re: #273 Alberta Oil Peon

Goldberg certainly has a couple of interesting and important points. Neither of those are exactly new though - for instance, the origins of Mussolini’s thinking have been pointed out before by others, and more conclusively - see Zeev Sternhell for this especially. One thing though is clear about this book, which is probably both a strength and a weakness: It is primarily a political book concerned with the present. It is NOT a historical study on the history of certain ideas, in particular it isn’t an academic study. I won’t hold that against the book, it is something that should be held in mind when reading it, though. Goldberg has my sympathies if he wants to show how statism is a danger to freedom. But he loses them once he ignores the existing scientific literature, and worse, original national socialist literature. Anyone who has read Hitler, Rosenberg and the likes in the original knows that it is absurd to call the nazis leftists.

It is not a concidence that there is no real debate among historians about this book…