Er?

I'm just going to pretend that there wasn't even a service interruption in my posting on this blog. It'll be a short one today, and we'll see if I have time in the future.

This was prompted mainly by confusion and outrage after reading one of Glenn Greenwald's own blog posts on the Salon.com. Greenwald is actually now the only political blogger who I read regularly, because he seems to have it together more than most.

Today his article is the second in a series about how the Anti-Defamation League and Simon Wiesenthal Center like to confront newsmakers for comparing current events and such to the Nazis, because that cheapens Nazism and the Holocaust. I think we can see this principle in effect today with respect to 9/11, because whereas I was very impressed by 9/11 the day it happened, lately I've just gotten tired of it. There was a 9/11 related episode of Law and Order (ripped from the headlines!) on rerun the other day, and all I could think about was the Giuliani campaign.

The problem that Greenwald has, is that the ADL doesn't do much denouncing of the neo-cons and Fox News people who throw "Nazi" around as a pejorative. He gives as his prime example a new book by Jonah Goldberg entitled Liberal Fascism, which features a smiley face with a Hitler mustache and apparently accuses all liberals of being Nazis.

From the blurb quoted by Greenwald:
'Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism. . . .

The modern heirs of this "friendly fascist" tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.'

Maybe it's the history student in me reacting with this confusion... but I confused as all hell by this book. I feel like I need to buy it, to understand what is going on in this blurb, or rather check it out from the library or steal it so that I can avoid giving any material support to this Goldberg person. The original Fascists were really on the left? Compared to who? My head is just swimming.