The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge

by Matt Ridley

Jonah Goldberg points out in his book Liberal Fascism that in the 1930s fascism was widely seen as a progressive movement, and was supported by many on the left: ‘Fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left. This fact – an inconvenient truth if there ever was one – is obscured in our time by the equally mistaken belief that fascism and communism are opposites. In reality, they are closely related, historical competitors for the same constituents.’ Father Charles Coughlin, the ‘radio priest’ of the 1930s who came closest to imitating Hitler’s aims and methods in American politics, was very much a man of the left: criticising bankers, demanding the nationalisation of industry and the protection of the rights of labour. Only his anti-Semitism could be described as ‘right’. The very phrase ‘liberal fascist’ was coined approvingly by H.G. Wells in a speech in Oxford in 1932. Earlier, in 1927, Wells had mused about ‘the good there is in these Fascists. There is something brave and well-meaning about them.’