Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

For those of you who don’t know me, I am someone who holds history sacred. I have never been fond of the idea of anyone rewriting our history, no matter what side of the aisle that person may be on. I also believe that all history should be preserved, even if it represents a period that wasn’t a shining moment for our country. Sadly, it has been an uphill battle trying to fight the misconceptions created by those who write the history books. The book Killing History by L.K. Samuels, succeeds to do just that with the myth that fascism is the creation of the right-wing.

I have read two other books on the subject, such as Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg and The Big Lie by Dinesh D’Souza. Both of these books were excellent and both authors did a good job supporting their position that fascism is actually a product of the left. Not that it comes as a surprise, but the works of Goldberg and D’Souza have pretty much been dismissed by left-wing intellectuals, due to the fact that both authors are right-wing ideologues. LK Samuels is a libertarian that doesn’t have much of a dog in the fight between those on the far-left and the far-right, but instead believes in the sanctity of our history.

Personally, I have always found the so-called political spectrum accepted by mainstream academia to be confusing. How can fascism and communism have so much in common while being on opposite sides of the political spectrum? In the end both ideologies ultimately believe in having absolute control over everybody and everything. What is even more confusing is that they place conservativism and libertarianism on the same political spectrum as fascism, which really doesn’t make any sense at all. It would actually make more sense to have anarchism on the far-right instead of fascism because that would be the ideology that would most likely fellow libertarianism. What is even more confusing is that people once placed classical liberalism (not what they call liberalism now a days) and libertarianism on the left side of the spectrum. Samuels actually provides two charts, one that places libertarianism on the right and other on the left.

Samuels with his thousands of citations, pretty much destroys the idea that fascism and communism are anything but two ideologies cut from the same cloth. He debunks the entire notion that fascism has anything at all in common with the right and that it actually shares a much greater kinship with Marxism by showing us example after example of how German and Italian fascists used the same anti-capitalist language as the Marxists. In theory, a Marxist nation has the entire means of production owned by the government, while fascist governments do allow some forms of private industry to exist. Yet, fascists are still the ones who will decide how these industries are run. Samuels shows many examples of how industries under Hitler’s reign were far from free, with their crippling taxes, regulations and various other forms of interference from the Reich. I don’t know if I can even say that there is as much as a dime’s worth of difference between the two ideologies.

I also liked how Samuels compared some of the tactics used by Antifa, to that of the Brownshirts of the Nazi Party, which once again shows that fascism has a much greater kinship with the left. Of course, Samuels isn’t the first to point this out, since Dinesh D’Souza pointed this out a few years earlier in The Big Lie . It’s also worth pointing out that both authors have acknowledged that one of the favorite tactics of the Brownshirts was to go to college campuses and disrupt lectures of guest speakers that had differing viewpoints from the Nazi Party.

The only disappointment that I have with the book, is that Samuels makes no mention of the so-called Alt-Right. I say so-called because they seem to have little to nothing in common with modern conservatives or libertarians. As D’Souza has pointed out on several occasions, the only trait that the separates the Alt-Right from the modern left, is there adherence to white nationalism. The Alt-Right believes in having an economy that is tightly controlled by the central government and that individual rights should be replaced by collective rights granted by the government. On top of that Richard Spencer, the leader of the Alt-Right movement, has stated that he wouldn’t at all be against the idea of socialized medicine (for the white man) or even socialism for that matter. It could be that Samuels doesn’t really believe that the Alt-Right is significant enough to mention.

Not only would I recommend checking this book out, but I would also suggest leaving a review on Amazon. Sadly, certain reviewers who appear to be nothing more than leftist trolls who haven’t even read the book, have been leaving one-star ratings along with short and vague reviews on why the book’s premise is false. I believe that this is the greatest book written on the subject and I believe more reviews that are positive or least objective would give it a much-needed boost for its sales.

Available in both paperback and Kindle.

[ see below — Editor ]

Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the 'Free Left' and the 'Statist Left'
by L.K. Samuels
click cover image to go to Amazon.com

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change
by Jonah Goldberg
click cover image to go to Amazon.com

The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left
Dinesh D'Souza
click cover image to go to Amazon.com