A prescient twenty-seven year old forecast

In 2008, Jonah Goldberg published Liberal Fascism. From Wikipedia:

In the book, Goldberg argues that both modern liberalism and fascism descended from progressivism, and that before World War II, "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States". Goldberg writes that there was more to fascism than bigotry and genocide, and argues that those characteristics were not so much a feature of Italian fascism, but rather of German Nazism, which was allegedly forced upon the Italian fascists "after the Nazis had invaded northern Italy and created a puppet government in Salò."

He argues that over time, the term fascism has lost its original meaning and has descended to the level of being "a modern word for 'heretic,' branding an individual worthy of excommunication from the body politic", noting that in 1946, the socialist anti-fascist writer George Orwell described the word as no longer having any meaning except to signify "something not desirable".

I am familiar with Goldberg's thesis.

But I was unaware of an antecedent. I am cleaning out old files and in doing so came across this piece, The Rise of Liberal Fascism, by Paul Johnson in the English The Spectator. Johnson is generally a religiously traditional (Catholic) Burkean conservative with a strong foundation in Classical Liberalism, i.e. what we now call a conservative.

The article is 27 years old and could have been ripped from today's headlines and Twitter outrage. Indeed, the subtitle to the article is "The media: Paul Johnson deplores attempts to censor opinions on sex and race."

Benito Mussolini was a Marxist, once highly commended by Lenin, and the fascism he founded was essentially a Marxist heresy. Fascist Left and Fascist Right have much in common, especially their taste for street violence and their hectoring intolerance. Wearisome though it often is, civilised democrats have to be on perpetual stand-by to keep both at bay. To make life even more difficult for reasonable people, there is now a third threat, what I call liberal fascism. It is constituted not so much by liberals themselves as by the well-organised and increasingly aggressive pressure groups liberal triumphalism has spawned. Its two most dangerous manifestations, as I have pointed out before, are the race relations industry and the homosexual lobby, though is a growing number of other objectionable groups, such as the animal rights campaigners. What worries me is not so much the demands of these liberal fascists as the willingness of the rich and powerful, both people and institutions, to bow to them. There is the stench of cowardice in the air, as in the original fascist heyday of the Thirties.

It is worth bearing in mind that Johnson was born in 1928 and therefore was a boy and young adult in the thirties when fascism was not a history lesson in class but a movement in the streets. Johnson was there at the birthing.

The core of the article is a discussion of a dust-up in the US around negative commentary about some LGBT issue. It is interred in the nineties and would be of interest only to historians of the emergence of this nascent movement of postmodernist, critical theory multiculturalism working in the guise of civil rights.

Johnson finishes with:

Unless liberal fascism is resisted, starting from now, it is only a matter of time before the same system of censorship is imposed here. It will, needless to say, be the work of precisely those people who complain that the Government's ban on IRA terrorists, masquerading as Sinn Fein politicians, appearing on British television screens to advocate mass-murder, is a gross denial of freedom of speech. It would not at all surprise me if an incoming Labour government makes it actually unlawful to criticise homosexual practices, since the homo-lobby is now well dug into the party at every level. As it is, the victory of the race relations industry in suppressing debate on immigration is now more or less complete. The recent treatment of Norman Tebbit, one of the few MPs who still has the courage to challenge the censors, is significant. I don't at all agree with Tebbit on Hong Kong, or even with his remark about the 'cricket test'. But it was a perfectly fair comment on an issue which passionately concerns the public and on which free discussion is essential. Yet one Labour MP immediately demanded his prosecution and much of the press comment has been unconscionable. The incident shows how deeply the roots of liberal fascism have penetrated our tolerant soil, and I for one am determined to grub them up. Who is with me?

In two paragraphs, Johnson's diagnoses the problem (totalitarian Marxism in its postmodernist, critical theory, multiculturalist guise) and the likely progression of elitists suppressing debate around issues of immigration, rule of law, equality before the law; intolerant suppression of variant opinions; mob justice over debate; etc.

Twenty-seven years. The renunciation of postmodernist critical theory as evidenced by Sanders, Trump and Brexit was a long time coming but we are at the inflection point where the citizenry has begun to stand with Johnson and is beginning to demand a return to the classical liberal precepts of democracy, rule of law, equality before the law, libertarian tolerance, etc. A long time coming and much to resolve but perhaps the descent towards totalitarian authoritarianism has been arrested. Or at least, put on notice.