peatedly likened student radicals to Europeanrn”fascists.” My colleague found thisrnremarkable, given the fact that Hofstadterrnhad spent decades agonizing over thern”paranoid style” of the American nativistrnright. For Hofstadter and others of likernmind, however, the campus radicalsrnwere not progressive reformers but hatersrnof “liberal democracy.” Some of them,rnin deference to black nationalists, took arnpro-Arab, anti-Israel stand; and this confirmedrnfor Cold War liberals (soon to becomernneoconservatives) that their enemiesrn—apparently on the left—werernactually throwbacks to the interwar right.rnThis political geography went as farrnback as the “red fascist” images popularizedrnby Truman and other Democratsrnduring the early years of the Cold War.rnIn order to smooth the transition fromrnbattling international fascism to resistingrninternational communism, it was usefulrnto blur the dishnction between the two.rnBoth were portrayed as faces of the samerntotalitarian foe; and though Stalinoid Europeanrnrefugees presented the “authoritarianrnpersonality” as an exclusively rightwingrnpathology, it was easily coopted as arnCold War liberal weapon. By the earlyrn50’s, Seymour Martin Lipset was speakingrnof fascist personality development inrnMarxist-Leninists. Some historians, mostrnfamously James Gregor, tried to make therncomparison from the opposite direction,rnthough (for obvious reasons) with less acclaim.rnIn an ambitious work on Italianrnfascism, Gregor, by picking his evidencernselectively, made it appear that fascistsrnwere on the anti-democratic left.rnAlthough not everyone who drew suchrncomparisons was on the same wavelengthrn(one thinks especially of the laternErik von Kuehnelt-Leddhin), most exponentsrnof “red fascism” and its thematicrnpermutations belonged to the same club.rnThe postwar center-left found it comfortngrnto believe that everyone opposed torn’liberal democracy” (particularly in itsrn^ew Deal American form) was a “totaliarian”rnor an “authoritarian” in need ofrn;oercive reeducation. This is the recurentrntheme of the Vital Center, Politicalrnv’lan, and other products of the ColdrnVar liberal imagination that flourishedrnletween the late 40’s and mid-60’s. Itsrnupreme illustration, though persistentlyrnnisrepresented as a “conservative clasic,”rnis Allan Bloom’s The Closing of thernAmerican Mind. In this best-sellingrnrade against Germans, postmodernists,rnippies, and popular music, Bloomrnuprises the idee fixe of Cold War liberals:rnthat what appears to be an unkempt, malodorous,rnand riotous enemy on the leftrncan be traced back to the anti-American,rnEuropean, and especially German right.rnIt was nice for a certified member of thernpostwar democratic left to think that herndid not have to change his enemies as thernCold War heated up, or as campusesrnwere occupied and littered by self-describedrnMaoists in the late 60’s and byrnhirsifte women burning their bras in thern70’s. Unacceptable leftists could bernpacked into the far right or introduced asrnanti-democratic Teutons in drag.rnThe argument that the New Left hadrnsomething to do with the fascism is absurd:rnThe New Left was far too tame tornresemble the Nazis or communist thugsrnwho destroyed the Weimar Republic andrnroutinely murdered people in the process.rnIn terms of violence and antisemitism,rnthe New Left fell ridiculouslyrnbelow the standards of savagery of thernNazis, even before they came to power.rnThe comparison of strident hippies tornLatin fascists is equally farfetched, but forrnopposite reasons. The intellectual fathersrnof European fascism, in contrast to AngelarnDavis, Fidel Castro, and FranzrnFanon, were eminently civilized gentlemen,rnincluding such figures as GiovannirnGentile, Vilfredo Pareto, Maurice Barres,rnand Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera.rnThe founding generation of this movementrnhad no desire to tear down eitherrncivilization or sexual mores. What concernedrnthem was the explosiveness of thernleft and the fear that bourgeois societyrnwas too decadent to protect the world itrnhad built or inherited. To the extent thatrnfascists began to imitate the opposite side,rnthey did so largely to forestall it. Thusrnthey produced, in the memorable phrasernof Ernst Nolte, “a counterrevolutionaryrnimitation” of the revolutionary left.rnIt is true that serious thinkers and socialrncritics could be found temporarilyrnconnected with the New Left—for example,rnEugene Genovese, Paul Piccone,rnand Christopher Lasch. But these associationsrnproved brittle, and thoughtful fellowrntravelers fled the movement withrnvarying degrees of disgust. The reasonsrnare clearly put in Stanley Rothman’srnRoots of American Radicalism or in Genovese’srncolorful commentaries. Both providernpictures of sexually disordered, oftenrnlewd exhibitionists full of uncontrolledrnrage against authority figures, startingrnwith their parents. Rothman offers furtherrninsights into New Left anger by contrastingrnJewish and Christian radicals andrnexplaining why the former were morernprone to sexual exhibition and the latterrnto random violence. My own memory attestsrnthat we cannot exaggerate the intellectiialrnand social vulgarity of these radicalizedrnlouts. Indeed, fairness requiresrnthat any comparisons between them andrnthe fascists favor the squadristi whornmarched on Rome in October 1922.rnMoreover, the two movements hadrndramatically different fates. Wliile in thern20’s and early 30’s, Western progressivesrnand Catholic corporatists found elementsrnof Italian fascism worth exporting,rnand labor legislation under Hoover andrnFDR looks like it was drafted by thernConfederazione Nazionale SindacatirnFascisti, by the 40’s the fascist movementrnhad collapsed. It had been vulgarized inrnSpain by Franco and identified withrnmurderous imperialism through its selectivernabsorption by the Third Reich. Fascismrntoday lives on only as a hate word,rninvoked by the media against anyone orrnanything that fails to comply with its everrnmore stringent standards of political correctness,rnfrom Pat Buchanan to Europeanrncritics of immigration.rnThe New Left, by contrast, has madernout well. While New Leftists had oncernrapped about the evil of impersonal bureaucraticrnstructures, they were happy tornleave that particular concern to others,rnsuch as the denizens of right-wing feverrnswamps, once they became part of thern”system.” They became the shock troopsrnand cheering gallery of the therapeuticrnstate. Compared to the New Left’s policyrnefforts on behalf of alternative lifestylesrnand marginalized minorities, the socialrnchanges wrought by the Italian fascistsrnwere minimal. The Carta del Lavorornbrought before the Fascist Gran Consigliornin 1927 by the “anti-bourgeois”rnminister of labor Giuseppe Bottai did notrneven begin to create the proclaimed nationalrnworkers’ revolution. The Cartarnwas watered down into a pale forerunnerrnof the New Deal, and its fate illustratesrnthe fascist reluctance to tamper withrnbourgeois society: Don’t look to Italianrnfamily heads to turn the social order insidernout! Only the Nazis could approachrnthe nihilistic mentalit}’ of our own politicalrnclass.rnDespite its fire-eating rhetoric, earlyrnfascism, which was almost exclusivelyrnLatin or Latin-derivative, left the surroundingrnsociety largely intact. This wasrnnot only due to its counterrevolutionaryrnaspect, but because of where it took root.rnLatin Catholic cultures were far lessrnAUGUST 2000/45rnrnrn