Poisoned root.('Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning')(Book review)

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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 leftwing 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: