Taking Seriousness Seriously
Apparently, posting something about Jonah Goldberg’s new book gets you even more comments than posting something about Ron Paul.
I therefore ask the following question:
If Jonah really believes his thesis – that World War I and the Progressive movement unleashed the Leviathan that is on a broad level to be identified with fascism and whose influence is pervasive in modern society – shouldn’t he, logically, be supporting Ron Paul for President?
Just trying to do my part to increase traffic here at TAS.
I haven’t read the book. Is it clear that Goldberg is anti-fascist?
— SomeCallMeTim · Jan 14, 05:00 PM · #
You want a serious answer, or a snarky answer?
Snarky answer: no.
Serious answer: I think what Jonah is trying to do is have it both ways. By narrowing the gap between fascism and other forms of statism, he intends both to make readers feel uncomfortable with statism generally and force them to re-think the idea that fascism is a word that just means, “evil,” as opposed to being a coherent political orientation. He has to have it both ways because he’s not a libertarian, in large part because he’s a law-and-order conservative, and he’s basically defined fascism as the opposite of libertarianism. (And, as I’ll go into below, while I don’t think his argument is very useful, defining fascism and libertarianism as opposites does indeed make sense to me.)
The phrase, “liberal fascism,” comes from H.G. Wells, and by it he meant something like “the moral equivalent of war.” That is to say: he was recognizing certain virtues in fascism (as James was in war) while also recognizing that the enterprise itself (fascism and war, respectively) was immoral; hence the yearning for something that would have the virtues while being moral. An “enlightened Nazism” (also a Wells phrase) would be some kind of political movement that mobilized society to improve the race and achieve harmony between the classes and between man and nature, while eschewing the Nazi exaltation of violence, its intolerance of dissent, its hatred of free inquiry, and its lust for conquest.
What Jonah does with this phrase is to say, in effect, see: big-deal left-of-center Progressive types in the Anglo-American world at the time thought the fascists had a lot of things right. And since contemporary Anglo-American lefties derive from the Progressives, they are closer to the fascists than they know. Moreover, inasmuch as Anglo-American righties derive from the 19th century liberals, they are closer to the sorts of folks the fascists considered their opposites than liberals want to admit.
But this is fundamentally not a sensible way to slice things, because the history of Anglo-American political thought is not a simple contest between small-state, live-and-let-live righties and state-maximizing, centralist and conformist lefties. Hamilton and Lincoln did not believe in a minimalist state, and neither did Churchill; John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis were not live-and-let-live types. For that matter, there was plenty of right-wing enthusiasm for fascism in America, from both the Northern and Southern branches of American conservatism. Were either the Agrarians or Henry Ford in any sense “left-wing”? If they were, then words have no meaning.
Analytically, though not historically, I still think the Pournelle Chart is a better way of typologizing this stuff than the standard model of a one-dimensional right-left dichotomy. According to that chart, Nazism and Communism, like Socialism and Fascism, share similar attitudes towards the state. But they are radically opposite in their understanding of human nature (which is where the “rationalism vs irrationalism” rubber meets the road).
What’s most interesting to me about the chart is that the lower-right and upper-left corners are both considered “right-wing” and the upper-right and lower-left corners to be “left-wing.” That would seem not to make sense, since the orthogonal corners disagree on everything. But it’s true to the way we think about right and left. That is to say: hippie anarchists really are both considered “left” even though they are pretty much the exact opposite of communists, while libertarians and fascists really are both considered “right” even they they are also pretty much opposites of each other. Apparently, on the right hyper-rationalism goes with opposition to the state, while those who exalt the state do so for ultimately non-rational reasons, while on the left the opposite is true – those who exalt the state do so for entirely rational reasons, while those who demonize the state are coming from a non- or anti-rationalist place.
— Noah Millman · Jan 14, 05:51 PM · #
My concern with what Ross, Goldberg and others is saying is this: precisely no one on the Internet actually holds themselves to the standards that he is suggesting they do. As a concept, do I support the idea that we should read Goldberg’s book before engaging it? Sure. But look, if you write a blog, or read them, or are engaged in this Internet discourse thing, you can’t help but comment on second hand accounts, summaries, and explanations. It’s inevitable. There is simply too much to read out there and no possible way to read it all. And everybody does it. I could with little effort, I’m sure, look through Ross’s archives and find something that he has written about without having read the primary source material. There’s nothing really wrong about that, really, depending on how the discussion takes place. I mean, look, Goldberg has written a lot about his book outside of the book. He’s given interviews. Aren’t I free to comment on those things? He’s engaging the discourse when he comments on and promotes the book. He can’t complain when the discourse engages back. And while the “don’t criticize something before you read it” charge is good for writing cutting posts, it’s an impossible standard to live up to. Ross himself has and will again violate it.
— Freddie · Jan 14, 06:03 PM · #
Freddie: I haven’t read the book. I’m not sure whether I will or won’t. I wouldn’t mind reading it, but I’ve got a very long list of books I didn’t read last year that I intended to, and the odds that LF winds up on that pile this year is pretty high.
So, since I’m talking about the book without having read it, I’m obviously not adhering to this lofty standard.
