Today Bush points out that we are still at war with "Islamic Fascits". This got me to wondering exactly what he thinks (if he does) a fascist is. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others have made a pretty strong case that many characteristics of the Bush Administration and the current Republic (sic) Party are very similar to previous Fascist regimes, in that they value ideological purity, military might, supress opposition, and are essentially a government run by corporations.
The following text and citiation are directly from Wikipedia: recent definition [of Fascism] that has attracted much favorable comment is that by Robert O. Paxton:
* "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." (Anatomy of Fascism, p 218).
Gee, that sounds a whole lot like Bush's approach to governing the US, doesn't it?
It's an interesting strategy to characterize the enemy as doing exactly what you're doing, and the Republicans have been very good employing the tactic against us (Byron York's book about the Left Wing noise machine comes to mind). I'm not at all saying there isn't real danger from terrorists, but am interested in the framing of them used by BushCorp. The fascist meme is being used quite a lot these days and is surely a talking point.
UPDATE: In case anybody is still reading this now that it's slipped off the screen, TheKost points out in a comment a good intro for understanding fascism: http://www.cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction.php