Book Review: Liberal Fascism

I have written on here a number of times about the Red State Book Notes project. This project was created to discuss conservative idea’s and theories. The first book of the project was “A Message to Garcia”. The second book was Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

Mr. Goldberg traces the history of fascism from Mussolini and Hitler to the modern progressive movement. Before my more liberal readers get up in arms, Mr. Goldberg points out that just because today’s liberal movement share’s a history with Hitler and others doesn’t mean all liberals today would condone that action. However, many of the theories that today’s progressive’s support have been pursued before with deadly consequences.

As part of the Red State project, I wrote diary entries after almost every chapter. You can view those below this paragraph. Each of these posts discusses important ideas within each of those chapters. They are not intended to be recaps of the chapter, but only discuss an important point. I wanted to post these links to provide more information on the book, and to give you a flavor of the book.

One of the most interesting things I discovered while reading this book is just how little I knew about the Woodrow Wilson presidency or JFK. For example, the first two chapters of the book go into detail about Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. After discussing why people view those governments as fascist, Mr. Goldberg then applies those same rules to President Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Goldberg argues that Wilson was actually the first fascist government in the world.

In the final chapter, Mr. Goldberg points out that liberals aren’t the only people with fascist tendencies. He argues that some “compassionate conservatives” have shown fascist tendencies when they try to regulate behavior. However, this section is relatively small. Mr. Goldberg’s book focuses in on the examples provided by liberals. He says, “In this book I have argued that modern liberalism is the off-spring of twentieth-century progressivism, which in turn shares intellectual roots with European fascism. ” This sentence is a great summary of the book.