M-3: reboot got it. Mussolini’s definition is succinct and apt, and probably of more merit for its historical context than a dictionary’s definition.

If Hitler had simply been a dictator his Nazi vision would have been called a dictatorship; the deliberate combination of corporate control of government with political dominance was its own new brand of totalitarianism, remarkably similar to state-centric communism but with a decidedly bloodier trend toward monied interests (I.G. Farben and their exploitation of Jewish slave labor comes immediately to mind).

In that light it might not be wholly out of line to draw comparisons to Bush today; however, overall there isn’t a lot of what Hitler pulled present now to make the comparison truly valid. We lack systematized incarceration and slaughter of millions for the “crime” of simply being different, for instance; and while the Bush admin is definitely one of the most opaque in US history, it still lacks all the power-grabishness that the NSDAP had in, say, 1937 or so.

They’re still a year and more away from being constitutionally shorn of power, of course, and they might try a coup before the clock runs out — but why bother, when they’re all quite set for life now with their deeply entrenched privatized profiteering war excursions?

My personal term to describe our government today is neo-fascism. It’s fascism mixed with religious fundamentalism and a putatively democratic perspective, which makes it particularly insidious.

However, a direct comparison to the US now with pre-Nazi Germany (say, 1935 or thereabouts) is probably not appropriate, even if we include religious fanaticism. This is something different; it’s still quite new, and it’ll probably be decades before we’re really able to label or fix just how thoroughly US democracy has been undermined by Bush, Cheney, Rove and their ilk.