Neiwert on Liberal Fascism

As I hoped, David Neiwert completely tears Jonah Goldberg a new one for the absurdity of Liberal Fascism. Neiwert nails the complete intellectual dishonesty of Goldberg and his like in their arguments that anything they don't like is fascism.

He writes:

Indeed, Goldberg even makes some use of Orwell, noting that the author of 1984 once dismissed the misuse of "fascism" as meaning "something not desirable." Of course, Orwell was railing against the loss of the word's meaning, while Goldberg, conversely, revels in it -- he refers to Orwell's critique as his "definition of fascism."

And then Goldberg proceeds to define everything that he himself considers undesirable as "fascist." This is just about everything even remotely and vaguely thought of as "liberal": vegetarianism, Social Security, multiculturalism, the "war on poverty," "the politics of meaning." The figures he labels as fascist range from Woodrow Wilson and FDR to LBJ and Hillary Clinton. Goldberg's primary achievement is to rob the word of all meaning -- Newspeak incarnate.

Indeed, Goldberg either does not understand Orwell or he willfully ignores his actual beliefs. Goldberg also deserves excoriation for rendering the word fascism meaningless. I have ranted numerous times on this phenomena, which plagues both the left and the right, but I don't think anyone has so brazenly redefined the word as Goldberg.