ABSTRACT
Over the past 30 years or so, fascism has come to be loosely used to describe the broader concept of totalitarianism, which encompasses communism as well. Liberals are every bit as prone to the particular confusion as conservatives. Jonah Goldberg's book was essentially an up-is-down-inside-is-out mishmash of history and political philosophy that stipulated, primarily, that "fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left". Goldberg bases his argument on the following definition of fascism: Fascism is a religion of the state. Payne's approach, similar to that of many scholars of fascism, is useful; it offers important descriptive information that helps us get a sense of the multifaceted phenomenon of fascism. One can use some "mobilizing passions" to assess how close the para-fascism practiced by movement conservatism comes to recreating the components of genuine fascism.
