>Er, wasn't mockery -- a prime example being Chaplin's (especially
>untimely) _The Great Dictator_ -- exactly how the world tried to
>defuse the threat of Mussolini and Hitler? The beta version of this
>approach doesn't seem to have been a big success.
I don't know that "the world" tried to defuse fascism in the 20s and 30s. There was a lot of elite sympathy for Muss & Hitler among the British and American ruling classes, wasn't there? We know that Standard Oil, Ford, and Chase did business with the Nazis throughout the 30s and into the 40s, and even after the war, the young CIA was happy to absorb the Nazi intelligence apparatus.
Things are rather different now. Austria is not a country in crisis, like Germany was, and the EU and US are quite hostile to Haider, in contrast to their stance of 60 years ago. Whatever's happening, it's not a rerun of Hitler's rise.
Doug