I admit to not having read Goldberg's book, primarily because I don't want a penny of my hard-earned cash to slide into his hysterical paws. I do, however, have a more-than-glancing familiarity with fascist ideologies, having written a thesis on the topic in a past life.

Fascism is, in its most essential form, condensable to two concepts (which themselves are intertwined in application). Its core principle, and its primary adaptation from socialist ideology, is that of nationalism. Nationalsim and the struggle for national power replaced class struggle in Marxist thought (thereby obliterating Marxism's core principle). (This idea has been advanced by many political theorists whose names I can't recall). The State itself becomes a character, and the dictator, as the head of the State, its personified form.

Second, as Walter Benjamin and others have noted, fascism is the aestheticization of politics: the dawn of the political spectacle. Goose-stepping marchers in wartime parades; charismatic dictators who inspire fanatical devotion in followers; towering architecture that conveys culturally-laden messages of dominance--these, too, are the hallmarks of a fascist state. (A certain statue tumbling down in a certain square in a certain Middle Eastern nation might be seen as the dismantling of the spectacle of the ace of a certain deck of cards, for example).

What emerges from Goldberg's characterizations, based on the possibly (probably) biased excerpts that Noah provides here, is an analytical misapplication of these core principles. With enough gymnastic turns of phrase, any leader can be transformed into a fascist caricature. The end result is no more believable for the trying, however.

Quite right. The game of trying to pin fascism on the left-right political spectrum of "liberal" democracies is a fool's game.