I repeat that I don't think this is *really* the issue. Rather, it is the freight of calling the Taliban 'fascist' in the current political context. Unlike Chip, Hitchens is clearly not engaged in any serious intellectual exercise. He's building his new career as the next Arthur Koestler.
I agree that hating women or racism in and of themselves are not sufficient conditions for something to be fascist. Of course, that doesn't mean they are not really really bad. But we're trying to be a little scientific here.
I haven't read the sociologists on this, nor Chip, but I would start with the economic side and say the objectives of those who finance and lead fascist movements are the brutal regimentation of labor, the aggressive use of the state to subsidize and direct business organizations, and the elimination of all rights of individuals (including electoral/parliamentary democracy). The extent of systemic change involved goes to the appearance of the ideology as some kind of insurgent alternative to socialism, and in the same vein, is the basis for a kind of ersatz radicalism with some appeal to some working class elements, among others.
This could occur in a country whether or not it was industrialized. I would add a common additional objective -- the mass dispossession and possibly the literal extermination of groups targeted for chauvinism on grounds of race, ethnicity, or religion. Hence the ideology is likely (but not necessarily) to be chauvinistic in some way, as well as justified in terms of religious ideology, and rejecting of bourgeois democracy through the embrace of extra-parliamentary violence. The possibility that such a system could not be sustained in a poor third world nation for technological reasons might be true (I doubt it, though), but does not negative the appropriateness of the label. Nazism couldn't be sustained either, as it turned out.
mbs
Hi,
Max is correct that there currently is a real political problem in the use of the term fascism to cover for US attacks. . . .