"Few spoke out, as Roger Griffin suggests, because they recognized that Goldberg's book was more of an exercise in polemics than a historical work, and as such not really appropriate for academic consideration.  Its use of history was so shoddy and propagandistic, and its claims so frankly absurd, that very few of them considered it worth taking seriously."

"And yet, here we are two years later, and it turns out that many people indeed have taken Goldberg's book seriously.  Not only was Liberal Fascism a national bestseller, but its core 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" - has become widely accepted conventional wisdom among American conservatives, and has played a significant role in the national discourse.  Along the way, it morphed into the claim that the agenda of Democratic liberals, and particularly President Obama, was an innately fascist attempt to impose a totalitarian state, something Goldberg himself only intimated in the book, though he later confirmed it in a National Review article."

"Nowhere is this more evident than at gatherings of the Tea Party movement, the right-wing populist phenomenon that has sprung up in opposition to the policies for which Barack Obama was elected president.  It is common at Tea Party rallies to see signs equating Obama with Hitler, and declaring the current regime "fascist." "

Read the entire Neiwert essay and the other essays here