I am chided with not having read the book. Fair-do's. My remarks are remarks on a review.

These remarks come from someone who has been on the right all his life and who has been appalled by the over-use of the word "fascist" as applied to right-wingers. It seems sensible to protect lefties from being the target of the same nonsense (even when they've been culprits).

It seems a mistake to label all vicious totalitarianism as fascism. I don't know who was the more irrational and vicious, Stalin or Hitler. I am not even sure whether fascism is a subset of nazism or the other way round. Ignorant me. But they seem the same sort of thing. (Stuff to do with a strong leader, racial purity, longing for the Roman Empire.) You can mix in bits of socialism, as the fascists did, and it still doesn't quite mean that socialism is necessarily fascist.

So I am remain content that totalitarian fascism is something which happened in Germany, Spain and Italy. Totalitarian socialism happened in the USSR and China (and in places in theri maw). Neither is happening now anywhere.

But the review seems to suggest that because socialism has sometimes and in extreme been fascist, then all socialism is fascist. It also seems to say that all liberalism is more or less socialist, so fascist too.

(I suppose I ought to defend the Islamists from the frequent charge that they are fascist on the same grounds.)