Adolf Hitler, progressive ideologue

As did your humble correspondent, the Brew City Brawler also noticed that the proprietor of the blog Sadly, No! has received an advance copy of Jonah Goldberg's forthcoming book, Liberal Fascism. Goldberg, spawn of the odious Lucianne, scribbles for the National Review and his doughy visage occasionally graces pundit teevee when someone slightly less absurd is unavailable to producers.

Apparently Goldberg's project is to present Nazi policies and selected personal foibles of Adolf Hitler that can be rhetorically manhandled to coincide with Goldberg's own special caricatures of “liberalism” and “progressivism” and Hey, Presto!, liberals are just like Nazis.

If the following excerpt is representative of Goldberg's syllogistic finesse, then reading the entire book would be, as one of the hundreds of Sadly, No! commenters observes, “like getting punched in the butt until you die.”

Animal rights advocates correctly note that animal rights activism was a major concern in pre-Nazi Germany and that the animal rights movement shouldn't be associated with Nazism. But as with environmentalism, this is less of a defense than it sounds. It is fine to say that many of Nazism's concerns were held by people who were not Nazis. But the fact that these conventionally leftist views were held by Nazis suggests that Nazism isn't as alien to mainstream progressive thought as some would have us believe.

Well, if it's correct that the animal rights movement shouldn't be associated with Nazism, then why the association of the animal rights movement with Nazism? Because, that would be incorrect.

And, if it's incorrect to associate the animal rights movement with Nazism, then why needs there be a defense to this incorrect association at all, let alone one whose degree gets evaluated by Goldberg according to a measure of “more or less”? Things are not “more or less” incorrect. They either are, or they aren't, and Goldberg just got finished admitting this particular association is.

Goldberg then generously allows that some Nazi “concerns” were held by non-Nazis, and it's fine to say so. Thanks, Goldberg. For example, the classic stereotypical Nazi/Fascist “concern” that the trains run on time, which is, in turn, I think it's safe to say, also a classic progressive concern. Likewise eating, drinking, breathing, etc.

So because Nazis shared with progressives a concern that the trains run on time, this “suggests” that Nazism is connected to progressivism, despite what “some” will tell you. Mein Gott.

This is a game for buffoons, and can be played with any political ideology, and especially played with cherry picked components of any political ideology. Doubtless the Malkinbots will drink from it deeply.

Elsewhere Goldberg actually attempts to equate eating healthy with Fascism because Hitler favored a macrobiotic diet. There's a lot more of this nonsense at the link, some of it quite hilarious indeed.