Poisoned Root

By Paul Johnson
National Review
Books Arts & Manners
February 11, 2008

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning,
by Jonah Goldberg
(Doubleday, 496 pp., $27.95)


No political term has been more overused and misused than “fascism.” Since the 1930s it has been a word of indiscriminate abuse by the Left for anyone a scintilla to the right of them. And from the 1970s onward many right-wing commentators have used the term “fascist Left” to denote authoritarian tendencies on the socialist, liberal, or Democratic side of the political equation. I have used it myself when in a bad temper. Jonah Goldberg has now produced a comprehensive book that summarizes all the ways in which the liberal Left, principally in America, can legitimately be accused of fascist policies and states of mind.

The book is meaty with little-known facts, audacious intuitions, and sophisticated persiflage. Republican activists, whether in the media or on the platform, will find it an indispensable handbook for rough-and-tumble debate. Here are some of Goldberg’s thrusts, for which he supplies energetic evidence. Woodrow Wilson was responsible for “the birth of liberal fascism.” FDR’s New Deal was essentially fascist. So was the street-and-campus agitation of the 1960s. JFK’s myth and LBJ’s dream were both hallmarked by the fascist “cult of the state.” The liberal stress on race politics reflected “the eugenic ghost in the fascist machine.” Liberal economic theory and practice have fascist characteristics. So has Hillary Clinton’s “New Village.”

Anyone today who uses the word “fascist,” except in its strict historical context, implicitly admits: “I intend to be combative rather than fair-minded.” Thus, to take Goldberg’s first example, while it’s true Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, and enforced them, one of his main reasons for opposing America’s entry into World War I was precisely that such legislation would inexorably follow, together with a vast and deplorable expansion of government power. As Randolph Bourne put it, “War is the health of the State”; war, or any situation of extreme peril for a society, whether military or economic, tends to produce ruthless and authoritarian behavior by government. The case that Wilson was a fascist could equally be made against Lincoln.

A more persuasive example, in my view, is the behavior of FDR. His persecution of Andrew Mellon for imaginary tax evasion was exactly the kind of abuse that regularly occurred in both Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany. The hounding of Mellon, an outstanding treasury secretary and the creator and embellisher of the National Gallery in Washington, was a legal and constitutional crime unique in American history, and reflected a personal decision of Roosevelt himself. It was possible only because of the atmosphere of fear and panic created by the Great Depression. A similar atmosphere might have been created by the Islamic-fundamentalist assault on the American population, and similarly exploited. Happily, George W. Bush has steered the country through the crisis, so far, without any resort to fascist-style methods.

But what exactly are such methods? Indeed, what precisely was Fascism? The party was founded by Mussolini, a former socialist singled out by Lenin for praise, on March 23, 1919, and Goldberg quotes its purpose in detail. It was essentially left-wing and democratic: universal suffrage (which meant giving the vote to women), the eight-hour day, a minimum wage, old-age pensions, measures against church wealth and the secular rich, workers’ councils, and some nationalization. Mussolini himself called Fascism “the refuge of all heretics, the church of all heresies.” His first three years in power, 1922–5, were comparatively liberal and marked by freedom of speech and of the press. Jews played a prominent part in setting up the regime. Previous governments since Italian unification had been inefficient and corrupt, and the world, including many intellectuals, gave Fascism in its first phase a favorable reception. Goldberg reminds us that an early version of the Cole Porter song read:

You’re the top! You’re the Great Houdini!
You’re the top! You are Mussolini.

The number of world-famous figures who paid tribute to what Mussolini was doing in the 1920s — combating malaria by draining the Pontine Marches; building roads, railways, and magnificent railway stations; suppressing the Mafia — included Lloyd George and Churchill. But, following the murder of Giacomo Matteotti in 1924, and its consequences, there was a radical move toward authoritarianism, announced in a speech by Mussolini on October 28, 1925. It is worth reading because it marked the real beginning of Fascism and the corporate state. Opposition newspapers were banned, and opposition leaders confined on a penal island. Opposition, said Mussolini, was unnecessary because it already existed sufficiently in himself and his powers of self-criticism. This was a beautiful piece of Leninism. Then came his famous formula: “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Thereafter Mussolini and his regime were doomed, because the Italian state lacked the administrative resources to run everything efficiently, and Mussolini himself was a classic case of a man easily corrupted by power, and indeed by others, such as Hitler.

