now, that I think about it, I have one more comment about the article itself. Fascism, the way I understand it teaches racial supremacy. In its German execution, it boiled down to a hierarchy of races and within races (actually, within white race) - hierarchy of ethnicities. Aryans, Romans, Slavs, Jews.... (did I miss anyone?)

Now, I am not familiar with the Baath party ideology, but I do not recall hearing theses about the supremacy of the Arab "race" from Saddam & Co. The anti-Israeli stance is based, in my opinion, not on any racial supremacy (heck, both are Semites), but on purely geopolitical and religious grounds.

So, I am starting to have some serious doubts in "Iraq is the new basinet of fascism" theory.

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German Nazism is often considered a version of fascism, and it certainly belongs to the broad definition of fascism. However, the original Fascism, of Italian extraction, was not particularly racist.

Baath was created after the German Nazi party, but AFAIK it did not borrow its official view of the Semitic ethnic groups as untermenschen, for a number of reasons. :-)

So, whichever definition of fascism we use, it does not fit 100%, but is not completely foreign to them either.

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