A half century's slander: it isn't conservatives who must answer for fascism.(Cover story)

IF you search Lexis-Nexis for articles from just the last two years in which "Bush" and "fascist" are used in the same sentence, the results exceed 2,000. Search for the years encompassing his entire term, and smoke will start to come out of your computer.

A stack of recent books have branded Bush, Cheney, Republicans, conservatives, the Christian Right, and, of course, "neocons" as fascists, Nazis, or sympathizers with fascism and Nazism. Feminist author (and former Gore consultant) Naomi Wolf argues that America has already gone Nazi, equating the United States of today with the Germany of the early 1930s. The dyspeptic leftwing journalist Joe Conason warns that America is on the verge of fascism in It Can Happen Here. The Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges's book on the Christian Right gets straight to the point, beginning with its title: "American Fascists."

Today's F-bombers will tell you that conservatives have brought such charges on themselves by supporting George W. Bush and "his" War on Terror. What passes for the Left's argument is by now so familiar that we need not dwell on it for long. Nazis cracked down on civil liberties; America is cracking down on civil liberties. Nazis used terror and, allegedly, so does the Bush administration. Nazis invaded countries; America invaded countries. Hitler lied; Bush lied. Nazis rounded up Jews after labeling them enemies of the state; Bush is rounding up Muslims and labeling them enemies of the state. Hitler was a bad guy; Bush is a bad guy. Auschwitz, Guantanamo: What's in a name?

But this is nothing new. In 2000, when Bush was still promising a "humble" foreign policy, Jerrold Nadler denounced Republican efforts in the Florida recount as having "the whiff of fascism." Jesse Jackson lamented that, in the hanging-chad controversy, Holocaust survivors were being victimized "again." Earlier that year, Bill Clinton denounced the Texas GOP platform as a "fascist tract."

During the fight over the Contract with America, Rep. Charlie Rangel complained that "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things." (This is technically accurate in that Hitler wasn't pushing term limits for committee chairmen and "zero based" budgeting.) When Newt Gingrich invited black congressmen to Capitol Hill social events, Rep. Major Owens responded by declaring, "These are people who are practicing genocide with a smile. They're worse than Hitler.... We're going to have cocktail-party genocide."

Ronald Reagan was of course called a fascist by Communists from his earliest days fighting Reds in Hollywood. Before that, "everyone knew" that Barry Goldwater was a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer.

Two generations of Hollywood scriptwriters, actors, and producers have been warning that the fascist peril lurks beneath the surface of the Right. Pleasantville, Falling Down, Fight Club, American Beauty, American History X, and countless other films advanced this idea. In the film adaptation of Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears, the all-too-real threat of Islamist terror is switched to a cabal of rich, white, conservative businessmen who just happen to be--you guessed it--Nazis. Even after 9/11, it seems liberals think the fascist Right is America's real, and only, existential threat.