Using "fascist" like this is ludicrous. Is the Bush era any more repressive than the era of the Palmer Raids or the Red Scares? The roundup of the Japanese? The Jim Crow south, when the Klan worked in league with the cops? There's more opposition now, elite and popular, than there ever was in those earlier eras. If the regime really were fascist, your email would be censored, and you might even be locked up.
Doug
^^^^^ CB; A major aspect of fascism was the wars it perpetrated as crimes against peace, not only its domestic crimes against humanity. The U.S. war on Iraq is fully fascist, not to mention the U.S. military occupation of so many countries
Domestically, with the Patriot Act, Angela Davis and others have decribed things as a fascist climate.
Learning from history, it doesn't make sense to wait until there is fullblown fascism to start using the word. If only, somehow, German fascism had been nipped in the bud before it did started "censoring" messages among liberals and lefts.
If you wait until they come for you as the proof of fascism, you may end up like Father Neimaier (spelling) "They came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I was ...
Why is it ok to use all kinds of other epithets for the U.S. regime - apocalyptic, messianic, authoritarian militarist imperialist - but "fascism" has to pass such a high "precision" of definition test. What is this precise definition of fascism that must be met ? Censoring leftwing email ? Does that define fascism ? That seems to be the acid test for fascism. Only when they shut down email is it fascism.
Randi Rhodes uses the term "fascist" to refer to the U.S. regime.
Jim Crow was domestic fascism in the U.S. It happened before, it can happen again. No U.S. exceptionalism !