The BNP's Lee Barnes - a legend in his own lunchtime

people with mental health problems are stigmatised enough as it is, equating them with the fash is a big insult and encourages this reactionary scapegoating. The fash are wrong becuase they're racist scum that violently support the powerful.

In defence of the original article, I don't think it is claiming the mentally ill or those with mental health problems (sorry, forgot the subtle difference between these) are all fascists, just that all fascists are mentally ill. So they aren't equating them, they are just saying one is a subset of the other.

If you think fascists aren't mentally ill in some way, that implies fascism is a perfectly rational belief that perfectly sane people can legitimately have.

Fascism is authoritarianism, and as a fully-qualified cod psychologist I would suggest its adherents have some kind of sociopathy or psychosis where they think they are above everyone else.

is a combination of physcopathic tendencies with mass genocide & perversions against other living creatures under the belief that this can benefit the perpetrators superior ethnic or national group & that this good for the human race.
Fascism can appeal to religious & national fundamentalists & some "true believers" who may have not learnt or been taught how to deal with developmental disorders like autism& aspergers which sometimes can encourage intense black & white thinking unless the person is introduced into a more intergrated viewpoint.
The dangers seem to manifest when fascists gather & organise for takeovers, final solutions& "purity", therefore its a good idea to keep them seperate & encourage a different viewpoint, their ideology should be viewed as distatefully as violent paedophilia.
You could argue other totalitarian ideologies when taken to the extreme are as bad like Marxism where the vangaurd of proletarian dictatorship & dialectic materialism are always right & Capitalism where market forces & corporations are always right.



Thats why many anarchists believe in universalism & politically direct democracy by referendums & consensus with delegates from the regional to planetary level, with what could be described as grand coalitions rather than bickering & warmaking party politics.There is no excuse for totalitarianism during "a crisis in democracy", as described by fascists, capitalists like Brezinski or marxist dictators.
Better democracies have been strived for since ancient Greek times where in Athens wealth was not allowed to influence the successful city democracy, in more modern international times various people have tried to help achieve it from Bakunin in his slightly rigid "revolutionary catechism" to Naom Chomsky.

Labelling those you disagree with as mentally ill is something which the evil Soviet Empire went in for in a big way. Luckily in advanced countries only a few loonies indulge in the practice.

The term "mentally ill" just means you aren't thinking logically - that your internal model of the world doesn't match very well with reality. Or does someone have a better definition?

Otherwise you could say that psychopathic mass murderers aren't mentally ill, they just have a different opinion on ethics to most people.

What kind of things would you class as genuine mental illness? Are megalomania and narcissism mental illnesses?

This disagreement just comes down to definitions really.