Conservatives are not Fascists

While Cousin Don does a pretty thorough job of dismantling John Ray for failing to address Lew Rockwell's essay in its entirety (and by extension me for failing to check Ray), I would like to challenge one of Rockwell's assertions: that fascism is a form of right-wing extremism. This fallacy is regularly trotted out to discredit those on the right, and it needs to be put in its place.

To be sure, fascist dictators like Hitler and Mussolini were fiercely nationalistic, but that doesn't make patriotic Americans fascists. Many on the left tend to equate (or even define) fascism as nothing more than an arrogant (and militaristic) love of country and hence associate it with any American who professes to love this country more than they. As for so-called "government intrusion," the left's faux-concern about spying librarians is laughable, concerning the type of power they cheerfully delegate to the Department of Social Services.

Nevermind also that most on the right advocate free-marker capitalism (or at least pay it lip service), which is the antithesis of fascism. While Rockwell appears to have joined in the misconception of fascism as a right-wing ideology, consider this from an essay by philosopher Edward Feser:

The tendency of Nation-magazine style Leftists reliably to lapse into the fascist/right-winger comparison is in part a holdover from this hoary Communist tactic, a nervous tic that an old fellow-traveler can find it hard to lose even fifteen years after the collapse of the Evil Empire. What the comparison conveniently forgets is the alliance that existed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union before Hitler decided to betray Stalin, the Leftist dictator whose example had taught him so much about concentration camps and secret police. It forgets too the actual history of the development of fascist and National Socialist ideology, which had everything to do with developments in the socialist tradition in political thought, and absolutely nothing to do with the intellectual currents that gave rise to contemporary conservatism. But then, from Lenin and Stalin onward, the Left has been very good at airbrushing over any evidence of its true history, intellectual and otherwise.

It is a scandal that one has constantly to remind people of a fact that should be common knowledge: that Mussolini was for years a prominent socialist intellectual and publicist, as much a man of the Left as Noam Chomsky. His conversion to fascism was not a renunciation of this legacy, but a modification of it: he came to see solidarity with one's Nation rather than with one's Class as the key to breaking the hold of "liberal capitalism" over the modern world.
[...]

Contemporary Anglo-American conservatism, by contrast, has roots in three intellectual sources that have no connection to socialism, and indeed have always been hostile to it: the traditionalist "Throne and Altar" continental European conservatism of thinkers like Joseph de Maistre; the British classical liberalism or libertarianism of John Locke and Adam Smith; and the moderate British conservatism of Edmund Burke which represents something of a middle ground between the first two trends of thought. Hitler, Mussolini, and other fascists and Nazis had nothing but contempt for these intellectual traditions; and the difference between the characteristic themes of contemporary conservatism -- the free market, limited government, traditional religious belief -- are so obviously and radically different from, and opposed to, the tenets of fascism and National Socialism that it is difficult to understand how any intellectually honest person could see any similarity whatsoever.

So, when I see Rockwell claiming to be rejecting "socialism of the left and the fascism of the right," it starts my blood boiling. He could probably argue effectively that many conservatives have abandoned the core traditions outlined above, but he instead takes the intellectual shortcut of simply calling them Nazis, thereby burdening them with all the weight history has attached to that word without ever attempting to demonstrate its appropriateness.

From the same essay comes this short biography:

He had been something of a bohemian in his youth, and always regarded young people and their idealism as the key to progress and the overcoming of outmoded prejudices. And he was widely admired by the young people of his country, many of whom belonged to organizations devoted to practicing and propagating his teachings. He had a lifelong passion for music, art, and architecture, and was even something of a painter. He rejected what he regarded as petty bourgeois moral hang-ups, and he and his girlfriend "lived together" for years. He counted a number of homosexuals as friends and collaborators, and took the view that a man's personal morals were none of his business; some scholars of his life believe that he himself may have been homosexual or bisexual. He was ahead of his time where a number of contemporary progressive causes are concerned: he disliked smoking, regarding it as a serious danger to public health, and took steps to combat it; he was a vegetarian and animal lover; he enacted tough gun control laws; and he advocated euthanasia for the incurably ill.
He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market.

One could easily attribute large portions of that profile of Adolph Hitler to a host of leftist politicians, but to few on the right. So when I hear a lefty accuse those on the right of being "fascists" or "Nazis," the first thing that occurs to me is "projection.".

Finally, as for Don's rhetorical tolerance of Margaret Cho, that one crosses the line. (and might I add that when I started this blog I never thought things would get this deep!)