Summary of Contents
In the book, Goldberg argues that fascist movements were and are left-wing. He claims that both modern liberalism and fascism descended from progressivism, and that prior to World War II, "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States".
Goldberg writes that there was more to fascism than bigotry and genocide, and argues that those characteristics were not so much a feature of Italian fascism, but rather of German Nazism, which was allegedly forced upon the Italian fascists "after the Nazis had invaded northern Italy and created a puppet government in Salò."
He argues that over time, the term fascism has lost its original meaning and has descended to the level of being "a modern word for 'heretic,' branding an individual worthy of excommunication from the body politic", noting that in 1946, the socialist and anti-fascist writer George Orwell described the word as no longer having any meaning except to signify "something not desirable".
Read more about this topic: Liberal Fascism
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