I didn’t read the whole post, because there aren’t enough hours in the day. But I think I read enough to clear up one thing. When I read David Oshinsky’s review in the New York Times, I commented that it was remarkable that Oshinsky did not challenge Goldberg’s contention that fascism is essentially a left-wing phenomenon. Holbo comments that Oshinsky does, in fact, challenge the Goldberg’s alleged notion that “fascism is strictly a Democratic disease.”

Let me make two points here: First, the last section of the book, on “the tempting of conservatism,” directly contradict this characterization of Goldberg’s thesis. Second, my phrasing was a little bit loose. What I meant to say was that Oshinsky didn’t challenge Goldberg’s claim that European fascism in the first half of the last century–the fascism that gave fascism its name–was a left-wing movement. That omission still seems to me to constitute a big concession.