Hitler’s Nazi party had virtually nothing in common with Fascism other than its generally left-wing viewpoint. Its 1920 platform, which Goldberg quotes, owed more to Leninism. Hitler’s chief aim was to abolish the Versailles settlement and introduce pan-German racism, which involved expelling the Jews. If war came, the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish Problem” would take place. The most characteristic expression of Nazi theory, once the regime was installed, was the Nuremberg Laws, which were racial. Hitler’s suppression of the trade unions, combined with his rearmament and road-construction programs, enabled him to end mass unemployment; Germany was the first, indeed the only, great power to do so. Hitler’s work was much admired and attempts to imitate him were made across Europe, from Ireland to Romania. Nazi-style parties were ubiquitous, and had a variety of names and doctrines.

The question of nomenclature was permanently confused by the skill of the Soviet Communists in propaganda, and its amplification by the intellectual Left everywhere. The Soviets were initially perplexed by the rise of Mussolini, and still more by Hitler. There was nothing in Marx, or even Lenin, to prepare them for the rise of populist parties of the Left that could beat the Communists in both the streets and the voting booth. Goldberg quotes the Communist ideologue Karl Radek explaining in 1923 that “Fascism is middle-class socialism and we cannot persuade the middle classes to abandon it until we can prove to them that it only makes their condition worse.” This went some way toward the truth; but an alternative explanation, by Leon Trotsky — that fascism was the last gasp of capitalism — was more popular among Marxists because it could be supported by Marxist texts.

Also, the word “fascism” could be generalized into a denunciation of anything the far Left hated. In 1928 the Third International, dominated by Stalin, produced the useful formula of “social fascism.” This could be applied not only to Nazism as well as the original Italian form, but also to all varieties of Western democratic socialism. They were all equally evil and to be resisted. Finally, in 1933, appeared an official Soviet definition, on Stalin’s orders: “Fascism is the unconcealed terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic, and imperialist elements of finance capital.” This jargon reflected the failure of supposedly “scientific” Marxism to predict the most striking political development of the inter-war years. It made no sense at all but was an invitation, quickly accepted, to the left-wing intelligentsia to describe as fascism anything they did not like. So the confusion has remained, and the habit of right-wingers to describe as fascist anything they do not like about the Left merely extends the confusion.

We can console ourselves by reflecting that no one has produced a satisfactory definition of “liberalism” either. Indeed it means profoundly different things depending on which side of the Atlantic you live. Nor have we got a universally approved definition of “conservatism,” and the advent of neoconservatism has merely compounded the ambiguities. There is something to be said for the English tradition of using potent but, strictly speaking, meaningless terms. Thus thoroughgoing British Conservatives call themselves “Tories” (a label originating in 17th-century Ireland) and know what it means to feel yourself Tory, even if they can’t define it. The name “Whig” also has still a real resonance — I sometimes think I may be a Whig myself.

Whether use or abuse of labels for abusive purposes on the hustings or TV serves any honorable purpose must be a matter of opinion. Goldberg quotes a TV exchange on ABC in 1968 in which Gore Vidal goaded William F. Buckley Jr. by calling him a “crypto-Nazi.” Buckley replied: “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddam face and you’ll stay plastered.” Buckley instantly regretted this rare departure from civility. But most people will think Vidal, a notably unscrupulous controversialist, had it coming to him, even if the threatened sock had been delivered. Labels like “Nazi” and “fascist,” even if qualified by the nervous use of “crypto” or “neo,” are what the Irish call “fighting words” — words that, if proved (in a 19th-century Irish court) to have been used, were generally judged by juries to justify a blow. To “fascist” and “Nazi” I would now add the abusive word “racist.” Of course such vituperation should not occur at all. But it will, we can be sure, and for those thus tempted, Goldberg has provided an informative catechism.

Mr. Johnson is an author and historian. His most recent book is Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle.