Fascism has lots of elements and variations, so I’ll just give you a few common characteristics or attributes:

1) It’s ameliorative (much like American Liberalism by the way), which means that it’s trying to eradicate or purify certain percieved cultural harms. You’ll see a fascist leader constantly tlaking of culture-wide moral decline (decline’s a key word)

2) Actions to be taken ought to be taken by a strong and centralized state apparatus (in stark contradiction to Republican Philosophy)

3) the road to redemption is through a strong state. In other words, you purify or purge your cultures problems by creating a superior state. It’s a nuanced political identity argument, though, so be careful not to associate this with the Republican sentiment that the person ought to serve the state. In the fascist case, the person not only owes the state, but is merely a functional servant of it.

4) It devalues the necessity for individual liberty: I have a feeling this characteristic is one area people commonly confuse republicanism and fascism. Republicanism a la Machiavelli madnates in certain instances that the person’s good must be sacrificed for the good of the state. In fascism, there’s little need for caculation, as the state (in its newly purified form) is the only good necessary of achieving.

5) It’s generally militant (but it doesn’t have to be). You’ll need to see bellicose signs from its leaders and population. What’s even more important to recognize is that these signs must not be just bellicose, but also of a certain sort. They need to be couched in terms of national pride. Our country can kick your country’s butt, and will. The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan (as dumb as they were strategically) we not of this sort. That was an international policy not derived from a domestic one.

6) Progress is paramount: California’s a very likely contender for the most fascist government close to you. They’re willingness to jump on ‘progressive’ ideas that are good for ‘all’ Californians and that limit individual liberties make them so. You can see it as far back as their eugenics experiments (they used to castrate rapists, and some ethnicities, hey it’s one of the places Hitler got his ideas) and all the way through limiting the consumption and sale of alcohol. The idea is that you’re moving forward and can get people swept up in the motion. Car pool lanes and the environmental policies are great examples of these sorts of things (this is not to say that enviromental policies that protect the environment are bad, but that sometimes fascist elements can be good).

7) You usually need a dictator. It’s not necessary, but it helps. We could easily satisfy most of the requirements for fascism in a democracy (which we don’t have incidentally).

8) Fascism is a movement. As Montesquieu made clear in the spirit of laws, you cannot have a government or laws of a certain ideology if you do not have that in your culture.

I could go on for a really, really long time. That’s a very basic list meant not for the details. It just summarizes fascism.

As for the original comment, though, pay close attention to the eighth requirement. We have to have a fascist culture to have fascist leaders. Fascism isn’t a style of leadership that can happen without that mass movement. You simply don’t have the conditional requirements necessary to call our leadership fascist.

If sophia wanted to say our leaders are bumbling, drooling morons that can’t decipher strategy form strategery, she’d be in good company. However, they’re not fascist. They most resemble republican, but only barely. It’d be best to call them neocons, but I don’t think they even understand that theory. They thought they did, but look how that turned out.