> No disagreement that mass fascism is the product of economic
> crisis, but you're wrong in suggesting it would have to to be
> given a "go ahead" by the US and EU or other governments.
> It's preeminently a mass movement from below, which isn't to
> say that it doesn't attract support from influential and
> opportunistic right-wingers at the top when it nears power.
I profoundly disagree. Without the support of government or quasi-governmental bodies, any mass resentment can at most produce an occasional riot. A large scale mobilization and organization requires coordination from above. Richard Rubenstein (_The Cunning of History_) goes even further and claims that a mass movement alone and adrift is antithetical to fascism whose quintessence is authoritarian control from above.
I do not want to quibble over semantics what's fascism and who decides whether we have one - all I am saying that there is a qualitative difference between (i) popular sentiments that usually do not amount to much more than kvetching; (ii) a spontaneous riot, perhaps fueled by popular sentiments or perhaps not, but almost invariably triggered by a precipitating event that "starts the action" (action does not need prior sentiments to sustain itself, it generates its own); and (iii) a coordinated operation in which large numbers of people are mobilized and organized for action targeting an entire group of people - which is virtually impossible without government or quasi-government involvement. I tend to reserve the word "fascism" to (iii), you seem to extend it to (ii), while CB seems to include (i) as well (which imho renders the term lacking any specific meaning).
I may also add that you seem to assume that action requires prior mental states that motivate it (resentment, hatred, fear etc.). I call this a mentalist behavioral model. I am not exactly rejecting that model, I think it is applicable to certain situations, but it is certainly not the only behavioral model possible. An alternative model is interactionist which behavior precedes mental states that justify and legitimate that behavior. In that model, people are drawn to a course of action by the dynamics of interaction with other people, and then ex post facto produce mental states that justify their behavior. That may involve anything from a hoodlum assaulting another person and justifying it by 'being disrespected' to a person being brought to an event (be it a holy roller service or a political rally) by a friend, getting involved in action and then adopting ideology justifying that action.
Research on collective action shows that the interactionist model has a much better predictive power than the mentalist model. That is to say, people seldom act on their beliefs, especially when action requires personal cost or risk. Instead, people act when the social barriers for that action (or transaction costs, if you will) have been sufficiently lowered for them, and then become emotionally engaged and finally making up excuses and justifications for what they are doing. People by nature are social animals, and virtually every society proscribes wanton aggression and violence against it sown members. Most people (save for a few degenerates) have internalized those norms, and breaking them does not come easily. That is to say, there is considerable transaction cost to every individual ((discomfort, remorse, guilt, fear of rejection) in violating those norms. In most cases, those transaction costs prevent people from engaging in wanton acts of violence against others, regardless of what they feel and thing of those others.
However, if those transaction costs are lowered - say, by an act of provocation or by a legitimate authority figure, like a political leader or a priest, saying that it is ok to engage in such acts - it is much easier for most individuals to engage in wanton violence against other. That does not mean that everyone will suddenly drop everything and start hacking their neighbors to death. Rather, it will start with the marginal elements, the lumpens, the gangsters, the hoodlums, the psychos and disgruntled cranks who are already predisposed toward violence, and as these start rioting - this will draw more and more people into action, people who otherwise would not engage in such behavior on their own. Of course, there will be always those who will resist the temptation no matter what, but the point is that otherwise "normal" people without any violent 'priors' will engage in wanton violence.
That point was clearly demonstrated by the Stanford Prison Experiment (http://www.prisonexp.org/) or Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments (replicated in various different settings) in which study participants were led to believe that they are killing a fellow participant in the course of the experiment - very few refused to "go ahead" when told so by a "scientific authority figure." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment.
I think, therefore, that there is plenty of evidence to support my point that fascist aggression is not merely a result of prior mental states (feelings, prejudices, resentments, etc.) but instead it is socially engineered, usually from above. A corollary to this is that there a fascist (a pogromschik or a lynching mobster) in everyone - all that is required is to engineer the right kind of social interaction that draws one into action (a point also emphasized by Richard Rubenstein). I know that form my own experience. I am a non-violent person, to the point of refusing to use mouse traps. However, in various demos I attended I was a part of the mob that trashed cars, attacked people, and set buildings ablaze. Of course, all of that was for a "good cause" - peace, opposition to imperialism or authoritarian rule, but people whose cars were trashed had noting to do with war, imperialism or authoritarianism - they simply happened to be in the mob's way.
Wojtek