From a reader:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,
I’m in the process of reading Liberal Fascism and I’m loving it. I took a course on Wiemar Germany about a year ago and was struck by how socialistic the Nazis were, and how they were fighting with the Bolsheviks for pretty much the same constituency. When I first heard about your book I knew I had to read it because it seemed like you were going to confirm what I had discovered in my course: that the Nazis weren’t really “righties” in any sense of how we use the term here in America; that they were in fact “lefties,” although national lefties instead of international lefties (i.e.: the commies).
But I’m not just writing to offer you praise and thanks for the book (though I’m doing that also: Great book! and Thank you!). I’m still in the process of reading it, but I jumped ahead to the chapter “We Are All Fascists Now” because it sounded so intriguing. I’m a former film student so I was especially interested in your discussion of cinema (and you abso-effing-lutely nailed why Dead Poets Society is so deceptively awful and wrongheaded that I will cherish your analysis forever). BUT — I was dismayed that you lumped Braveheart among the fascist-tinged films. I agree about 300, the Dirty Harry films, etc., and I noticed and was made uncomfortable by the things you mentioned about those films, but I think your case against Braveheart is weak and unpersuasive. Since I love Braveheart to death, I feel like I should defend it.
Your argument that it has fascist themes hinges, as far as I can tell, on the fact that Scotland in the 12th century, or whenever it is, isn’t an American-style, classically liberal republic, that it’s not fighting for individual freedom but for the freedom of the “clan” to live by its own “relativistic values.” But I would argue that the film has many parallels with an American-like struggle for independence and not with the Fascist revolutions of the 20th century.
First, the English king makes a good stand-in for a fascist leader, with his insistence on taking money from the Scottish to help fund the kingdom (the state), having state control over their personal lives (prima nocte anyone?), and the limiting of local control in government (exemplified in the way the Scottish nobles are simply stooges for the “national” English government). Also, notice how in comparison to the relatively non-religious Longshanks, the Scots (specifically Wallace) are shown to be good, traditional Catholics. I think a case could be made that Longshanks has established himself as a “god-like” ruler and the Scot’s traditional religion threatens his and the state’s supreme authority.
Also, I think the film goes to great lengths to establish the fact that Wallace and the Scots simply want to be left alone and not have to join in with the other British groups in some sort of pan-Britishism that Longshanks has set up (remember how the king tries to bring the Welsh and the Irish into his army to fight the Scots). Isn’t this a pretty conservative sentiment, to want to govern oneself locally and not be bothered with funding and supporting some overgrown national government. The Scots aren’t throwing off some traditional bourgeois culture that they think is corrupt — they want to maintain their bourgeois culture in the face of a “pagan” invasion from England (the prima nocte thing is an important fact in this regard).
300 doesn’t have fascist overtones because the Spartans want to maintain their freedom and independence from the Persian empire; it’s fascism is in its glorification of infanticide (eugenics), and its “everything for the state” ethos, and its totally militarized culture. The Scots in Braveheart are none of these things. They are traditionally Christian, generally peace-loving (we get a sense of this in the first third of the film when we watch a joyous wedding celebration and Wallace’s romantic wooing escapades), and independent (sure, there are clans, but much of the imagery of the film consists of individual families working on their farms and minding their own business; and it’s pretty much eccentric oddball Wallace alone versus the state by the end of the film). There is no such thing as a Scottish “state”, in the same sense as there was a Spartan state in 300. And even after Robert the Bruce unites the Scots under his banner to defeat the English, the film doesn’t go into and isn’t interested in what a Scottish state consists of (except that it’s free of English rule). There’s no “This is how we do it (fascist-style) here in Scotland” sequence in Braveheart to correspond to the one found at the beginning of 300 for the Spartans.
In many ways one could say that Scotland under Robert the Bruce (i.e.: George Washington), has a limited national government mostly charged with national security from foreign attack (i.e.: U.S. Federal gov’t), while still maintaining its clan-structure and local control (i.e.: states, federalism); in other words, an imperfect allegory for the United States government as established by the founders.
Whenever I watch the film I’m struck by how it’s really just one man’s attempt to be free from government control. William Wallace just wanted to get married, start a family, and run a farm, but the heavy hand of the government came in and messed with his plans and his life. He’s no bohemian prep school student caught up in throwing away conventional, corrupt morality, a la Neil from Dead Poets Society, and he’s no Leonides, leader of a Sparta in which everyone and everything is united in purpose behind the state’s goals. He’s just a dude whose wife was killed by thuggish English soldiers and he’s sick and tired of their iron rule. Even though there’s some identity politics going on in the film (a kind of “Scots gots to stick together”), there’s very little celebration or glorification of specifically Scottish culture. Most of the cultural things we see are explicitly Catholic and not particular to the Scottish. In it’s simplest terms, it’s a film about a bunch of guys who are sick of the government encroaching on their lives. I’m not really getting the fascist vibe from that.
Sorry to go on at such great length about this, but I’m not a deconstructionist when it comes to art and I don’t think we can fit any interpretation onto a given text, and I frankly see very little that is fascist about Braveheart. The movie is violent and does celebrate martial values in some respect, but surely not every film that celebrates men fighting must fall into the fascist category. Yes, it’s true, Scotland in the Middle Ages was not a liberal democracy, but of the two “states” represented in the film, I think it’s obvious that the English government is much more “fascist” in its methods, while Scotland represents the rights of the individual. [And as a side note, recall that the Elder Bruce’s attempts at “triangulation” and “Third Way” politics are rightly presented as bad.] If I recall correctly, the name of William Wallace’s clan is hardly mentioned in the film and it’s certainly not given any sort of importance. What is important is Wallace the man and his fight to secure the individual freedoms of his fellow Scots. It requires more than mentioning “clans” to make the argument that Wallace and his fellow Scots in the film were fighting to establish their own fascist state. Unlike the samurai of that Tom Cruise film you mentioned, or the Spartans of 300, the clans as presented in Braveheart are made up of a bunch of farmers and cowardly noblemen and not in anyway a warrior class or militarized culture. As far as I can see, all the fascism in the film is on the side of Longshanks.
Sorry if I got a little snarky, but I just wanted to offer a vigorous defense of a very good film.
Thank you again for the awesome book and for all you’ve written at NRO, which I’ve enjoyed for years.
p.s.: I’d love to read your thoughts on fascism re: Star Trek and BSG (if you’ve already written about this, then forgive my ignorance).

Me: Maybe I’ll take up the challenge on this later (I am exhausted). But for now let me just say, I loved the movie Braveheart, too. Though perhaps not as much as this reader.