It’s funny how both the extreme right and left in American politics like to throw the “F” word around when describing one another. The real question is, when you look at their backup material, you begin to see that one side wants to limit free speech and shut down religion, while the other wants to protect the family and children, not by taking away rights, but by putting some balance back into the phrase “limited rights.”
OK, so I’m painting the liberals as the bad guys. I’m sure someone on the left will have a better description of how conservatives are being “fascists.” In fact, you can check out American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America if you like, as well as the conservative accusations of fascism in Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview.
American Fascists was recently reviewed recently in the LA Times:
Thus, Hedges concludes, the United States today faces an internal threat analogous to that posed by the Nazis in Weimar Germany.
There are problems with this analogy….In fact, the differences between today’s Christian right and the movements led by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are greater than the similarities. Hitler was more pagan than Christian. Street violence was a key tactic of Mussolini’s Brownshirts; the Christian right has focused on nonviolent demonstrations outside U.S. abortion clinics and on changing laws at the ballot box. And there’s a big difference between supporting laws against gay marriage and putting gays in concentration camps.
Nevertheless, Hedges concludes that the Christian right “should no longer be tolerated,” because it “would destroy the tolerance that makes an open society possible.” What does he think should be done? He endorses the view that “any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law,” and therefore we should treat “incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal.” Thus he rejects the 1st Amendment protections for freedom of speech and religion, and court rulings that permit prosecution for speech only if there is an imminent threat to particular individuals.
Here’s a chapter of American Fascists.