Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg, pondering what else to do with his career. (Well, other than bullshitting about military dogs.)

God, guns, and freedom U.S. Politics

Starting arguments over Thanksgiving dinner

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Persons of interest

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For the love of all you hold dear, do not confuse with Jeffrey Goldberg, who can be a bit pompous but is actually intelligent and thoughtful, if biased.

Jonah Goldberg (1968–), known to liberal bloggers as Doughy Pantload, is a pundit and editor at the National Review Online, the website for the well-known conservative magazine the National Review, and has done great work in helping destroying its brand (when it's not too busy destroying itself). His mother was "ratfucker" Lucianne Goldberg (1935–2022), who became famous by masquerading as a journalist to spy on the 1972 Democratic presidential campaign for Richard Nixon and later by helping to touch off the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Andrew Sullivan alleges that Goldberg received his position due to nepotism rather than to actual merit.

Goldberg wrote a book called Liberal Fascism in which he claims that Swarthmore-educated grade-school teachers are a greater risk than actual fascists. (This is despite the fact that he doesn't even know basic history about Benito Mussolini.)

The underlying premise is so poor that readers should be encouraged to pick it up in order to see what tripe the National Review actually publishes. For example, the book clearly states that Hitler's National Socialist party (National Socialist German Workers' Party) was Socialist because it included the term in its name, which of course is on par with saying that a pineapple is a type of apple. This is not so much discredited but dismissed as idiocy by sane people.

Most bloggers find him an arrogant bloviator. He does get points for his massive geek cred; otherwise, the depths of his inanity make him a worthless pundit. He has a logical fallacy, Jonanism, named after him.

He has been a notable critic of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.

Politics

Goldberg is a true Movement Conservative, meaning that his politics shift with the times. During the Bush years, he was a bedwetter in the chickenhawk mold. With the return of the Democrats to power, he shifted to a quasi-libertarian perspective. Not surprisingly, this coincided with the release of his book, which would have seemed a tad hypocritical if he were still begging the government to lock up the bad people with the funny names. Still, hints of authoritarianism still slip through the cracks. Even better is his stance on waterboarding. At one point, he admitted it was torture (under certain circumstances, and after suggesting it may have been worthwhile). He later walked it back, posting reader comments arguing that waterboarding isn't really torture if you do it by the book. Of course, it is possible that he was merely posting these e-mails to demonstrate the depravity of his readers.

In addition to torture, Goldberg appears to endorse the assassination of whistleblowers. In one blog post, he fantasized about Julian Assange being garroted. Wingnuts like him like to talk tough but usually want someone else to do the wet work.

As to be expected, Goldberg is also a global warming denier, though most of his arguments seem to involve rambling about "Climategate." He's also made some noise about non existent DDT bans, and seems to hit most of the anti-environmentalist talking points when talking about anything even remotely environmental.

At the Corner

Much of the mockery Goldberg receives comes from his posts at the Corner, the NRO group blog. Goldberg has a reputation for posting links to flash games and YouTube videos in lieu of actual commentary. When he does get around to writing about politics, he tends to do so via bare links or Instapundit-style grunts. This behavior, combined with his habit of avoiding discussions by claiming to be on deadline, has given him a reputation for laziness.

His most notable achievement at the Corner was coining the neologism "bleg" — a portmanteau of blog and beg — which he defined as "an appeal for thoughts or more to readers of one's blog." That alone should tell you everything you need to know about Goldberg's work ethic.

Is Goldberg a clueless asshole?

In a word: Duh?

Goldberg received widespread criticism for an unbelievably heartless post he left at the Corner on August 29, 2005, the day that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The post, in full:

I think it's time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you're working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he's not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It's never too soon to be prepared.

A week later, Goldberg wrote another post apologizing for his horrible statements. Well... to be perfectly accurate, he spent 100 words apologizing and 1000 words criticizing someone else for incorrect statements about Katrina. Still, the fact that he said anything about it at all meant that he learned something from his mistakes.

Unfortunately, between 2005 and 2010, he forgot that lesson. Responding to the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, he argued that the real problem in Haiti was its "poverty culture" and that we needed to show the country "tough love" to help the Haitians shake it off. Maybe if the US and Europe hadn't deliberately made things difficult for Haiti, it could shed some of that poverty, n'est-ce pas?

