THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 9, January 10, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
FASCISM'S LEGACY: LIBERALISM
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
STATISM: THE COMMON & DISTINGUISHING FEATURE OF JACOBINISM, FASCISM, NAZISM, COMMUNISM,
SOCIALISM, & MODERN AMERICAN LIBERALISM -- THE CLOSE KINSHIP AMONG THE VARIOUS PHILOSOPHIES, IDEOLOGIES,
& GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEMS THAT EXALT THE STATE OVER THE INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN, ELITE OR BUREAUCRATIC RULE
OVER REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY, AUTHORITARIANISM OVER CONSTITUTIONALISM & THE RULE OF LAW, ENFORCED
CONSENSUS OR ORTHODOXY OVER FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION & DEBATE, & A CENTRALLY CONTROLLED & DIRECTED,
COMMAND ECONOMY OVER A FREE MARKET, CAPITALIST ECONOMY
FULL STORY:
Liberal Fascism sounds like an oxymoron – or a term for Conservatives to insult Liberals. Actually, it was coined by a
Socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential Leftwinger H.G. Wells, who, in 1931, called on fellow
Progressives to become "Liberal Fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really.
His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing Socialism with Fascism: Benito Mussolini was a leading Socialist
figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend
Fascism. Likewise, Adolf Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.
These facts jar because they contradict the political spectrum that has shaped our worldview since the late 1930s, the
political spectrum which places Communism at the far Left, followed by Socialism, Liberalism in the Center,
Conservatism, and then Fascism on the far Right. But this spectrum, Jonah Goldberg points out in his brilliant,
profound, and original new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the
Politics of Meaning (Doubleday), reflects Joseph Stalin's use of the word "Fascist" as an epithet to discredit
anyone he wished – Trotsky, Churchill, Russian peasants – and distorts reality. Already in 1946, George Orwell noted
that Fascism had degenerated to signify "something not desirable."
To understand Fascism in its full expression requires putting aside Stalin's misrepresentation of the term and also look
beyond the Holocaust, and, instead, return to the period Goldberg terms the "Fascist moment," roughly 1910-1935. A
Statist ideology, Fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole.
It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate,
and Socialism over Capitalism. It is totalitarian in Mussolini's original meaning of the term, of "Everything in the State,
nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Fascism's message boils down to "Enough talk, more action!" Its
lasting appeal is getting things done.
In contrast, Conservatism calls for limited government, individualism, democratic debate, and Capitalism. Its appeal is
liberty and leaving citizens alone.
Goldberg's triumph is to establish the kinship between Communism, Fascism, and Liberalism. All derive from the same
tradition that goes back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution. His revised political spectrum would focus on the role
of the state and go from Libertarianism to Conservatism to Fascism in its many guises – American, Italian, German,
Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and so on.
Mussolini and Hitler were both Socialists.
As this listing suggests, Fascism is flexible; different iterations differ in specifics, but they share "emotional or instinctual
impulses." Mussolini tweaked the Socialist agenda to emphasize the state; Lenin made workers the vanguard party; Hitler
added race. If the German version was militaristic, the American one (which Goldberg calls Liberal Fascism) is nearly
pacifist. Goldberg quotes historian Richard Pipes on this point: "Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of Socialism." He
proves this confluence in two ways.
First, he offers a "secret history of the American Left":
Woodrow Wilson's Progressivism featured a "militaristic, fanatically nationalist,
imperialist, racist" program, enabled by the exigencies of World War I.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Fascist New Deal" built on and extended Wilson's
government.
Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society established the modern welfare state, "the
ultimate fruition" (so far) of this Statist tradition.
The youthful New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s brought about "an
Americanized updating" of the European Old Right.
Hillary Clinton hopes "to insert the state deep into family life," an essential step
of the totalitarian project.
To sum up a near-century of history, if the American political system traditionally encouraged the pursuit of happiness,
"more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered."
Second, Goldberg dissects American Liberal programs – racial, economic, environmental, even the "cult of the organic" –
and shows their affinities to those of Mussolini and Hitler.
If this summary sounds mind-numbingly implausible, read Liberal Fascism in full for its colorful quotes and
convincing documentation. The author, hitherto known as a smart, sharp-elbowed polemicist, has proven himself a major
political thinker.
Beyond offering a radically different way to understand modern politics, in which Fascist is no more a slander than
Socialist, Goldberg's extraordinary book provides Conservatives with the tools to reply to their Liberal tormentors and
eventually go on the offensive. If Liberals can eternally raise the specter of Joseph McCarthy, Conservatives can counter
with that of Benito Mussolini.
© Daniel Pipes 2008
Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post, January 10, 2008
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, January 10, 2008
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5355
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The American Political & Cultural Left:
Liberals, Statists, Socialists, & Other Leftists
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Liberalism Versus Conservatism in American Politics
-------------------------
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY & POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES:
COMPETING SYSTEMS OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Conservatism
Traditional Conservatism: Questions & Answers
Conservatism: Attitudes, Types, & Present Status
Constitutional Conservatism: American & British
Liberalism
Classical Liberalism: Intellectual Foundations
Classical Liberalism: Conservative Liberalism
Manchester Liberalism & Social Darwinism
Modern Social "Liberalism": Statist "Liberalism"
Radical & Totalitarian Ideologies
Radicalism, Utopianism, & Totalitarianism
--------------------------
POLITICAL SYSTEMS -- SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT:
CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY & OTHER POLITICAL REGIMES
Modern Constitutional Democracy:
Fundamental Character & Essential Ingredients
Constitutionalism: The First Essential Ingredient
of Modern Constitutional Democracy
Dictatorship: The Opposite of Constitutionalism
Representative Democracy: The Second Essential Ingredient
of Modern Constitutional Democracy
Direct Democracy & Representative Democracy
Political Culture & Modern Constitutional Democracy
Modern Constitutional Democracy:
Summary & Conclusion
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity