Over at Matthew Yglesias there’s a nice little piece. The basics of his post , that fascism cannot possibly be seen as anything other than a right wing movement, and that the Laffer Curve is just doodling on a napkin with no relevance to the real world : well, sufficiently fatuous not to need rebuttal.

If you do want some rebuttal, have a look at this article from the Spectator
( free reg req ) by the Italian Senator Paolo Guzzanti :

“What is often forgotten is that, unlike Hitler, Mussolini was the leader of the revolutionary Left and that Fascism was socialist and Jacobin in origin. Lenin considered Mussolini the only genuine revolutionary in Italy. The Fascist party — like the Communist party — was born in Italy out of the numerous schisms within the Socialist party and the impotence of the democratic system.

To describe Mussolini as right-wing, therefore, is grossly to oversimplify politics and history. Mussolini remained to the end a violent and wholehearted enemy of the bourgeoisie, capitalism, the free market and all those values that allowed the birth of democracy in Britain, America and, with one or two hiccups, in France. “

But my favourite part comes from the comments section, from someone called Rea :

If you infer from the name of the party that the Nazis were socialists, you should likewise infer that the rulers of the People’s Republic of China are Republicans

Well, yes I do assume that the Communist current rulers of China are Republicans. They have an elected President ( a limited franchise to be sure, but ? ) as head of state, which is pretty much the definition. I mean , what did you think they were ? Monarchists ?

Hat tip to Jeff