Reply #1: Welcome to Neo-Fascism 101'

[IChing]

1. Economic fascism is based a merger of big business and big government. Sometimes, a formal corporatism emerges; other times, the private sector (monopolies and oligopolies) simply pass over into the public sector (as in the US), capturing the state and using it to wage that most profitable of activities: war. This later scenario is what happened in the United States, and the incestuous relationship between Big Business and Big Government ushered in a new Gilded Age of cronyism and corruption. Benito Mussolini was clear: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."
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For the Middle East, the preconditions of mature capitalism (and thus fascism) simply do not exist.
Islamic fundamentalist groups compete at the national level, but Islamic fundamentalism is a transnational movement inherently opposed to the pseudo-nationalism necessary for fascism.


Middle Eastern and Islamic movements can be reactionary, but these are reactions to external powers and not to the core dimensions of their own societies, which remain traditional.
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So the economic, political and cultural prerequisites of fascism do not exist in the Middle East - but they do exist in the United States. Our post-WWII, Information Age neo-fascism is much like the inter-war classical fascism but softer, lighter, friendlier. Today, instead of marching, we ritually demonstrate our political will on touch-screen pads, a ceremony organized by Party-backed corporations with secret software on private servers.

article here:
http://www.virtualcitizens.com/bosworth_2006-08-14_neo_fascism.html