Dear Conservative Politicians: Please Don't Defend Fascism, Okay? Thanks.

The rap on me is that I'm often seen as being too hard on conservatives and don't defend them nearly enough. My view is that I'd be more than happy enough to defend them if they chose to do something that's actually defensible once in a while. That'd be pretty great.

But one thing I'm not going to do is destroy my own credibility of self-esteem by giving my stamp of approval to things that are stupid, offensive or stupidly offensive. That makes me a pretty shitty team player, I know.

One of things that I decided early that I wasn't going to associate myself with is the recent conservative (and particularly the Glenn Beck, Breitbart asshole, Tea Party variety of conservatism) revisionist history that paints fascism as a left-wing ideology.

That's actually part of a larger trend in modern conservatism, which refuses to recognize any of its evils, either ancient or recent. Watergate, for example, is an inescapable reality, so Tea Partiers point to Richard Nixon's creation of the Environment Protection Agency and establishment of affirmative action to paint him as a liberal and thereby absolve conservatism of his sins. Of course, that ignores the fact that every Republican in America vigorously defended Nixon until the last minute, but whatever.

Look, just because The National Socialist German Workers Party had the word "socialist" in it did not mean that the Nazis were left wing. They decidedly were not. Because fascism, first in Italy, then in Germany was a response to the rise of communism, Actual communists and socialists didn't do especially well in either regime. They were largely killed or imprisoned before the fascists went after the Jews. In fact, fascist anti-Semitsm was largely predicated on the canard that communism was a Jewish ideology, which is pretty hilarious when you consider that they also believed that the Jews controlled all of the banks.

The fascist economic model was a command economy, to be sure. But it wasn't an example of the people controlling the means of production, which is a foundational tenent of Marxism. Fascism was the partnering of government with big business, and business did very well indeed under that arrangement. The folks at Krupp, for example, only pretended that they were victims of persecution after the war.

It's also important to remember that fascism was premised on expansionist wars of conquest. Even in Western capitalist democracies employ command economies in wartime. One can make a very credible argument that in spreading their production facilities into every congressional district in America, defense contractors have created a virtual form of fascism. The United States government therefore cannot effectively review its interventionist foreign policy without immediately throwing hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work. Defense contractors also operate on a "cost plus" model, which guarantees profits regardless of cost overruns and inefficiencies. This is one of the reasons that President Eisenhower warned against the establishment of a "military-industrial complex."

Fascism is nationalist, while socialism and communism decidedly are not. The latter two movements are internationalist and believe that nationalism impedes the advancement of the ideology.

Having said that, just because conservatives shouldn't lie about fascism doesn't mean that we should run around defending it. And it's particularly regrettable that no one gave Silvio Berlusconi that memo.

Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi praised Benito Mussolini for “having done good” despite the Fascist dictator's anti-Jewish laws, immediately sparking expressions of outrage as Europe on Sunday held Holocaust remembrances.

Berlusconi also defended Mussolini for allying himself with Hitler, saying he likely reasoned that it would be better to be on the winning side.

The media mogul, whose conservative forces are polling second in voter surveys ahead of next month's election, spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony in Milan to commemorate the Holocaust.

I never thought I'd have to say this out loud, but not only should you not defend fascism, it's the height of bad manners to do so at a Holocaust commemoration ceremony. People get awfully touchy about that sort of thing.

“It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then,” Berlusconi said of Mussolini's support for Hitler. “Certainly the (Italian) government then, fearing that German power would turn into a general victory, preferred to be allied with Hitler's Germany rather than oppose it.”

Berlusconi added that “within this alliance came the imposition of the fight against, and extermination of, the Jews. Thus, the racial laws are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good.”

Berlusconi ignores a couple of important facts in his apologia of fascism.

First, Il Duce was the senior partner in Europe's fascist alliance, having come to power almost a full decade before Hitler did. Hitler looked to Mussolini for support, but was not taken seriously. It was only after the militarization of the Rhineland that he became Hitler's second banana.

Second, the Italian fascists were engaged in a war of conquest long before the German invasion of Poland, having attacked Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1935. Mussolini also intervened on the side of the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Berlusconi seems to imply that Mussolini feared a German invasion of Italy had he not allied with Hitler which is nonsense. As we have already seen, the Italian Fascists were no strangers to foreign aggression. Moreover, the German high command had absolutely no respect for Italian forces, seeing them as more of a hindrance than anything else.

Yes, there was a German occupation of Italy, but that came only after Mussolini was dismissed and arrested by King Victor Emmanuel III.

Berlusconis's assertions to the contrary aside, the Fascist Italians were racist almost a decade before the publication of Hitler's Mein Kampf, endorsing a policy eerily similar to lebensraum. As early as 1920, the future Il Duce endorsed the taking of lands from the "inferior and barbarian" Slavs. Throughout the 1920s, long before the Beer Hall Putsch, Mussolini spoke about the "hierarchy of races." While it's true that the Manifesto of Race wasn't enacted until 1938, the seeds of it were always present in the Fascist movement.

As you might imagine, pretty much everybody's pissed at Silvio right now.

Reactions of outrage, along with a demand that Berlusconi be prosecuted for promoting Fascism, quickly followed his words.

Berlusconi's praise of Mussolini constitutes “an insult to the democratic conscience of Italy,” said Rosy Bindi, a centre-left leader. “Only Berlusconi's political cynicism, combined with the worst historic revisionism, could separate the shame of the racist laws from the Fascist dictatorship.”

Italian laws enacted following the country's disastrous experience in the war forbid the defence of Fascism. A candidate for local elections, Gianfranco Mascia, pledged that he and his supporters will present a formal complaint on Monday to Italian prosecutors, seeking to have Berlusconi prosecuted.

It should be noted that defence of Fascism is one of the very few things that Silvio Berlusconi isn't currently on trial for. He was convicted of tax fraud last October and is currently on trial for prostitution and statutory rape. If nothing else, it's pretty impressive that a 76 year old man can be the one-man crime spree that Silvio is.

Even more incredible is the fact that Berlusconi's People of Freedom party is running second in next month's national elections. With one-third of the electorate undecided, there's a very real chance that he can be elected to a record fourth term of office, just 15 months after having resigned.  Being that he's Berlusconi, he's made several differing and conflicting statements on whether he would be premier if People of Freedom wins the election.

One thing that People of Freedom has going for it, and this goes to Berlusconi's political genius, is that it's populated with wall-to-wall hot chicks, recruited mostly from his television empire. Imagine if, say, Vanna White was Senate majority leader in the 1980s. Italy is well on its way to having its fourth government like that. Were it not for the fact that she's Czech, Denise Milani would be the ideal head of the Italian government.

And that's probably the way it should be. If you live in an ungovernable country with a criminal prime minister, you might as well have an aching hard-on to distract you from your impending doom. If the government can't meet your needs, you should at least be able to jerk off to it. That only seems fair.