A lot of people tend to ask me to look over stuff relating to scientific research, but only my family (and more specifically the only two really conservative members of my family) have asked me to read books to “convert” me. Like virtually all popular science sources, these books by hardcore right-wingers have (IMO) consisted of little more than garbage. Worse still is being handed some book by Ann Coulter by someone who’s read Hayek, Popper, von Mises, Mill, Marx, Rousseau, Jefferson, Hobbes, Smith, and so on (back to Plato). Needless to say, then, I had nothing but terrible expectations when I was (forcibly) lent a book entitled Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. I was surprised.
Would I recommend the book? No. But for a piece of right-wing historicizing ideology by a journalist (not a historian), it was far more accurate and well-researched than expected. It was like a less accurate and more sensationalist version of the history of the modern left by the doctor of political science Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn: Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse. It was this book, along with von Mises’ Socialism (and the work by his student & mentor Hayek, e.g., the chapter in his The Road to Serfdom “The Socialist Roots of Nazism”) that opened my mind as a preteen/young teen years ago. Even my extremely conservative father had concentrated on “correcting” the political history I was being taught in school and emphasizing that leftwing ideology led to regimes like Stalin. He never (so far as I can recall) argued that Hitler’s party was leftwing or that fascism was leftist, nor corrected what I was taught in school: the Nazis were rightwing extremist in contrast to the extreme left represented by e.g., Stalin.
Years and years later, I would have to agree with a now fairly lengthy tradition of
1) Exposing the “creationist” myth that the two extremes were two sides of the same coin rather than strawmen created by a post-WII intellectual attempt to simultaneously reinvent their ideological origins and purge them of eugenics and connections to totalitarian regimes.
&
2) Demonstrating that neither the 20th totalitarian regimes nor the fascism of those of Hitler or Mussolini were rightwing at all.
I would also not say that fascism is a leftwing ideology. I would actually argue it is a largely meaningless term:
“At the end of the twentieth century fascism remains probably the vaguest of the major political terms. This may stem from the fact that the word itself contains no explicit political reference, however abstract, as do democracy, liberalism, socialism, and communism. To say that the Italian fascio (Latin fasces, French faisceau, Spanish haz) means “bundle” or “union” does not tell us much. Moreover, the term has probably been used more by its opponents than by its proponents, the former having been responsible for the generalization of the adjective on an international level, as early as 1923. Fascist has been one of the most frequently invoked political pejoratives, normally intended to connote “violent,” “brutal,” “repressive,” or “dictatorial.” Yet if fascism means no more than that, then Communist regimes, for example, would probably have to be categorized as among the most fascist” (italics in original; emphasis added)
Payne, S. G. (1995). A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Routledge.
Unlike Goldberg’s book, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s erudite and monumental historiography, while (IMO) still too biased to the right, traces the origins of 20th century fascism (i.e., regimes of those like Hitler) all the way back to Plato. Of course, tracing fascism and totalitarianism to Plato is hardly new (see esp. Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies). But few histories of fascism not only go so far back, but also cover in detail the evolution of leftwing ideologies from the French revolution to modern conservatives and liberals whilst covering little known but important developments that run the gamut from Protestantism and St. Thomas More to anticolonialism. Also, while Goldberg’s book is more comprehensive when it comes to the development of the use of the term fascist as well as modern political thought from the early 20th century onwards, there are much better, more accurate sources. It is not as if the connections between the “fascism” of Hitler and the real fascism of Mussolini were demonstrated to have more than just surface similarities to leftwing ideology:
"like later New Leftists, many French fascist intellectuals were ostensibly antibourgeois. Robert Brasillach once described the spirit of fascism as "anti-conformist first of all, anti-bourgeois...in which disrespect plays a part," the revolt of a joyous, unhypocritical, antimaterialist youth ("scornful of the think possessions of this world") against their stuffy, repressed, middle-class elders."
Soucy, R. (1974). French Fascist Intellectuals in the 1930s: An Old New Left? French Historical Studies 8(3): 445-458.
