As I’ve been researching a book on precisely this point for the last few months, I found the Times story particularly interesting. The fact is that this effort to use fascism as a cudgel against your enemies is nothing new on the Left. Indeed, you could argue that the effort to redefine fascism to fit George Bush is a sign of increasing intellectually honesty. In the past academics wouldn’t even care that they were using the word wrong. I don’t want to spoil the book, but let’s just say that this is all nonsense on stilts on the cone of a rocket to the moon.

Fascism is socialism in one state. Nazism is socialism for one race. It is the rejection of intenational socialism in the face of the obvious fact that individuals seek more meaning in their lives than the sanitary principles of international socialism could provide in the 1920s and 1930s. The Soviets — along with their fellow travellers — invented the idea that Fasicism is right-wing in order to discredit the threat Fascism posed to their own popularity. This is why, for example, Leon Trostky was labelled a “fascist” the second he fell out of favor with Stalin. It’s not like Trostky became a free-market right-winger in terms of his philosophy. He was merely a Marxist heretic and Soviet apostate and therefor dubbed a fascist.

If you go back and look at the political agenda of real, self-described fascists there is almost nothing recognizably “conservative” in the American sense save for its nods to patriotism. Its economic agenda, its educational approach, its social policies are all thoroughly socialist according to any definition we have today.

Consider this nonsense from the Times article:

“Whenever people start locking up enemies because of national security without much legal care, you are coming close,” said Robert Paxton, an emeritus professor of history at Columbia University and the author of a forthcoming book called “Fascism in Action,” a comparative study that tries to distill the essence of fascism.

So: according to this definition, every Marxist, Soviet and Maoist nation in the history of the 20th century was Fascist. I could go on and on and on. But that’s what the book is for.