Jonah Goldberg is being disingenuous about Liberal Fascism:
I tried to explain, for those whose feelings were so hurt they didn’t even crack the spine, that the title “Liberal Fascism” comes from a speech delivered by H.G. Wells, one of the most important and influential progressive and socialist intellectuals of the 20th century. He wanted to re-brand liberalism as “liberal fascism” and even “enlightened Nazism.” He believed these terms best described his own political views — views that deeply informed American progressivism and New Deal liberalism.
I’m reading through his book right now, and I think a better title would have been Worship of the State or perhaps No God But Government. Yes, the title Liberal Fascism may have a serious intellectual pedigree from H.G. Wells (who, incidentally, was attacked as a heretic by no other than one of Goldberg’s heroes, G.K. Chesterton). But I can’t blame contemporary liberals for dismissing the book as an attack. Conservatives are rightly upset when accused of fascism, and liberals have a right to be upset, too. Why did he make it so easy for others to dismiss him as a hack when he’s anything but?
Goldberg attempts to explain the main reason for picking the inflammatory title:
As much as it may shock some, I’m not the first person to set the record straight. Maybe those authors didn’t penetrate the public debate because they tend to write books titled “Illiberal Policymaking and Culture Formation, the Anglo-American Experience, 1912-2007.” If I’d followed their example, no one would be buying my book, reading it or discussing it. And, you can be sure, I wouldn’t have been invited on to “The Daily Show” to get smacked around for 20 minutes.
So far, the book is filled with useful correctives to the standard left-wing version of history (I have a few other issues with it that I’ll try to expand on once I’m finished). I still don’t think that the choice of title was a wise idea. A book cannot change minds if they’re too offended by the title to take it seriously. As it is, I expect Mr. Goldberg to sell lots of books to like-minded conservatives, but to change the minds of very few modern liberals. (Then again, his epilogue “The Tempting of Conservatism” hints that his primary audience might not be modern liberals but modern conservatives. Again, I’ll know better once I’ve finished.)
It’s one thing for a hack like Ann Coulter to write shoddy polemics with inflammatory titles like Godless or Treason. It’s something more serious and frustrating when thoughtful conservatives like Jonah Goldberg or Ramesh “The Party of Death” Ponnuru do the same. I don’t know why they’re cutting themselves off at the knees like this, but they need to start being more constructive.
Posted by Hubbard in Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Possession by the Coultergeist, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet