Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

in favor of the doctrine of multiculturalism. The diversity argument — which, by the way, is only used to defend favored groups; Asians and Jews almost never count toward the goal of diversity — is an argument for the permanence of race and identity. In other words, if the left has its way, racial preferences will no longer have anything to do with redressing past wrongs (except when such preferences are under attack). Rather, the pursuit of diversity will become the permanent license for social-engineering bean counters to discriminate against whatever group they see fit in order to reach the desired 'balance.' For example, quotas unfairly kept Jews out of universities to help white Protestants. Now quotas unfairly keep Jews (and Asians) out of universities to help blacks and Hispanics. What's different is that now liberals are sure such policies are a sign of racial progress.

Diversity depends on, and therefore ratifies, racial essentialism. Not only do rich (and, increasingly, foreign- born) blacks count as much as poor ones, but the argument now is that mere exposure to blacks is uplifting in and of itself. The policy is condescending and counterproductive because it assumes that blacks come to school not as Tom Smith or Joe Jones but as interchangeable Black-Perspective Student. Professors turn to black students for 'the black point of view,' and students who don't present the party line are counted as inauthentic by condescending white liberals (that is, most faculty and administrators) or by race-gaming blacks. I've been to dozens of campuses, and everywhere the story is the same: blacks eat, party, and live with other blacks. This self-segregation increasingly manifests itself in campus politics. Blacks become a student body within a student body, a microcosm of the nation within a nation. Ironically, the best way for a white kid to benefit from exposure to a black kid, and vice versa, would be for there to be fewer black students or at least no black dorms. That way blacks would be forced to integrate with the majority culture. But of course, integration is now derided as a racist doctrine.

You might say it's outrageous to compare the current liberal program to help minorities with the poisonous ideology of fascism and Nazism. And I would agree if we were talking about things like the Holocaust or even Kristallnacht. But at the philosophical level, we are talking about categorical ways of thinking. To forgive something by saying 'it's a black thing' is philosophically no different from saying 'it's an Aryan thing.' The moral context matters a great deal. But the excuse is identical. Similarly, rejecting the Enlightenment for 'good' reasons is still a rejection of the Enlightenment. And any instrumental or pragmatic gains you get from rejecting the Enlightenment still amount to taking a sledgehammer to the soapbox you're standing on. Without the standards of the Enlightenment, we are in a Nietzschean world where power decides important questions rather than reason. This is exactly how the left appears to want it.

One last point about diversity. Because liberals have what Thomas Sowell calls an 'unconstrained vision,' they assume everyone sees things through the same categorical prism. So once again, as with the left's invention of social Darwinism, liberals assume their ideological opposites take the 'bad' view to their good. If liberals assume blacks — or women, or gays — are inherently good, conservatives must think these same groups are inherently bad.

This is not to say that there are no racist conservatives. But at the philosophical level, liberalism is battling a straw man. This is why liberals must constantly assert that conservatives use code words — because there's nothing obviously racist about conservatism per se. Indeed, the constant manipulation of the language to keep conservatives — and other non-liberals — on the defensive is a necessary tactic for liberal politics. The Washington, D.C., bureaucrat who was fired for using the word 'niggardly' correctly in a sentence is a case in point.⁶⁴ The ground must be constantly shifted to maintain a climate of grievance. Fascists famously ruled by terror. Political correctness isn't literally terroristic, but it does govern through fear. No serious person can deny that the grievance politics of the American left keeps decent people in a constant state of fright — they are afraid to say the wrong word, utter the wrong thought, offend the wrong constituency.

If we maintain our understanding of political conservatism as the heir of classical liberal individualism, it is almost impossible for a fair-minded person to call it racist. And yet, according to liberals, race neutrality is itself racist. It harkens back to the 'social Darwinism' of the past, we are told, because it relegates minorities to a savage struggle for the survival of the fittest.

There are only three basic positions. There is the racism of the left, which seeks to use the state to help favored minorities that it regards as morally superior. There is racial neutrality, which is, or has become, the conservative position. And then there is some form of 'classical racism' — that is, seeing blacks as inferior in some way. According to the left, only one of these positions isn't racist. Race neutrality is racist. Racism is racist. So what's left? Nothing except liberalism. In other words, agree with liberals and you're not racist. Of course, if you adopt color blindness as a policy, many fair-minded liberals will tell you that while you're not personally racist, your views 'perpetuate' racism. And some liberals will stand by the fascist motto: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Either way, there are no safe harbors from liberal ideology. Hence, when it comes to race, liberalism has become a kind of soft totalitarianism and multiculturalism the mechanism for a liberal Gleichschaltung. If you fall outside the liberal consensus, you are either evil or an abettor of evil. This is the logic of the Volksgemeinschaft in politically correct jargon.

Now, of course you're not going to get a visit from the Gestapo if you see the world differently; if you don't think the good kind of diversity is skin deep or that the only legitimate community is the one where 'we're all in it together,' you won't be dragged off to reeducation camp. But you very well may be sent off to counseling or sensitivity training.

8

Liberal Fascist Economics

IN RECENT YEARS liberals have largely succeeded in defining the conventional wisdom when it comes to economics. 'Corporations are too powerful.' They have a 'stranglehold' on 'the system,' the entirety of which is now corrupted by the soiled touch of commerce. Every liberal publication in America subscribes to this perspective to some extent, from the Nation to the New Republic to the New York Times. The further you move to the left, the more this conviction becomes a caricature. Thus Bill Maher showed up at the Republican National Convention in 2000 dressed in a NASCAR-style tracksuit festooned with corporate logos to mock how the Republicans were stooges of Wall Street. Arianna Huffington supposedly switched from right to left due to her disgust with corporate 'pigs at the trough.' William Greider, Kevin Phillips, Robert Reich, Jonathan Chait, and every other would-be Charles Beard on the American left hold similar views. Corporations are inherently right-wing, we are assured, and if left unchecked, these malign and irresponsible entities will bring us perilously close to fascism. The noble fight against these sinister 'corporate paymasters' is part of the eternal struggle to keep fascism — however ill defined — at bay.

Ever since the 1930s, there has been a tendency to see big business — 'industrialists,' 'economic royalists,' or 'financial ruling classes' — as the real wizards behind the fascist Oz. Today's liberals are just the latest inheritors of this tradition. On the conspiratorial left, for example, it is de rigueur to call George W. Bush and Republicans in general Nazis. The case is supposedly bolstered by the widely peddled smear that Bush's grandfather was one of the industrialists who 'funded' Hitler.¹ But even outside the fever swamps, the notion that liberals must keep a weather eye on big business for signs of creeping fascism is an article of faith. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recycles this theme when he writes, 'The rise of fascism across Europe in the 1930s offers many lessons on how corporate power can undermine a democracy. Mussolini complained that 'fascism should really be called corporatism.' Today, George Bush and his court are treating our country as a grab bag for the robber barons.' Countless others have echoed these sentiments, arguing, in the words of Norman Mailer, that America is already a 'pre-fascist' society run by corporations and their lickspittles in the Republican Party. The political scientist Theodore Lowi has said that the Republicans are 'friendly fascists, a dominant effort to combine government and corporations.' The Canadian novelist John Ralston Saul argues in his book The Unconscious Civilization that we live in a corporatist-fascist society but we are unwilling to see it. Corporate CEOs, Saul laments, are 'the true descendants of Benito Mussolini.'²

There is much unintentional truth to this collective diagnosis, but these would-be physicians have misread both the symptoms and the disease. In the left's eternal vigilance to fend off fascism, they have in fact created it, albeit with a friendly face. Like a medieval doctor who believes that mercury will cure madness, they foster precisely