Pat Dollard | Young Americans

This is something I think about often…how much the far left, the nazi fascists, and the islamofascists are alike. Jonah Goldberg (Editor at Large for National Review) has a book out titled “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning”, this from the Amazon.com description:

“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s Fascism.

Jeff Poor has an article in Business & Media Institute, some excerpts:

Liberalism and fascism aren’t polar opposites in the world according to National Review Editor at Large Jonah Goldberg. In fact, he says they’re the same – especially when it comes to pushing liberal causes such as global warming.

Goldberg outlined how the left has used fascist tactics on climate change by promoting the view that global warming skepticism should be immediately dismissed as nonsense. That’s a tactic used by global warming alarmist and former vice president Al Gore.

“The only people who say we need to get beyond ideology, get beyond labels, are the people who want you to shut up, you to stop disagreeing and agree with them,” Goldberg said.

According to Goldberg, the talking points Gore uses to promote the global warming issue as a “planetary emergency” go against the principles of democracy.

“That’s why Al Gore says things: ‘The time for argument is over, the time for discussion is over,’” Goldberg said. “Well, this is a democracy and democracy, the time for discussion is supposed to never be over. If you take out the idea, if you champion the idea that unity is good in of itself, that the collective is a good in of itself regardless of what it is doing, then you are buying into a fundamentally fascist political aesthetic.”

Goldberg made those remarks on January 15 at a Borders Bookstore in downtown Washington, D.C. to promote his new book, Liberal Fascism. He said using environmental concerns have been a part of the fascist playbook since the days of Nazi Germany.

“The Nazis as well exploited the environmental movement to a great deal,” Goldberg said. “It began with their ideology about a holistic totalitarian vision of the world in which everything worked in tandem. Everything worked in concert. One of the most fascist phrases you hear in modern contemporary life in America is this notion that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. That is a fascist sentiment.”

Goldberg was careful not to brand the American left-wing a modern-day Nazism. Goldberg, who is Jewish, said the Holocaust was the most horrific “evil” of the 20th century. He said the left, however, is a “softer fascism.”

“I think there is a softer sort of fascism, but I’ve never believed we’ve had anything like the angry nasty fascism in Italy and Germany because I think we’re a better people and our institutions and our culture would prohibit it.”