I've read a number of your posts and I typically enjoy them, though I don't agree with a good deal of your assertions; which is fine. It's what it's all about. And this post is no different. While I can appreciate the connection between radical youngsters raising hell in the Weimar Republic and the American movements in the '60s, there's a also a number of disconnects.

Firstly, the Weimar Republic's situation was the result of the Entente's short-sighted and disastrous retribution against Germany. The destruction of the war and the resulting economic hardship was unprecedented on such a scale. While it stands to reason that the following generation of German youth might gravitate toward radial ideas after reading Teutonic philosophy, I hardly think that can be blamed for Nationalist Socialism taking root. No. It was Anti-Liberal ideals that birthed and fostered the Nazi party's ascent. This isn't revisionism.

A movement rooted in nationalistic pride, xenophobic fear, Christian relativism, and bigoted culture hardly exemplifies the Liberal mindset, regardless of what Age you pluck it from for inspection.

'After all, fascism is by its very nature a movement of the young, exalting passion and action over reason and discussion.'

This statement is only half right. Fascism does indeed thrive on irrational action, but it's not born of just the young. Fascism is reactionary. When societies feel threatened, they contract to ultranationalistic impulses. Mussolini's power didn't derive from university students. It came from the mercantile and land owning classes fearful of unions and other workers' efforts to better their lot. When it was Hitler's time, he didn't rely on university students for his base of support. Again, it was the established class, reacting to the economic hardships and fear of the masses that provided Hitler the opening he needed to instill fear and reactionist sentiment throughout entire population.

The '60s radical movements in the United States is another disingenuous connection to fascism. These radical groups, while certainly operating outside the bounds of law, were small and essentially ineffective - it's misleading and erroneous to compare them to the political factions that eventually thrived in Italy and Germany. Also, the groups, as misguided as their actions were, had no other recourse in an America that systematically oppressed them after the abolishment of slavery. Jim Crow, among other policies derived from 'divine' right of white Christian America, was a conservative notion alongside the Dixiecrats - now notoriously regarded as Liberal in name only.

I understand the impulse to label university students as a hotbed of fascist tendency, especially with the screeching that occurs on today's campuses. It's true, many campuses across the country have shamelessly resorted to the silencing of ideas and voices these activists groups deemed offensive (and on my behalf, no less); but to compare that to symptoms of fascism? No. I'll agree that it's an ingredient for the recipe as America's 'Old Guard' has embraced xenophobic immigration policies and the Religious Right has convinced each other that they are the oppressed. Trump's base has rejected intellectualism for cultism. The Far Right has embraced economic isolationism and nativism in an increasingly globalized world. These are the acts of an irrational society.

My two cents.