When writing a polemic designed to warn your readers about incipient American fascism, here are some helpful tips for what not to do (so that you do not end up sounding like Naomi Wolf).  To save time, I have limited it just to eight points:

1) Do not start by referring to the overwhelmingly popular military coup in Thailand that was blessed by the Thai king and helped remove from power an incompetent and corrupt demagogue.  Mentioning this will only make your readers wonder why the same thing might not be tried here to good effect.

2) Do not, if you can help it, refer at any time to Pinochet, whose lasting legacy will be that he made Chile into one of the relatively wealthier, more stable and least basketcase-like Latin American countries that it still is today.

3) Do not write the following: “I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds [bold mine-DL] of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.”  Other kinds of fascism?  Like the Australian kind?  What other kinds of fascism besides the European are there?  (Hint: there is no Islamofascism)

4) Do not go through the entire article and fail to define fascism.

5) Do not set up fascism as the opposite of democracy or as equivalent with the policies of authoritarian caudillos, since this will show you to be entirely ignorant of what fascism is.

6) Do not refer to Rev. Niemoeller when talking about Guantanamo.

7) Do not liken the Florida recount fights to the rise of the fascisti.  James Baker was not the second coming of D’Annunzio.

8) Whatever you do, DO NOT compare the firing of the eight US Attorneys to anything related to Joseph Goebbels.

The sad thing about Wolf’s article is that many of the things she objects to are usurpations, bad policies or violations of fundamental rights.  Instead of focusing specifically on these, she has to make it into a tiresome declaration of her zealous anti-fascism, in the process showing that she doesn’t know what the word fascist means and thus manages to devalue the legitimate criticisms she was trying to make.