But this comparison is easily pushed to an inaccurate extreme (almost as bad as identifying the Nazi party as rightwing). It misses the important differences that exist even between the Nazi party and Mussolini’s Italy, as well as the common historical & ideological bases behind a much broader set regimes, parties, and movements:
"Italian Fascism was not Hitler’s National Socialism, and it was not Lenin’s Bolshevism—but all three shared some sort of affinity, however minimal. For the purpose of the present exposition, the relationship between Mussolini’s Fascism and Lenin’s Bolshevism is of central concern. It speaks to the ideological relationship shared by Italian Fascism and one or another variant of Marxism, and helps us understand why relevant similarities regularly resurface in any study dealing with modern revolutionary political systems. It is a story that covers almost half a century of European radical thought—and involves some of the major intellectuals of the first quarter of the twentieth century."
Gregor, J. A. (2009). Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism. Stanford University Press.
“In retrospect, out of the enormous body of reasoning devoted to Marxism as a revolutionary belief system, one can tease some of those elements with which we are today all-too-familiar. There is, in the texts left to us by Marx and Engels, an argument for the rejection of any “absolute” morality. Morality, we are told by the founders of classical Marxism, is that code of conduct that results in “the overthrow of the present, [and] represents the future.” Why overthrowing the present should recommend itself as moral is part of the story of the role played by normative reasoning in the twentieth century. Out of that reasoning, in large part, was to emerge the totalitarian rationale of Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, National Socialism, and Italian Fascism in all their variants.” (emphasis added)
Gregor, J. A. (2009). Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism. Stanford University Press.
I don’t need to trace the development of thought behind the 20th century regimes that resulted in mass slaughter here, as it is vast and includes everything from French revolutionary thought to Darwinism and political religions. After all, there is good reason for Mussolini’s radical socialism prior to Italy’s fascist transformation as there is Hitler’s deep-seated affinity with the Marxism his party (a “people’s” party that was explicitly socialist) fought with for the heart of the German people:
"The reality was that, underneath the ostensible philosophical incompatibilities between the two rival ideologies, Nazism contained a number of tactical affinities with the much- decried Marxism. Hitler himself admitted that he found inspiration in Marxist patterns of political struggle: 'I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit. I don’t mean their tiresome social doctrine or the materialist conception of history . . . and so on. But I have learned from their methods. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun. The whole National Socialism is based on it . . . National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with the democratic order.'”
Tismaneanu, V. (2012). The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century. University of California Press.
Would I recommend the book? No. But for a piece of right-wing historicizing ideology by a journalist (not a historian), it was far more accurate and well-researched than expected. It was like a less accurate and more sensationalist version of the history of the modern left by the doctor of political science Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn: Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse. It was this book, along with von Mises’ Socialism (and the work by his student & mentor Hayek, e.g., the chapter in his The Road to Serfdom “The Socialist Roots of Nazism”) that opened my mind as a preteen/young teen years ago. Even my extremely conservative father had concentrated on “correcting” the political history I was being taught in school and emphasizing that leftwing ideology led to regimes like Stalin. He never (so far as I can recall) argued that Hitler’s party was leftwing or that fascism was leftist, nor corrected what I was taught in school: the Nazis were rightwing extremist in contrast to the extreme left represented by e.g., Stalin.
Years and years later, I would have to agree with a now fairly lengthy tradition of
1) Exposing the “creationist” myth that the two extremes were two sides of the same coin rather than strawmen created by a post-WII intellectual attempt to simultaneously reinvent their ideological origins and purge them of eugenics and connections to totalitarian regimes.
&
2) Demonstrating that neither the 20th totalitarian regimes nor the fascism of those of Hitler or Mussolini were rightwing at all.
I would also not say that fascism is a leftwing ideology. I would actually argue it is a largely meaningless term:
“At the end of the twentieth century fascism remains probably the vaguest of the major political terms. This may stem from the fact that the word itself contains no explicit political reference, however abstract, as do democracy, liberalism, socialism, and communism. To say that the Italian fascio (Latin fasces, French faisceau, Spanish haz) means “bundle” or “union” does not tell us much. Moreover, the term has probably been used more by its opponents than by its proponents, the former having been responsible for the generalization of the adjective on an international level, as early as 1923. Fascist has been one of the most frequently invoked political pejoratives, normally intended to connote “violent,” “brutal,” “repressive,” or “dictatorial.” Yet if fascism means no more than that, then Communist regimes, for example, would probably have to be categorized as among the most fascist” (italics in original; emphasis added)
Payne, S. G. (1995). A History of Fascism, 1914-1945. Routledge.
