Heinrich Himmler was a certified animal rights activist and an aggressive promoter of “natural healing.” Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, championed homeopathy and herbal remedies. They were the authors of Prohibition, the Palmer Raids, eugenics, loyalty oaths, and, in its modern incarnation, what many call “state capitalism.” - P.15 But liberals often forget that the progressives were imperialists, at home and abroad. This is a difficult concept for modern liberals to grasp because they are used to thinking of the progressives as the people who cleaned up the food supply, pushed through the eight hour workday, and ended child labor. How else would you describe a country where the world’s first modern propaganda ministry was established political prisoners by the thousands were harassed, beaten, spied upon, and thrown in jail simply for expressing private opinions the national leader accused foreigners or immigrants of injecting treasonous “poison into the American bloodstream ” newspapers and magazines were shut down for criticizing the government nearly a hundred thousand government propaganda agents were sent out among the people to whip up support for the regime and its war college professors imposed loyalty oaths on their colleagues nearly a quarter-million goons were given legal authority to intimidate and beat “slackers” and dissenters and leading artists and writers dedicated their crafts to proselytizing for the government? - P.11-12Īmerican progressivism, from which today’s liberalism descended, was a kind of Christian fascism (many called it “Christian socialism”). The first appearance of modern totalitarianism in the Western world wasn’t in Italy or Germany but in the United States of America. Indeed, it is my argument that during World War I, America became a fascist country, albeit temporarily. P.7īefore the war, fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States… - P.9 In reality, they are closely related, historical competitors for the same constituents. This fact - an inconvenient truth if there ever was one - is obscured in our time by the equally mistaken belief that fascism and communism are opposites. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left. The major flaw in all of this is that fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. (Liberal) logic seems to be that multiculturalism, the Peace Corps, and such are good things - things that liberals approve of - and good things can’t be fascist by simple virtue of the fact that liberals approve of them.

You’ll get a sense of that as you read these quotes… Although it’s not as witty as Goldberg’s columns, it’s a well researched, incredibly important book that will change the way you view fascism, Nazism, and liberalism.

Liberal fascism by jonah goldberg