read
The Dark Valley by Piers Brendon
Although Franco called himself a fascist - Actually a Falangist, I do not equate him with Mussolini or Hitler in that he was never elected to office but came to power in the Spanish Civil War. The big difference I have seen between Fascism and Boleshi-communism is that in almost every case the Fascists were elected bu the people to office - Germany, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Argentina,Romania, Bulgaria all come to mind. Bolshevist Communist regimes were mainly the result of violent revolution, palace coups or just imposed on a people by Soviet occupation...
This was one of my arguments about too much democracy in an earlier thread - you know that one where I was called a moron by JR
One of the reasons a populistic-fascist movement did not take root here - and there were a few that started in the 1930's is that we have the system of checks and balances the prevent any one part of government from taking complete control.
If you can believe it - Hitler was a fan of Roosevelt in the 1930's and thought he had a lot of the right ideas in his three letter agencies... WPA, NRA (national recovery act not the real NRA) CCC, etc...
If you read the acts and laws done by Roosevelt that were struck down by the SCoUS you can see that he was leaning towards a left-wing fascistic state. Of and by the way in most cases the fascists were pretty left wing.
Mussolini was pretty left wing having split from the Socialists, Ernst Rhoem (sp) was VERY left wing and before he was killed was in talks about JOINING the NAZIs with the Socialists and Communists to smash once and for all the Junkers. That was one of the reasons for the 'night of the long knives' Peron was very left until his own movement was taken over by the right wing of his party, etc...