I note from a mailnote from John that he’s managed to snarf an interview with Jonah on his book. [1]
A snip:
Before we really get started, give us the Jonah Goldberg definition of fascism.
A short definition would simply be — there’s a longer definition in the book — it’s one word we give for a totalitarian, religious impulse, where everything has to go together, where the state has to govern every aspect of society or at least direct every aspect of society towards some Utopian end. Something like that. It’s a hard thing to (define) which is why it’s important to define it better on paper, which I do in the book.
I think one of the things we get caught up with, when we talk about fascism, is that we think it is this incredibly unique thing and really, it’s just another name for a kind of socialism. Fascism is socialism, Mussolini was a socialist, the National Socialists — duh — were socialists.
Instead, what we’ve done is turn fascism into this shorthand for evil. Nazism was obviously evil and Italian fascism was really, really bad, but fascism meant something else as well.
…Take the word socialism. More people were rounded up, put in camps, and murdered in the name of socialism than were ever killed in the name of Nazism or fascism and that’s not even counting the National Socialists of Germany. Mao killed 65 million people in the name of socialism. Stalin killed, minimum, 20 million people in the name of socialism. But, if I call you a socialist, that’s like I’m saying you’re misguided, Utopian, idealistic, or goofy, but it doesn’t mean I am calling you a genocidal murderer. But, we do that with fascism, where we just say it’s sort of a codeword for evil. So, part of the book explains that fascism isn’t as exotic as you think it is, it’s really just a flowering of a different kind of socialism.
Quite correct. I’m going to have to see about getting a copy here.