I tried sending this earlier. Apologies if you get duplicate posts... OK, I'll take a crack at it. Fascism in its classic European form is distinguished by the following three characteristics. 1. A populist appeal to middle strata on the basis of perceived threats from both above and below them in the social scale. 2. The location of the solution to this problem in excluding the representives of the threatening upper and lower strata from influence in the state. A willingness to abrogate forms of bourgeois democracy may also be necessary to meet this criterion. 3. The promulgation of an ideology of nationalism and national superiority usually coupled with some kind of racist appeal. Without going into his history in detail it seems to me Buchanan meets these criteria, knows he meets these criteria, and consequently has had no problem identifying himself with the legal cases against extradition of various WWII era Eastern European fascists. The recently concluded Louisiana contest between Buchanan and Gramm can then be interpreted as a contest between a fascist candidate and a bourgeois economist attempting to look like a populist. The fascist won. Reuters reports that British bookmakers have just halved Buchanan's odds on becoming president from 100/1 to 50/1. Gramm's odds "plummeted" from 14/1 to 33/1. Terry McDonough I might add that being Catholic Buchanan adds the Southern European appeals to religion and traditional family values.
