The extreme right wing tends towards Fascism or corporatism, and Hitler was one of the biggest proponents of that. The extreme left wing tends towards communism which brings in Stalin. There's been plenty of occasions where the Democratic party has had Stalin mentioned here in regard to them.

Both are fair play, because both wings have a tendency to extremism and both have a record of how that turned out. Is Hitler more offensive to speak about than Stalin? Why?

Let's not forget McCarthy and his campaign of smearing people as being communists. Republicans have always been the anticommunist party like the nazis were. By most well known measures the Bush administration is Fascist in its favouritism to corporations. Pre emptive war was also used by the Nazis and Mussolini as we know.

That doesn't mean the US is on a slippery slope to a Hitler like regime or Bush is morphing into Hitler's more extreme policies. On the other hand no one really knows whether an extreme regime eventually does end up on a slippery slope. The safest way is to stay away from extremism.

Calling Bush a nazi may cost the Democratic Party votes or even the election. They are doing that though, their supporters are and they have the right to free speech. I think Bush's administration is the most fascist since Franco, and people are seeing this and protesting. The Orwellian comparisons are interesting, Orwell fought against Franco and many of the ideas come from Fascism not Communism.

The sub text to all this is that white people are in charge and they don't do this sort of thing. Don't forget Germany, Italy, and Spain were all white countries and they slid into Fascist dictatorship. Most of South America is controlled by the whiter parts of their populations and they had no problems supporting right wing dictatorships like Somoza and Pinochet there.

Fascism probably evolved from feudalism and the aristocracy, which is a feature of all Europe. So the sense that the US people by nature are too sensible to fall into something like that is a dangerous one. Most of them are descended from people who did fall into it.

Does that mean Bush wants to be a dictator? I don't know, but he seems to have flirted with the idea in some comments like most leaders probably do. If his disastrous economic policies create an economic collapse, which more and more economists are warning about then a dictatorship may be more possible. A lot of people see warning signs, don't trust Bush, and so fear the worst. That fear may be no more realistic than claiming the Democratic Party wants to make the US into a socialist state though.