Yep in America a lot of people tend to lump fascism and communism in the same category, but that's because of the examples in history, not because they've analysed the beliefs of both ideologies and come to the conclusion they're the same! Admittedly, if Hitler had called his party the German Phalange or something other than "socialist" the comparison might never have been made. They'd just have been examples of totalitarianism/authoritarianism. And also, Hitler is the uber-fascist and is the ultimate comparison to anything anyone disagrees with. Any similarities with anything Hitler did and opponents will make accusations of fascism. Hitler was authoritarian, so was Stalin, therefore, communism is fascist. Israel oppresses a people, so did Hitler, therefore, Israel is fascist.
The Tory who is the topic of this thread went through a similar process. The BNP are left wing economically, so were some historical fascists, therefore fascism originated out of the left. Obviously there is no "left wing fascist tradition" but as I said in my first post, when various labels have negative connotations attached to them, everybody goes out of their way to distance themselves from that label and attempt to attach that label to their opponents. The Tory is attempting to distance the "right" from the negative "far right" by going full circle and instead attaching it to the "left" (their opponents). The same thing happens with the word "terrorist".
It really is just an argument over semantics and probably has less to do with opposing the BNP than it does smearing political opponents...