Unlike Goldberg’s book, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s erudite and monumental historiography, while (IMO) still too biased to the right, traces the origins of 20th century fascism (i.e., regimes of those like Hitler) all the way back to Plato. Of course, tracing fascism and totalitarianism to Plato is hardly new (see esp. Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies). But few histories of fascism not only go so far back, but also cover in detail the evolution of leftwing ideologies from the French revolution to modern conservatives and liberals whilst covering little known but important developments that run the gamut from Protestantism and St. Thomas More to anticolonialism. Also, while Goldberg’s book is more comprehensive when it comes to the development of the use of the term fascist as well as modern political thought from the early 20th century onwards, there are much better, more accurate sources. It is not as if the connections between the “fascism” of Hitler and the real fascism of Mussolini were demonstrated to have more than just surface similarities to leftwing ideology:
"like later New Leftists, many French fascist intellectuals were ostensibly antibourgeois. Robert Brasillach once described the spirit of fascism as "anti-conformist first of all, anti-bourgeois...in which disrespect plays a part," the revolt of a joyous, unhypocritical, antimaterialist youth ("scornful of the think possessions of this world") against their stuffy, repressed, middle-class elders."
Soucy, R. (1974). French Fascist Intellectuals in the 1930s: An Old New Left? French Historical Studies 8(3): 445-458.
But this comparison is easily pushed to an inaccurate extreme (almost as bad as identifying the Nazi party as rightwing). It misses the important differences that exist even between the Nazi party and Mussolini’s Italy, as well as the common historical & ideological bases behind a much broader set regimes, parties, and movements:
"Italian Fascism was not Hitler’s National Socialism, and it was not Lenin’s Bolshevism—but all three shared some sort of affinity, however minimal. For the purpose of the present exposition, the relationship between Mussolini’s Fascism and Lenin’s Bolshevism is of central concern. It speaks to the ideological relationship shared by Italian Fascism and one or another variant of Marxism, and helps us understand why relevant similarities regularly resurface in any study dealing with modern revolutionary political systems. It is a story that covers almost half a century of European radical thought—and involves some of the major intellectuals of the first quarter of the twentieth century."
Gregor, J. A. (2009). Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism. Stanford University Press.
“In retrospect, out of the enormous body of reasoning devoted to Marxism as a revolutionary belief system, one can tease some of those elements with which we are today all-too-familiar. There is, in the texts left to us by Marx and Engels, an argument for the rejection of any “absolute” morality. Morality, we are told by the founders of classical Marxism, is that code of conduct that results in “the overthrow of the present, [and] represents the future.” Why overthrowing the present should recommend itself as moral is part of the story of the role played by normative reasoning in the twentieth century. Out of that reasoning, in large part, was to emerge the totalitarian rationale of Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, National Socialism, and Italian Fascism in all their variants.” (emphasis added)
Gregor, J. A. (2009). Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism. Stanford University Press.
I don’t need to trace the development of thought behind the 20th century regimes that resulted in mass slaughter here, as it is vast and includes everything from French revolutionary thought to Darwinism and political religions. After all, there is good reason for Mussolini’s radical socialism prior to Italy’s fascist transformation as there is Hitler’s deep-seated affinity with the Marxism his party (a “people’s” party that was explicitly socialist) fought with for the heart of the German people:
"The reality was that, underneath the ostensible philosophical incompatibilities between the two rival ideologies, Nazism contained a number of tactical affinities with the much- decried Marxism. Hitler himself admitted that he found inspiration in Marxist patterns of political struggle: 'I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit. I don’t mean their tiresome social doctrine or the materialist conception of history . . . and so on. But I have learned from their methods. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun. The whole National Socialism is based on it . . . National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with the democratic order.'”
Tismaneanu, V. (2012). The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century. University of California Press.
