Since (I assume) no one will be interested in taking fascism seriously as an ideology we might want to adopt or promote, I would like our discussion of fascism to focus, in part, on whether a drift or slide into fascism is a serious danger in the US these days. A lot of people have been sounding the 'fascism alarm' over the past few years. Should we take any of these alarms seriously? If fascism were coming to America, how would we recognize it?

Here are some links to things to help get that discussion going:

Thom Hartmann draws on a 1944 essay by Henry Wallace (then the Vice President of the US) to analyze the danger of American fascism:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-15.htm

Here is the text of Wallace's essay: http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm

Franklin Loehr, a Unitarian minister from Austin, Texas, argues that "the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism," here:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7478.htm

Here is a brief YouTube video (agitprop, as we used to call it) critizing the policies of the Bush administration and linking them to fascism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sg_NRC8ozk&NR

Here is Ron Paul, a libertarianish Republican Congressman who ran for President in 2008 making a similar charge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F67ZFpuZwl4

And here is right-wing pundit Glenn Beck sounding the same theme (in his usual over-the-top fashion):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD9BquYaGsE

Journalist David Neiwert, who has written several books about the radical right in America, thinks that Beck is himself a purveyer of what Neiwert calls "pseudo-fascism". The idea is briefly explained in this review of his recent book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/12/718452/-Book-review:-Dave-Neiwerts-The-Eliminationists

Philosopher of law Brian Leiter (U. of Chicago) has a blog in which he posts occasional "Authoritarianism and Fascism alerts", indexed here:

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/authoritarianism_and_fascism_alerts/index.html

See this link for a fairly startling example ("Brown Shirts in Waiting, Part 37"):

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/12/brown_shirts_in_1.html

But here is a New York Times piece that throws some cold water on the idea that the term "fascism" is really appropriate to anything happening in contemporary politics:

http://woldww.net/classes/Political_Ideas/The%20Latest%20Obscenity%20Has%20Seven%20Letters.htm