He has shown some bright side by being against Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.

Liberal Fascism, or Goldberg's Load

“”The use and abuse of Nazi analogies has been a major peeve of mine for quite some time. Here's how I put it in a column on this subject about a year and half ago: 'If someone isn't advocating the murder of millions of people in gas chambers and a global Reich for the White Man, you shouldn't assume he's a Nazi and you should know it's pretty damn evil to call him one.

—Jonah Goldberg, 2002

Goldberg is probably best known for his book-length brain fart, Liberal Fascism. Long story short, it is Goldberg's argument that nationalism-hating, Social Darwinism-hating American liberalism is derived entirely from Italian and German fascism, "a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care." That is, an argument that amounts to a Nazi analogy. This is however because the argument was previously nonexistent, and with the release of his book barely holds together as a conscious thought. Its inherent contradictions are too manifold for properly refuting and its premises deny falsifiability. Yet, this is more than nothing and the "detail and care" are arguably more than null. The truth however is a bit trickier.

History

Liberal Fascism almost didn't come out; it was delayed six times. Originally slated for a 2005 release, it didn't come out until December 2007.

Why the delays? There are any number of factors that can push back a release date. Even something as simple as a name change can cause a delay, and the name of the book changed at least three times. It is also possible that Goldberg is the laziest man on Earth and didn't even get around to writing it until 2007. The fact that he repeatedly used NRO to beg for assistance from his readers seems to support this.

In December 2007, a Daily Kos blogger organized a Google bomb directing searches for Liberal Fascism to a blog post in which Goldberg's arguments were depicted as a series of LOLcat images. Predictably, Goldberg was displeased. In January 2008, the link abruptly disappeared from search results, apparently a result of the fascist liberal Google manually editing the search results. Surprisingly, Goldberg seemed genuinely contrite over the whole affair.

Content

The easiest way to debunk the "argument" is to quote the man himself. The following quotes are all from Liberal Fascism:

• "In this sense, both the Wilson and the FDR administrations were descendants - albeit distant ones - of the first fascist movement: the French Revolution."
• "Nazi attitudes toward homosexuality are a source of confusion...Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams write in The Pink Swastika that 'the National Socialist revolution and the Nazi Party were animated and dominated by militaristic homosexuals, pederasts, pornographers, and sadomasochists.'"
• "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." (On animal rights being a fascist position!)
• "But it [liberalism] is definitely totalitarian - or 'holistic,' if you prefer - in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance..."
• "The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism."
• '“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”'
• "Liberal fascism differs from classical fascism in many ways. I don't deny this. Indeed, it is central to my point." (As a result, "central to my point" became a meme in the world of political blogs. Ex: "Jonah Goldberg is different from Charles Manson in many ways. Indeed, this is central to my point.")

Reception

It almost goes without saying that most experts on history or politics in general (and fascism in particular) have come out against Goldberg's book. Additionally, he was humiliated on many talk shows during the promotional phase. Jon Stewart did as good a job as anyone.

Despite the widespread derision, Dan Schneider, the executive director of the American Conservative Union (which runs the Conservative Political Action Conference), has taken up the cause against "liberal fascism" in 2017 by using the term in reference to the alt-right. (If the alt-right consists of liberal fascists, what must conservative fascists be like?)

In contrast to the American Conservative Union, Austin Bramwell writing in The American Conservative accused Goldberg's book of engaging in reductio ad Hitlerum:

“”That Nazism and contemporary liberalism both promote healthy living is as meaningless a finding as that bloody marys and martinis may both be made with gin. Repeatedly, Goldberg fails to recognize a reductio ad absurdum. He tells us that Himmler bemoaned the Christian persecution of witches, just like Wiccan feminists do today, that Hitler once described his doctrine as “reality-based,” just like today’s progressives describe theirs, and that Mussolini was quite smart “by the standards of liberal intellectuals today.” In no case does Goldberg uncover anything more ominous than a coincidence.

Other projects

Goldberg's latest project is Proud to Be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation, a compilation of stories to which Goldberg appended his name. Amusingly, the press for the book itself has been overshadowed by a bizarre incident on CSPAN2's BookTV in which contributor Todd Seavey launched into a tangent on his ex-girlfriend, another contributor who was also present.

See also

• PRATT