Was Burke A Fascist?

"Reality-based community".

That was an outrageous howler the very first time I ever laid eyes on it.

Was Burke A Fascist?

This is a good question, but the quoted text doesn't answer it. There have been metaphorical uses of the word "fascism". Certainly in Jonah Goldberg's silly book, fascism is whatever the hell he wants it to be. So let's get back to basics: Racism is racism and fascism is fascism. If you admire a fascist dictator, that's fascist. Again, when I say "fascist dictator", I do not mean "fascist" or "dictator" to be any sort of semblance or slippery slope. Rather, I mean a bundle-of-rods autocrat such as Hitler or Mussolini; if not one of those two specifically, then another bundle-of-rods autocrat that they backed. Someone like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain.

Indeed, according to Buckley, Franco was an authentic national hero. His towering heroic achievement was to overthrow the freely elected Spanish government, because it was veering to Communism. It's a good thing that Hitler armed Franco, or he might not have pulled it off. Buckley did concede that Franco's legitimacy was wearing thin 20 years later, in 1957. It didn't look quite right that no branch of the Spanish government had any independent authority. On the bright side, Buckley explained, Franco wasn't all that oppressive, because for the most part, his subjects were content.

So yes, Buckley was a fascist, at least in what he thought was good for Spain. After another 18 years, Buckley still resented criticism of Franco. At that time, in 1975, Franco
had just executed five Basque separatists. What was all the fuss, Buckley wondered, since they were after all convicted of murder. The thesis that a criminal tribunal organized by a fascist dictator doesn't look too legitimate --- whether or not the defendants are guilty --- was not addressed.

Goldberg claims that Buckley recanted his support of racial segregation in the American South. Just like people posting here, he doesn't explain the what or the when of this alleged recantation. But let's suppose that Buckley had issued a direct and unqualified public apology to Martin Luther King and all black Americans. He certainly didn't, but let's say that he did. It would still not have negated his admiration for Franco.

You can read the full text of these essays on fascist Spain here and here.

As with Malcolm X - the last couple of years of his life he spent renouncing (or at least distancing) his earlier comments about violent resistance and spoke movingly of reconcilliation - thats some good stuff; but try to dismiss X on his earlier thuggery and you will meet with great resistance, rightly I think; but this stuff runs both ways -- either the whole life is to be judged or the final product, not one set for my allies, another for my opponents

Holy crap. It takes a very special individual indeed to believe that an advocate of limited governement is a fascist.

Here's an idea: Try reading books before burning them.

"So yes, Buckley was a fascist, at least in what he thought was good for Spain."

So by that standard, I guess Jim Harris is a Batthist based on what you though was good for Iraq.

It takes a very special individual indeed to believe that an advocate of limited governement is a fascist.

Sure, Buckley thought that the government should be limited for him. He didn't live in Spain, and he also wasn't black.

Here's an idea: Try reading books before burning them.

There is a complete on-line archive of Buckley's writings and that is what I linked to. Maybe you should follow those links before jumping to conclusions.

I guess Jim Harris is a Baathist based on what you though was good for Iraq.

Absolutely not! Saddam Hussein was anything but an authentic national hero; he never did anything heroic for Iraq in his life. His subjects were anything but content; they were a pressure cooker of violent reaction. None of his executions were legitimate, not even when he killed dangerous terrorists. In fact he deserved execution himself, even though his own execution was delegitimized by the Sadr men who carried it out. So no, my view of Hussein is nothing like Buckley's view of Franco.

The most that you can say is that Hussein was bad, but not as bad as the Shiite militias that control most of Iraq now. Just as, the Soviet puppet regime in Afghanistan was bad, but not as bad as the Taliban.

This is a good question, but the quoted text doesn't answer it.

No one claimed it did. Work on your reading comprehension.

And as for Jonah's "silly book," I'd be willing to bet you haven't read it, and your "review" (like that of so many that were pulled at Amazon for that reason) is worth absolutely nothing, or actually less than nothing. As is most of the tripe with which you pollute my website.

And as for Jonah's "silly book," I'd be willing to bet you haven't read it, and your "review"

I haven't read it or reviewed it. But excerpts from this book are no secret on the Internet, and they are uniformly silly. Which may have something to do with why it sells well: it may be good for a few laughs. Even the fans of this book let on a chortle factor.

No one claimed it did.

Okay, let me be more specific on this point. Nothing in the Goldberg's post that you linked to addresses whether Buckley was fascist. In particular Goldberg had nothing at all to say about Buckley's views on fascist Spain.

But this much is fair: Buckley didn't want to be controlled by fascist rule himself. Or, by extension, many other people like him. People who were not near his own cultural pinnacle were a different story.

Nothing in the Goldberg's post that you linked to addresses whether Buckley was fascist.

No one claimed it did.

Again, learn to read.

No one claimed it did.

I see your point. I had read "Burke" as some kind of nickname for William F. Buckley --- but apparently it refers instead to Edmund Burke. I was thrown by the topic-flipping: "Buckley recanted his earlier views [sic]...Now was Burke a fascist?"

Now that I see what was meant, the question is silly. Burke predated the European fascist movement by more than a century. He wasn't a fascist any more than Jesus was a Mormon.

