Yes, they could, since fascism is anti-ideological (well, it'd be hard to be a communist fascist, since anti-communism and pro-business is one of its things), but it seems they are "fellow travelers".
You are aware that the conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg wrote an entire book on how liberal policies can become fascistic? I'm not sure why you think libertarianism is particularly more prone to fascism than other political ideologies.
While I don't deny liberalism can be fascist (and certainly didn't just now), I find Goldberg to be incoherent. cf this quote:
"Was Bill Clinton a fascist president? Well, he certainly believed in the primacy of emotion and the supremacy of his own intellect. … But I think if we are going to call him a fascist, it must be in the sense that he was a sponge for the ideas and emotions of liberalism. To say that he was a fascist is to credit him with more ideology and principle than justified. He was the sort of president liberal fascism could only produce during unexciting times."
Um, what?
Anyway, I can certainly produce more discursive thoughts in a longer post on why libertarianism is filled with "fellow travelers" of fascism - and by that I mean real fascism, not "such and such == FASCISM" type rhetoric. There are many different competing and contradictory definitions of fascism running around, including the Orwellian (Goldbergian) "anything I don't like", but by this I mean that supporting libertarianism generally means working alongside groups or giving power to groups that have a far-right nativist agenda that would give more power to corporatist interests and weaken democratic influence. Among other things.
4 comments:
All ideologies can become fascism.
Yes, they could, since fascism is anti-ideological (well, it'd be hard to be a communist fascist, since anti-communism and pro-business is one of its things), but it seems they are "fellow travelers".
You are aware that the conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg wrote an entire book on how liberal policies can become fascistic? I'm not sure why you think libertarianism is particularly more prone to fascism than other political ideologies.
While I don't deny liberalism can be fascist (and certainly didn't just now), I find Goldberg to be incoherent. cf this quote:
"Was Bill Clinton a fascist president? Well, he certainly believed in the primacy of emotion and the supremacy of his own intellect. … But I think if we are going to call him a fascist, it must be in the sense that he was a sponge for the ideas and emotions of liberalism. To say that he was a fascist is to credit him with more ideology and principle than justified. He was the sort of president liberal fascism could only produce during unexciting times."
Um, what?
Anyway, I can certainly produce more discursive thoughts in a longer post on why libertarianism is filled with "fellow travelers" of fascism - and by that I mean real fascism, not "such and such == FASCISM" type rhetoric. There are many different competing and contradictory definitions of fascism running around, including the Orwellian (Goldbergian) "anything I don't like", but by this I mean that supporting libertarianism generally means working alongside groups or giving power to groups that have a far-right nativist agenda that would give more power to corporatist interests and weaken democratic influence. Among other things.
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