Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Fascism Is Not Liberal

David Neiwert, award winning journalist, author and expert on the American far right, was kind enough to come up to Ferndale last night and give a talk to a gathering of interested citizens. He critiqued Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" and discussed our area's real experience with fascist and proto-fascist groups.

Mr. Neiwert's conclusion, Goldberg's book is nearly 500 page worth of school yard taunting in which Goldberg says to the people who have called him a fascist "I know you are, but what am I".

Goldberg claims to define fascism but instead describes much broader elements of totalitarianism and authoritarianism which only serves to muddy the waters. Goldberg picks what suits his purposes from the rhetoric of fascist movements and calls that evidence of a resemblance to liberalism. Of course Goldberg ignores the consistent patterns of fascist actions that are always right wing and virulently anti-liberal.

Mr. Neiwert was interviewed by local radio station KGMI. You can listen to the interview HERE (part 1) and HERE (part 2) .

David Neiwert blogs at Orcinus and Firedoglake.

1 comment:

Enzo said...

During his presentation, David Neiwert answered a question about the definition of authoritarianism, in part by referring to a work by Dr. Robert Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba. The Altemeyer work is posted here:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/