Funferal

Fascism and equivalence

From Toby’s Political Diary (“Let it begin here”, as the tagline goes) comes a discussion on the nature of fascism, and possibly pertinent examples from the contemporary US. Any piece of this type runs the risk of being dismissed on the basis of Godwin’s law, but the reasoned definition of fascism (as opposed to Naziism it should be noted) gives a good underpinning to his argument.
My only problem would be with how easily he moves from the case of Saddam’s regime charging victim’s families for execution expenses to the proposal (in Massachusetts) to charge protesters for policing expenses. While both cases do tend to chill speech, the cruelty present in the Iraqi case brings it to a clearly different level. The policing example stands on its own (I’m reminded of the – thankfully defeated – public order proposals for Dublin last year), and claiming an equivalence with the execution of prisoners just diminishes the argument.