— Noah Millman · Jan 14, 06:17 PM · #
Freddie, I think you can take Ross at his word. He didn’t say don’t criticize the book without reading it, he said don’t claim to have written a “definitive rebuttal” (or whatever) without reading it.
The basic point — that responses to the book may be amusing or even insightful but will tend to be shallow unless the responder has read the book — is fair enough.
Based on a sample size of one — the NYT review — I will also note that reading the book may engender more respect for the analysis than just jumping to conclusions.
(What a lot of dashes for one post — I normally rely primarily on parentheses . . .)
— J Mann · Jan 14, 06:25 PM · #
The basic point — that responses to the book may be amusing or even insightful but will tend to be shallow unless the responder has read the book — is fair enough.
Hmmm, you may be right here.
— Freddie · Jan 14, 06:28 PM · #
You don’t have to read the book becasue the argument is clear: Modern american liberalsm (MAL) and fascism share intellectual roots and thus certain chracteristics. But who cares? Who cares if MAL and Fascism share intellectual roots and superficial characteristics (both like big states, citizens owe something to the state). What they don’t share is much more important: a cult of an authoritarian leader; intense patriotism and militarism; violent persecution of minorites; the abrogation of all civil rights; government control of all speech, militarization of the police; imperialism; genocide. If you are going to compare by characteristcs, then you have to look at all of them. His argument is faulty becasue, if he’s only saying that MAL and fascism share intellectual roots, who cares? And if he is saying that MAL and Fascism share characteristcs, again, who cares? The charateristics the share are meaningless compared to those they don’t share.
— cw · Jan 14, 07:46 PM · #
Thanks for drawing my attention to the Pournelle Chart. I wasn’t aware of it before.
I’ve also been pondering the inadequacy of the one dimensional left-right spectrum to describe today’s political landscape—and internet discussion of “Liberal Fascism” has made this inadequacy all the more apparent.
The two-dimensional Pournelle chart is an improvement, but still produces a distorted picture. For instance, Randian objectivists and Nazis are mapped here as polar opposites. In reality, the two systems are different in many ways, but have in common the ubermensh-worship that is a legacy of 19th century Romanticism. Certainly Objectivism shouldn’t be mapped twice as far away from Nazism as middle-of-the-road American Pragmatism.
I would submit a chart with three axes, the Hartzell chart:
1. Conservative–Progressive. The conservative desires to keep and pass along what he sees as valuable in his culture. The Progressive is more focused on what’s wrong with his culture and wants to move it toward an ideal vision. The content of this vision is irrelevant for this axis. the “Progressive” can be a techno-utopian or an Al Qaeda fundamentalist.
2. Left–Right. “Left” here indicates an emphasis on self-expression. The imperative to fully realize one’s vision of the Good is more important than defending that vision or asserting it against competing visions. “Right”, conversely, indicates a mindset more concerned with asserting and defending a vision of the Good than with bringing it to its highest stage of internal development.
3. Individualist vs. Communitarian. This axis is self-explanatory.
This chart, I think, gives us the truest picture of the actual political landscape. It solves problems that the other charts don’t solve.
For instance: take (a) your Hippie Anarchist growing psychadelic mushrooms out in the woods. Take (b) your survivalist hoarding his guns in the same woods. Conventional left-right mapping puts them at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Pournelle chart puts them on the same side of the chart, but at opposite corners.
But we know that there is crossover between these camps, that there are © libertarian-anarchists who love both drugs AND guns (Hunter S. Thompson, i.e.). Where to put him on the map? Do we strike a balance between right and left, and put him at (or at least closer to) the political center? Doesn’t this seem to imply that © is somehow more moderate than (a) or (b), when actually he is more radical?
The Hartzell chart solves this problem by putting all three characters the far end of the “individualism” axis, with Hippie leaning left and Survivalist leaning right, and Hunter S. Thompson right on the line between them.
Further, the Hartzell chart opens up the possibility of left-wing conservatism and right-wing progressivism. Once you start thinking in terms of these categories, they seem obvious. Howard Kunstler and the new urbanists, for instance, would map to conservative left-wing communitarian, because they are concerned with preserving traditional forms of architecture and community planning with an emphasis more on human development than assertion/defense against threats. The Neocon crew would map to progressive, right-wing, with some leaning more individualistic and some leaning more communitarian.
With this chart, the relationship between Fascism, Communism and American Liberalism would come into better focus. It would be clear that Fascism and Liberalism are both Progressive and Communitarian, but we could still view Fascism correctly as right-wing and Liberalism as left-wing.
What do you think?
— AndyHartzell · Jan 14, 08:34 PM · #
Very interesting! Too bad is so hard to make a three-dimensional chart.
— Freddie · Jan 14, 11:20 PM · #
Wow. Nice response to a question that was only half snark.
What’s most interesting to me about the chart is that the lower-right and upper-left corners are both considered “right-wing” and the upper-right and lower-left corners to be “left-wing.”
I think an explanation is that the left concerns itself with tyranny of the majority and the right doesn’t. On the axis, lower right: the state institutes the morality of the people. Upper left: the state doesn’t care one way or the other, and the majoritarian custom drives society. In the upper right, the state is deriving appropriate controls technically, and majoritarian politics need not come in. In the lower left—well, anarchy.
— SomeCallMeTim · Jan 15, 03:46 AM · #