by Michael Mcculley

Created on: April 27, 2009

April 28, 2009 marks the 64th anniversary of the execution of Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator who led Italy during World War II. Many things have made their way from Italy to America since that time, but I am pleased to observe that fascism is not (to any significant extent) one of them.

Of course, it is common in American political debate for one side to accuse the other of being fascist or advocating fascism. Liberals have long made that allegation against conservatives, and, more recently, conservatives (such as Jonah Goldberg) have returned the favor. However, for one American to call another a "fascist" or a "Nazi" is really nothing more than a shorthand way of accusing them of promoting policies that are unreasonably burdensome, paternalistic, or repressive.

For example, the popular television show Seinfeld once featured a character called "the Soup Nazi." The Soup Nazi was a man who ran a small restaurant in Manhattan. Jerry Seinfeld and his friends discovered the restaurant and found the soup to be so good that, as Jerry put it, "Your knees buckle!" Unfortunately, the owner of the restaurant did not (toput it mildly) have a friendly attitude towards his customers, and it was not long before the people in the neighborhood nicknamed him "the Soup Nazi."

The Soup Nazi did not earn that nickname by hanging Hitler posters on the wall or by refusing service to Jews, but rather by insisting that his customers follow a strict set of rules when ordering. The Soup Nazi punished even the slightest deviation from his rules by throwing the customer out of line with the hilarious cry, "No soup for you!" That's pretty much what the terms "Nazi" and "fascist" mean to Americans today, though most people would add that the concepts also have something to do with racism and anti-semitism.

However, if we are going to formally address the question of whether or not a particular government or political movement is "fascist," then we should use the term in a way that is consistent with its historical meaning. In his essay "What is Fascism?" Robert Meyer defines "fascism" as "a political attitude and mass movement that tended to dominate political life in central, southern, and eastern-central Europe between 1919 and 1975. Common to all fascist movements is an emphasis on the nation (race, corporation or state) as the centre and regulator of all history and life, and on the indisputable authority of the leader behind whom the people are expected to form an unbreakable unity."

There

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