Mussolini, you say?
Regretabably, Orcinus stole my thunder on much of what I was going to say about
.
Mussolini to Hillary Clinton, eh? I will say this: I’m glad he didn’t say Hitler. My real beef with people who make Hitler references to their political enemies is that Hitler is not the end all and be all of Historical dictators and Bad Guys.
But, in the end, I just have to come to the conclusion that… Mussolini is an entity of the right. I guess Jonah Goldberg used Mussolini because he was tired of hearing the quotation “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” (For an exploration of where, if anywhere, that Mussolini-ism came from, and more importantly what exactly Mussolini’s conception of Fascism was see here.)
Jonah Goldbergh’s argument placing Fascism on the back of the “Left” seems to proport that the “Right” is synonomous with limited government. Which, as we float through the Bush Administration, is to laugh.
Mussolini is a creature of the right. Like it. Live it. Learn it. Stalin is a figure of the Left, which is to say that at one point in history “left-wingers” were defending Stalin. The publication The Nation once published a piece by Emma Goldman which derided Stalin, where the publisher felt compelled to toss in his caveat at the beginning of the article that “You have to consider the circumstances of Dictator Franco’s Spain and put it all in context.” Which is reminiscent of how today (though not quite as much as you would during periods of the Cold War) you’ll occasionally get comments that “You know — Stalin killed more people than Hitler ever did.” (Which ends up as a strange back-handed exoneration of Hitler… as much as the case to start bombing the Soviet Union and American Liberals that it’s designed to be.)
Hitler is a bit stranger a case. Like it or not, it is “National” “Socialism, and he proudly called his regime “Socialism”, and in a number of twisted ways it was (probably moreso than the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was, for whatever that is worth… and here I’m just getting loopier and loopier). But, in the end, the “Right” was aligned with Hitler. He was a bulwark against those Commie Soviets, you see.
So, in conclusion: Jonah Goldberg is full of it. Maybe in the case of comparing our political enemies to Famous Dictators we oughta impose a two -century rule… which is to say… the Famous Dictator must come from at least two centuries ago.
(I would be remiss if I didn’t once again throw you to this odd bit of a alternative history)
[Additional Note: Because it oftentimes is the most important factor in a society, I have to explore how the dictators handled pop culture: Stalin preserved the Russian classics, Hitler and Mussolini allowed for the Apolitical Art/Entertainement (remember: Mussolini and “Bread and Circuses for the Masses”), Mao wanted to destroy it all. Now, what counts as “apolitical” is a question that needs to be parced out, which is to say you’re walking a fine line and will need to be summarily disappeared if you cross that line.]