Notes from Evil Bender

Jonah Goldberg’s latest book, Liberal Fascism: How eating vegtables is turning kids into Little Hitlers, has provided no end of laughs, from his claim that somehow McCarthy was sorta liberal to the idea that “the white male is the Jew of liberal fascism.” I must admit I’ve laughed as hard as the rest of the blogosphere at his inane arguments (my favorite is that he claims that fascism is about making everything political, and then moves on to claim that fascists have in common the desire to “‘get beyond’ politics”*), but the time for laughter is passed. Not content with implying women and vegetarians are the real source of fascism, Goldberg has now crossed over into full-on holocaust denial. You see, he’s so damn eager to claim that ideas like equality and sustainability are somehow fascist, that now he has to revise history and gloss over the deaths of who knows how many, and the arrest of 100,000 for homosexual activity.

I guess Goldberg just doesn’t get it: the fascist agenda doesn’t allow for difference. Women, as in the “female teachers” Goldberg claims are the face of liberal fascism; people of color; LGBT people; ethnic minorities; the poor; and the politically weak: all these are almost inevitably the result of a far-right philosophy that tries to give the powerful more power. You see, the only way that such authoritarian power can be sustained is by making sure that there is always a Them, a people–or really, many people–at whom public rage can be directed, else that rage turn on those in power.

Goldberg can dissemble all he wants, can redefine terms, fail to cite source, site obviously unreliable sources when he does so, and generally try to pin every sin of the far-right on the left. That won’t change the facts.

Nor will it change this key point: in his rush to attack liberals, Goldberg has become a holocaust apologist, glossing over the unpleasant reality of arrest, humiliation, concentration camps and death in order to make believe that homosexuals were somehow the problem in the holocaust, instead of one of many victimized groups. Goldberg is bigoted and hateful, and will obviously make up anything to cover for his deeply flawed and foolish thesis. Holocaust denialism: should we be surprised that the far right will stoop even to that disgust to attempt to rewrite history?

I will say this for Goldberg, though: he’s the one person I can think of who might actually learn something from anti-gay bigot “researcher” Paul Cameron: even a liar and homophobe like Cameron knows the Nazis weren’t exactly pro-gay.

*It’s no mistake that he makes these conflicting claims, though: how else could he possibly claim that the distinctly non-fascist idea that the personal is political could somehow be fascist? But if he admits the left is right about how the personal is intertwined in the political, then he’d have to start thinking about how his favored policies actually affect people, and he couldn’t have that.

I also can’t help but notice that he’s making this argument on the same time the right is still apoplectic about the Lawrence decision, and Ann Coulter is blathering about how it’s unconstitutional to remember that consenting adults’ sex lives aren’t the business of the government. That doesn’t fit with Goldberg’s thesis, though.