Obama As Fascist...Umm I Don't Think So

"You’ve got to be careful using the term ‘economic fascism’ in the right way, so it doesn’t come off as extreme.”
—Saul Anzus, former Michigan Republican Party chairman, quoted by John Harwood in today’s Times. [tw: you may vaguely recall Anzus, he was one of the team of "all-star" candidates for the Republican national committee chairmanship won by Mike Steele]

TW: Apparently some on the right are attempting to label Obama (and his cohorts) as fascists. Democrat, liberal, socialist, radical, terrorist and Muslim have not worked so they are attempting a bit of jujitsu as fascist is typically used pejoratively by those on the left describing the right not vice versa. So what is a fascist exactly, it is one of those words oft used with far more connotations than well-understood and/or accepted definitions. I turned to Wikipedia:

From Wikipedia:
"Fascism is a radical, authoritarian, and nationalist political ideology.[1][2][3][4] Fascists advocate the creation of a single-party state.[5] Fascists believe that nations and races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in combat against the weak.[6] Fascist governments forbid and suppress criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.[7] Fascism opposes class conflict and blames capitalist liberal democracies for creating class conflict and in turn blames communists for exploiting class conflict.[8] Fascists reject the individualism and self-interest of laissez-faire capitalism.[9] Many fascist leaders have claimed to support a "Third Way" in economic policy, which they believed superior to both the rampant individualism of unrestrained capitalism and the severe control of state communism.[10][11] This was to be achieved by a form of government control over business and labor (called "the corporate state" by Mussolini).[12] Some call this corporatism[13] while some others do not use the term corporatism to describe the fascist economic arrangement.[14]
Following the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II and the publicity surrounding the atrocities committed during the period of fascist governments, the term fascist has been used as a pejorative word.[15]"

TW: There is much going on this the above definitions which is why those who wish to taint others with the odor of fascism are able to so do frequently with at least some degree of accuracy. By focusing on the "economic" angle Anzus et al. are presumably reacting to Obama's aggressive policies to address the Great Contraction via financial bailouts etc. Obama's policies have also been described as corporatist (a whole other definitional alley but very roughly a concept associated with picking private industry winners and losers) in particular related to the recent actions towards the automakers.

Without digressing into the validity of those assertions, I would merely point one to the other aspects of the fascist definition- nationalism, suppression of dissent, single party state, paranoid fear of communism (or perhaps terrorism) etc. which I would think would be hard to pin on Obama et al.

Those who use the fascist label almost always do so pejoratively to recall Mussolini, Franco and most aggressively Hitler. I believe those associations with Obama are a touch challenging as well. Back to the drawing board Saul.