligence that deals in ideas as well as insults — no mean feat in the nasty world of the culture wars."

Michael Tomasky wrote in The New Republic: "...I can report with a clear conscience that Liberal Fascism is one of the most tedious and inane—and ultimately self-negating—books that I have ever read. ... Liberal Fascism is a document of a deeply frivolous culture, or sub-culture. ... However much or little Goldberg knows about fascism, he knows next to nothing about liberalism.

In his book Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, Charles P. Pierce describes Goldberg's book as "Apparently written with a paint roller" and "a richly footnoted loogie hawked by Goldberg at every liberal who ever loosely called him a fascist." Pierce also claims that Goldberg ignored historical facts relating to his accusations against Woodrow Wilson: It seems that Wilson was a Progressive, and Goldberg sees in the Progressive movement the seedbed of American fascism which, he argues, differs from European fascism, especially on those occasions when he needs it to differ because he has backed up the argument over his own feet. Anyway, Wilson brought the country into World War I. Therefore, Progressives love war.

David Gordon, a libertarian scholar with the Mises Institute, wrote in his review "Fascism, Left and Right" that "Jonah Goldberg has ruined what could have been a valuable book." While offering agreement with some of Goldberg's underlying thesis concerning the progressive nature of fascism, Gordon nonetheless finds insurmountable flaws to the book. Gordon states that "[Goldberg] seems to me too ready to call any resort to "identity politics" fascist; and while he criticizes the 'compassionate conservatism' of George Bush, he turns a blind eye to the effects of Bush's bellicose foreign policy on the domestic scene. Goldberg himself supports the Iraq war; when one is faced with a "good" war, apparently, the link between war and fascism no longer need be of concern"  Gordon's review discovered numerous historical errors that other negative reviews failed to mention. He faults Goldberg's claim that Rousseau is a precursor to fascism and his interpretation of various philosopher's statements.

In January 2010, History News Network published essays by David Neiwert, Robert Paxton, Roger Griffin, Matthew Feldman, Chip Berlet, and Michael Ledeen criticizing Liberal Fascism. They also published Goldberg's response which several authors responded to.[27]

Also, James did not "admire" Mussolini and the latter's claim to pragmatism has been refuted by James scholars since 1926. When James died in 1910, Benito was still an elementary school teacher in his twenties and fascism hadn't even been invented yet. 

Since you are recommending this book while reading it for the second time, you might be tempted to keep defending it. Believe me, you don't want to do that. Jonah Goldberg doesn't know what he's talking about. Intellectually speaking, he's not much more respectable than Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. 

> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:38:55 -0500
> From: combinedefforts at earthlink.net
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Babylonian intellectuals
> 
> On 7/19/10 12:25 PM, "John Carl" <ridgecoyote at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'd considered this before, reading an answer of Royce to James' critics,
> > but that Goldberg book sounds fascinatingly like a confirmation of this
> > idea.
> 
> [Dave]
> Not being familiar with Royce I can't say.
> 
> Goldberg basically traces the socialist/fascist impulse back to the French
> Revolution and follows its twists and turns up to the present (2007 when it
> was published)"it takes a village" form.  He claims that James and Mussolini
> early on were mutual admirers and that Hitler had positive things to say
> about both James and Dewey's work. In the period after WWI all the future
> "bad boys" were to one degree or another participants in the development and
> spread of international socialism. H & M in their rise to power, partly
> because of their fear of Russia, and partly for pragmatic reasons split off
> of the "international" strain developing a modified nationalistic socialism
> that later became labeled fascism. He claims all of them used James "Will to
> Believe" and "Moral Equivalent of War" married with Nietze's "Will to Power"
> concepts to some degree or another as philosophic underpinning for their
> actions.
> 
> So the real danger is not "cafeteria Christians" but "cafeteria
> Philosophers." But it seems to one degree or another we all are.
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> 
> 
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