Back-Folding 20th Century Lessons on 18th Century?

In forensic sciences -- including anthropology, archaeology, epidemiology, etc -- tools and techniques of today are applied to the past to extract new information, perspectives and understandings.  PBS uses this "fold-back" with some entertaining success in the Secrets of the Dead TV series.

This also can apply to political & social epistemology -- how we know what we think we know -- about how people behaved -- and thought -- in the past.

In the introduction and chapter one of Jonah Goldberg's 2009 book:

2009 Book (Wiki Details)

The author "back-folds" various modern "understandings" and lessons from the political trajectories of Mussolini and Hitler onto the 1789-1799 French Revolution.  This fold-back is accomplished a little like a modern epidemiologist might use a gas chromatograph and/or a mass spec to  "sniff" old ancient bones or clothing to extract new perspectives.  

Using this "back-fold" technique -- Mr Goldberg's book makes some surprising -- and convincing -- historical arguments that:

(a) The late 1700s and early 1800s French Revolution created the world's first "modern" Fascist regime.  This is not at all clear from other historical perspectives.  J.Goldberg "back-folds" attributes and political parallels of Benito Mussolini and Hitler onto the French Revolution -- and develops an interesting comparison and persuasive narrative.  And like an epidemiologist, Mr Goldberg compares the social & political disease of the French Revolution -- and how this disease evolved & propagated forward in time to become the social & political diseases of Mussolini fascism and Nazi national socialism.

(b) Shocking and surprising?  J.Goldberg also make another interesting case: The 1890s to 1930s "Progressives" -- Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR being the tips of the iceberg -- essentially imposed an 1870s German "Bismarckian" style regulatory-administrative "fascism" upon America -- and the "echos" of this "fascism" rings forward to our current day via the regulatory estate and plantation -- a regulatory "structure" imported from 1870s German academic "social engineering."

The key mystery?  Why did imported Bismarckian "fascism" not infect and afflict America the same way fascism infected and afflicted Italy or German?   Did WW2 intervened before the disease reached full bloom in America?  And the evils observed by veterans help the promoters of American fascism recoil in horror -- and reconsider their ways?

J.Goldberg explains that our "understanding" of fascism is too colored by the Hitler and Mussolini examples -- that fascism is a much more subtle infection of the body politic -- and like tuberculosis -- can take years to decades to fully sicken -- and kill the host country's civil society.

Recall that tuberculosis can take months to decades to kill a human hosts.  Tuberculin fascism appears to operate upon the body politic in similar timelines.

Some countries succumb to tuberculin fascism rather quickly -- in just a few years.  Some take require decades.  And like humans, the difference seems to be the strength of immune system.  

For the body politic -- the immune system that seems to thwart and resist the growth of tuberculin fascism are a well developed set of morals and religious traditions -- traditions that give individuals some sense of "worth" and "self" -- and a one-to-one relationship with an omniscience or divine.  

Evidence?  Action speak loud.  All the big "-ism" -- Socialism, Communism, Progressivism, Nazism, Mussolini style Fascism -- all of these (and more) attempt to replace an abstract "God" in heaven with the tangible "god" of the state.  Each of the big "-isms" attempt to intervene between the individual and the tradition divine -- and "command" the religious "worship" of the individual.  Drawing away the faithful by deceit -- or by force -- or worse.

The French Revolution attempted to draw folks away from their faith in a very heavy handed and coarse manner -- going so far as to kill priest outright as "enemies of the state" and destroy churches.  J. Goldberg indirectly seems to make the case that all of the big "-isms" are becoming more skilled and sophisticated at drawing away the faithful -- and to use the language of the bible -- to worship the false prophet of the state.

In spite of the human disasters of the French Revolution, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the Statists continue to try their hand at becoming "God on earth" -- making "real" what was abstract in traditional Judeo-Christian traditions.

UPSHOT?  BigGov is a jealous and petty god.  It maybe that an abstract God -- and individual faith in an abstract God -- is necessary to keep the body politic from developing a full blow case of tuberculin fascism.  There is something about making "God" tangible in the form of Big Government, that dives a country to self-destruction.  Not clear what -- yet history is full of examples.

As the Bard said almost 400 years ago: "All things be ready, if our minds be so."