Yes, it is fascism now. David Neiwert wrote this excellent examination of the roots and reality today of American fascism. Here is a link to the lengthy essay. However, If you go to his weblog Orcinus, instead, you will be able to download a .pdf file. Plus you'll see he is asking for a much-deserved $5 donation for his opus, He provides a link to click to do that. The link here is intended only to make eaders aware of Neiwert's work, and to direct them to his site to honor his donation request. It's well worth it. Here is a sample:

Most Americans have a perfectly clear idea of the basic tenets of communism (though in many cases it is fairly distorted), largely because it is an ideology based on a body of texts and revolving around specific ideas. In contrast, hardly anyone can explain what it is that makes fascism, mainly because all we really know about it is the regimes that arose under its banner. There are no extant texts, only a litany of dictatorships and atrocities. When we think of fascism, we think of Hitler and perhaps Mussolini, without even understanding what forces they rode to power.

At the same time, it's important that Americans of all stripes -- liberal or conservative -- have clear view of what fascism is, because it is not an extinct political force, and it is above all else innately anti-democratic and anti-American in spirit. This essay is in some regards a plea, particularly to those on the left who have used the term willy nilly to score shrill partisan political points, to cease abusing the word "fascism," learn what it means, and apply it only when it's appropriate. (I have absolutely no hopes of persuading those on the right, particularly since they are a large part of the problem.)

It has always seemed to me that Americans view Nazism almost as some kind of strange European virus that afflicted only the Germans, and only for a brief period -- this by way of rationalizing that It Couldn't Happen Here. But it also seems clear to me this is wrong; that the Germans were ordinary, ostensibly civilized people like the rest of us. And that what went wrong in them could someday go wrong in us too.

Tibetan stand-off. And where exactly has the "soul boy" missing since 1995 got to?

How socialist dreamer beat DARPA in the invention of the Internet, with Cybersyn.