Chip Berlet wrote:
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> May I just add that the rhetorical use of the word fascism to describe the Bush administration actually enhaces the chances of fascism coming to America wrapped in an American flag.
I would agree with this, but I think there is another danger that such rhetorical slovenliness enhances even more -- a steady increase in repression until we have the equivalent of fascist repression within still democratic forms. Most people are more sophisticated on this subject than are many left intellectuals. They will see that _obviously_ the Bush administration isn't fascist, and therefore they won't see it as being repressived _at all_. It is really crucial that leftists teach americans to recognize that fascism is not the only or most threatening form of repression; that repression of _all_ kinds must be resisted.
And Doug is certainly right that to extend the word "fascism" to all forms of repression, past and present, simply empties the word of any meaning whatever. It reminds me of a disastrous paper topic I assigned some 45 years ago, "Define Thoughtlessness." By the time my freshman students were finished, "thoughtless" was simply a synonym for every negative adjective in English!
Carrol