That heavyweight intellectual, Jonah Goldberg, loves to tell his audiences that no one on the left took his masterpiece, Liberal Fascism, seriously -- they just made fun of it!

So this is how Goldberg responds to an actually serious critique.

Evidently, Goldberg thinks that ignoring a sound argument lets you declare victory over it.

Now, just to be clear: Goldberg has never responded to the core of my critique. He's tossed off side issues, but what I have said about Liberal Fascism from the get-go is that its central thesis -- that "properly understood, fascism is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left" -- simply does not have any grounding in, and is indeed refuted by, the actual historical facts about the "political space" which fascism historically occupied.

I laid it all out again not too long ago:

This is, in fact, the argument that Goldberg attempts to make in his book as well: That the fascists occupied the "political space" on the Left, and thus were simply out to compete against their fellow leftists. But this is where Goldberg most deeply portrays a lack of respect for the historical material available to him, because any careful study of the actual details of how the fascists came to power in both Italy and Germany makes abundantly clear that they were occupying the available political space on the right -- and had charged hard in that direction from early on in their drive to power.

I discussed this in some detail, citing particularly Robert O. Paxton's work in The Anatomy of Fascism. Paxton, for instance, debunks the fascists' ostensible "anticapitalism":

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America Honors Leaders -- Not Politicians:

In this picture provided by the environmental group Greenpeace, Greenpeace climbers rappel down the face of Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, S.D. on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 to unfurl a banner that challenges President Obama to show leadership on global warming. Obama is at the G8 meeting in Italy to discuss the global warming crisis with other world leaders. A federal prosecutor says a dozen people were taken into custody on Wednesday after the incident.

Open thread below...

The rescue efforts are being hampered by strong aftershocks:

L’AQUILA, Italy — More than 90 people died and tens of thousands were left homeless when an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 shook central Italy early Monday morning, seriously damaging buildings in the mountainous Abruzzo Region east of Rome, officials said.

The Italian news agency, ANSA, quoted rescue workers in mid-afternoon as saying the death toll had reached 92. A spokesman for Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said on national television that an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people had been left homeless.

The epicenter was in L’Aquila, a picturesque Medieval fortress hill town, where most of the deaths occurred, officials said. Aftershocks shuddered through the area, hampering rescue efforts as people clawed through the debris by hand, frantically seeking survivors.

“Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety,” Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of Parliament, said in Rome before the chamber observed a moment of silence.

And here's a perfect example of why you should question authority:

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L'Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people, but was reported to authorities for spreading panic among the population.

The first tremors in the region were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, creating mounting alarm in the medieval city, about 100 km east of Rome.

Vans with loudspeakers had driven around the town a month ago telling locals to evacuate their houses after seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani predicted a large quake was on the way, prompting the mayor's anger.

Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for "spreading alarm" and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.

Italy's Civil Protection agency held a meeting of the Major Risks Committee, grouping scientists charged with assessing such risks, in L'Aquila on March 31 to reassure the townspeople.

"The tremors being felt by the population are part of a typical sequence ... (which is) absolutely normal in a seismic area like the one around L'Aquila," the civil protection agency said in a statement on the eve of that meeting.

"It is useful to underline that it is not in any way possible to predict an earthquake," it said, adding that the agency saw no reason for alarm but was nonetheless effecting "continuous monitoring and attention".

As the media asked questions about the authorities' alleged failure to safeguard the population ahead of the quake, the head of the National Geophysics Institute dismissed Giuliani's predictions.

And were wondering why:

Millions of people across the Middle East and Asia have lost access to the internet after two undersea cables in the Mediterranean suffered severe damage.

Huge numbers in Egypt and India were left struggling to get online as a result of the outage, when the major internet pipeline between Egypt and Italy was cut.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) throughout the region, including those in United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, also reported problems. International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

d r i f t g l a s s: The Rove Guru

Talking Points Memo: Is it really a good idea to have a crackpot war profiteer like James Woolsey speaking for your campaign?

Balkinization: How did the DOD decide to authorize torture, cruel treatment, and violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice?

This Modern World: What we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places.

Dani Rodrik: The heart of Barack Obama's spending program is his plan to spend $15 billion a year for ten years on energy technology.

Direland: Is Italy going fascist?

Blue Gal volunteers for public service...

Yahoo News: (h/t E)

Switzerland on Wednesday followed Italy and Germany in raising the threat of criminal prosecution of CIA operatives involved in anti-terrorism operations in Europe.

The Swiss Cabinet authorized the start of criminal proceedings against those responsible for the abduction in Italy of an Egyptian Muslim preacher allegedly taken on CIA flights through Swiss airspace.

Switzerland, which has cooperated closely in U.S. investigations and attempts to shut down terrorists' funding networks, has generally avoided open disputes with the U.S. government. But the wording of the seven-member Cabinet's statement was sharp.

"In the view of the Federal Council, the use of Swiss airspace for an abduction cannot be tolerated," the statement said. "There is evidence that basic norms of international law were violated."

It breaks my heart that they're talking about our country that way. In other news to be ashamed of, NPR discusses the inclusion of the US in UNICEF's list of Worst Countries for Kids. Truly, I think decades from now, historians are going to ask what was wrong with all of us for allowing this country to fall so spectacularly on a global level.

His condition is worsening now, the NY Sun is reporting he has gone into Intensive Care as his liver is failing.

Discovery News:

Thallium is frequently referred to as the poison of choice: Only a gram of the colorless, odorless, water-soluble heavy metal can kill. It is as toxic as arsenic, and even more so than lead.

Col. Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB and Federal Security Service agent, was under armed guard at a hospital Monday, fighting for his life after being given the deadly poison in London.

Litvinenko's white blood cell count - generally used as a gauge of the immune system - is down to nearly zero, said Dr. John Henry, a clinical toxicologist involved in his care.

MSNBC:

Col. Alexander Litvinenko, a former spy, an author and an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said he fell ill after meeting with a contact over a sushi meal while probing the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

[..]British news outlets identified Litvinenko's contact on the day he fell ill as Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic who helped investigate KGB activity in Italy during the Cold War. Scaramella could not immediately be reached for comment.

Alexander Goldfarb, a close friend of Litvinenko who helped him defect to Britain, said he suspected the former spy had been targeted by the Russian government.

I've been getting into the World Cup this time around and the last few minutes of the Italy/Germany match were incredible. The subtlety of the game has always been lost on me up until now. I watched every second of this contest and just marveled at the conditioning of the athletes. These are the two minutes and fifty seven seconds of play when both goals were scored.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Bloomberg: Italy beat Germany 2-0 on two goals late in extra time to advance to the soccer World Cup final against Portugal or France, who play tomorrow.

USA tied with Italy 1-1 at the half... Steve's a big fan...

Italy plans to begin withdrawing some of its troops from Iraq in September, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Friday. Berlusconi, who was a strong supporter of President Bush on Iraq, sent 3,000 troops to the country after the ouster of Saddam Hussein to help rebuild the country. He had previously indicated he hoped a pullout could begin in September...read on

I doubt this has anything to do with the London bombing per se because many Italians have been upset over Iraq for some time. Couple that with the Giuliana Sgrena incident and one shouldn't be surprised by this development. They do have to look out for themselves and this incident can be used as a spring board to leave Iraq sooner than later. "The time has come to begin to think also about our house, and to use the same resources currently committed in Iraq to prevent and combat possible attacks on our territory."