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If this is old news to you, great! If not, read-up.

Laurence Britt wrote a fantastic article for Free Inquiry Magazine back in 2003. He produced a list of 14 commonalities shared by a culturally diverse set of criminal regimes:

For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia.

Since then, there’s been some great discussion about Britt’s article. I don’t think the coffin has been slammed shut yet, but the United States definitely hits all fourteen points — we’re talking about a matter of degrees here, and the window for real change is closing fast.

Project for the Old American Century breaks it down point by point here.

Also, here’s a downloadable pamphlet from them to pass around at parties and a powerful examination of Bush’s fascism.

Listen via The White Rose Society to Mike Malloy read through these in 2004.

As an added benefit, understanding the similarity between the political path the current administration has set us on and Mussolini’s pet project will lay bare the real dangers/motivations of the recent republican hijacking of the term. The Islamic fundamentalists who attacked us consider theocracy, not fascism, their system of choice. The term Islamic fascists doesn’t fit. Knowing that the term actually applies to them, Bush and the gang want to water it down, destroy the meaning, and divert attention from the real poster-boys. Likewise, they wouldn’t risk condemning theocracy lest they lose their base.

Sen. Russ Feingold and many others have called them out, but for my money, Thom Hartmann lays this out best in his article over on Common Dreams.