Even so, you're wrong in your claim here, because Goldberg does say in the end that Burke's intellectual heirs aren't fascist either. So he either meant that Buckley wasn't fascist or that he wasn't one of Burke's intellectual heirs.

Now Buckley was fascist in some situations, because for instance he viewed Franco as a hero. So maybe on those days, he wasn't an intellectual heir of Burke. Maybe Goldberg would say that Buckley was a liberal on those days.

Having read Jonah's book, I see in Jim Harris everything Jonah was writing about. Jim says Jonah's book was silly but hasn't read the whole thing, only the out of context quotes Jim's brethren use to try and discredit him. His love for kill you with kindness statism and what seems to be hatred for anything not statism. His unfounded claims that militias control most of Iraq don't help either. But I digress as the orginal post was about Burke and Jim hijacked the thread to make snark about WFB and Goldberg and then agreed with Goldberg about Burke.

So he either meant that Buckley wasn't fascist or that he wasn't one of Burke's intellectual heirs.

Jonah wasn't implying that Buckley wasn't a fascist, though if you asked him, he'd certainly make the case that he wasn't (which would have the additional virtue of being true). You can infer whatever you want, of course. But then, you're the only one nuttily obsessed with the absurd question of whether or not Buckley was a fascist.

Jim says Jonah's book was silly but hasn't read the whole thing, only the out of context quotes Jim's brethren use to try and discredit him.

No, I haven't read any of those. I have only seen the favorite quotes picked by fans of the book. Those are all silly, and as I said, a lot of them seem intended with a chortle factor. But you're right that I have not read the whole book, because I'd have to buy it and that would be taken as an endorsement. (If the book is truly important, Goldberg could always release it to the Internet.) So sure, there is always that outside chance that there is some serious material somewhere in this book. Just not anything quoted by its fans, or by Goldberg in his blog.

His love for kill you with kindness statism

This is an interesting phrase that I think says a lot about the wishful interpretation of fascism as being the same as liberalism. I do not in fact love "kill-you-with-kindness statism", but whether or not I did, it would not be the same as fascism. If liberals of some evil stripe want to kill you with kindness, their fascists counterparts just want to kill you. The European fascists --- Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, etc. --- all killed a lot of people, but never with kindness. Their rationale was always that Communists, terrorists, and other mortal threats to the state were afoot, and they certainly weren't going to coddle them with the niceties of the Geneva Conventions. These alien threats played dirty, they reasoned, so they were going to play dirty too. In their view, it was the least that the government could do to protect the people. Anyone who thought otherwise must not have realized that they were at war.

To the last, "intellectual giants" such as William F. Buckley thought that it made sense. The Basques that Franco executed in 1975 were all terrorists, so why not execute them? An ad hoc military tribunal was all the due process that they deserved. Franco had also already bent over backwards by sparing the two who were pregnant.

What:
"Buckley said he had a few regrets, most notably his magazine's opposition to civil rights legislation in the 1960s. ``I think that the impact of that bill should have been welcomed by us,'' he said."

When: Bloomberg article by Heidi Przybyla claimed to be last update 31 March, 2006 available at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=anN._IfoJo1M&refer=us

Found using the google search terms, Buckley recanted segregation, and linked through an Ezra Klein post.

I know about that, Jethro. In 1957, when civil rights was heating up, Buckley says that the white race is culturally superior to the black race. In 1966, when the Voting Rights Act is first implemented in major elections, Buckley denounces it as a fiasco. By this time, he argues that it isn't about race, really, but rather that illiterates shouldn't be allowed to vote. If most of the illiterates in the South are black, then so be it. Sometime around 1970, he starts pretending that he never was racist. He welcomes the outcome of desegregation, he says; the only problem is that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were a bad means to a good end.

Finally, 40 years after the Voting Rights Act passed, Buckley realizes that his candle has burned almost to the holder. So he says off-handedly that he has "a few regrets", among them the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mighty big of him to admit it. No, it does not serve as an apology. It's also a fairly tepid and pathetically late recantation.

Still, that makes Buckley a better man than Jesse Helms, for example, who never did admit it.

One does also wonder whether Generalissimo Franco was another of Buckley's few regrets.

I should also say that that article does reveal one streak of real character in Buckley. By 2006, the intellectual giant realized, or maybe admitted, that the Iraq war was a failure. With conservative credentials like his, no one on the right wanted to badmouth him as a coward or a liberal, so instead they ignored him. "It's important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure," he said. "The neoconservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country," he also said. Right on both counts.

Buckley says that the white race is culturally superior to the black race.

He didn't say that. He was talking about cultures in the south, not about races. Obviously you don't understand what the word "race" means.

He was talking about cultures in the south, not about races.

What he said in 1957 was, "The White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race." He used the word race. He openly cast culture in racial terms. Besides, what defense of racial segregation is there that isn't racist? If not in the lines as in Buckley's 1957 piece, then between the lines?

Well, "speak no ill of the dead" is a silly principle that Buckley certainly didn't follow himself, but the dead do deserve their due because they can't argue back. At least Buckley was right about Iraq. It's too bad that his fans ignored him.