December 2007: What Arte Said

"Very interestingk...
But a Mein Kampf it wasn't."

The writers at Sadly, No have been slipped an advance copy of a book long anticipated. And long mocked: as if its insane theme weren't enough, its author has also missed his publication date by over two years, while using his blog to beg readers to do his research for him.

A few months ago, Jon Swift offered Jonah Goldberg a modest proposal for tackling his theme, "Liberal Fascism"—as explained by LOLcats.

Whenever a meme being pushed by the right reaches new heights of absurdity, someone on S, N will suggest that Peak Wingnut has been reached. Which is immediately countered by the other school of thought: that There Is No Such Thing As Peak Wingnut, which is an endlessly renewable resource.

S, N posts a series on the booklike object, inspiring weeks of mockery of a target that could not be more deserving.

Among the mockery (and LOLcats): here, here, here, and here.

"Revisionism" is such a mild term.

Among other S, N posts deconstructing the book's contents—Joseph McCarthy: Man of the Left.

Using the Hitler-moustached smiley face of the book's cover, Mister Leonard Pierce takes Goldberg's claims that Mussolini was a "socialist," and rates them on a scale of one to five ("an A-bomb of idiocy") Hitler-smileys.

In "The Dread Face Of Liberal Fascism" Brad writes—

Let’s recap what we know about liberal fascists:
• Much like the Nazis, their ranks are teeming with homosexuals.
• Much like the Nazis, they enjoy bossing people around.
• And worst of all, liberal fascists just love lecturing others on the value of (shudder) exercise and nutrition. Just like THE NAZIS DID.
So to find Liberal Fascism’s Grand Führer, we must find someone who’s gay*, bossy and fitness-obsessed. And then it hit me...

Funny stuff, but of course the real point of Goldberg's text is in this part of S, N's takedown—

Believe it or not, we're about to reach the part where he identifies Progressivism itself as fascist. As in, the end of child labor, the forty-hour work-week, the founding of America's national parks — in short, all that totalitarian goose-stepping stuff that interferes with the natural order of human society, i.e. feudalism under the ministry of robber barons.

Goldberg deserves to be made the laughingstock that he is here. But he will undeservedly have platforms in Serious Venues. Such as the LA Times—which dumps Robert Scheer and replaces him with Goldberg.

If there were any doubt about how low we've sunk—the media will push Goldberg's book as a serious work, when thirty years ago his notions would have been considered the fringiest of lunacy.

Though it's clear that the right has long tried to push this stuff. The Wiki entry on the New Deal and corporatism quotes Reagan telling Time in 1976: "Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say 'But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.'"

Thom Hartmann quotes a re-write of portions of Mein Kampf, as done by Ann Coulter [or fill in the name of any other right-wing pundit]. This version substituting "the Liberals" for "the Jews."

There are people with first-hand knowledge of the Nazis who are still around, horrified by the current parallels, and speaking out.

Historian Fritz Stern.

Former Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz continues to speak and write on the rule of law.

And there are still surviving generations with close links. Ray McGovern writes on December 27, 2007—

...Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel)... as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as "Geschichte eines Deutschen" (The Story of a German).

The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages—in English as "Defying Hitler."

I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that today is the 100th anniversary of Haffner's birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and e-mailed to ask me to "write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush's America. ... This is almost unbelievable."

Unlike Goldberg's doorstop, this is a succinct guide to how fascism really manifests itself. Which is looking all too familiar, with Britt's signs constantly being illustrated.

Just one recent example—revelations of the CIA's destruction of torture evidence, along with past and current obstruction of justice by US Attorneys, Mukasey, and the White House.

The fascist marriage of corporation and state is in plain sight, and in gruesome detail. Former KBR/Halliburton employee in Baghdad, Jamie Leigh Jones testifies before the House Judiciary Committee this month. Since July 2005 she's pursued justice, after her gang-rape by other contractors—immediately followed by the company's destroying evidence and imprisoning Jones in a shipping container.

Jones also testifies that eleven other women have contacted her with similar stories.

During the hearing, Congressman Robert Scott says that the Department of Justice "can enforce with respect to contractors who commit crimes abroad, but it chooses not to."

The DOJ fails to send a representative to the hearing.

The Washington Post publishes a particularly bizarre piece it presents as a human interest story: a Vietnamese immigrant who repays her gratitude to the US as "bomb lady" weapons designer. Among her quotes: "A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot? In Vietnam, our guys didn't have this tool."

Noticing the Post's lack of comment on its "shoot...on the spot" quote, Robert Parry decides to fill the story in a bit more, with, Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death. In which Parry also notes of the Post story—

Similarly, U.S. newspapers have consigned stories about U.S. troops engaging in extrajudicial killings of suspects mostly to pages deep inside the newspapers or have covered the news sympathetically. While some harsh criticism has fallen on trigger-happy Blackwater "security contractors," U.S. troops have been given largely a free pass.

And we have our political imprisonments.

There's a scene in "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," where Anton Walbrook's refugee character is questioned by English immigration officials. He describes life in Germany after WWI, until the Nazis came to power—

After the war years crime was increasing, and the honest citizens were having a hard job to put the gangsters in jail. Well, I needn't tell you, sir, that in Germany the gangsters finally succeeded in putting the honest citizens in jail.