In this book he not only repudiates its identification with conservatism but, as his title indicates, enthusiastically turns the accusation back on those who make it. As long ago as 1946, George Orwell concluded that the epithet was an item of political juvenilia, with no substantive reference beyond “something not desirable.”īut to the columnist Jonah Goldberg, a contributing editor of National Review, the term deserves to be taken very seriously indeed. The insult is at once so over the top and yet so devoid of meaning that most of its targets tend to shrug it off as unworthy of notice. People on the Left who have not yet been rhetorically housebroken, or who have simply forgotten their manners, have a habit of referring to conservatives as fascists. The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
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