Well, then forgive me

I'm all for Marxist-bashing, but this is ridiculous.

I mean, sure: few things have made me as angry recently as the inability of anyone writing about V for Vendetta to refrain from propogating Alan Moore's ignorance of the meaning of the word Fascism. Moore originally wrote the graphic novel in the mid-Eighties, he has said, as a "rebuke" to Thatcherism, stating,

We had supposed that it would take a nuclear war to make England veer towards fascism. In the end all it took was giving people the right to buy their own council house.

I find it distinctly odd that he should attempt to rebuke the least statist government Britain has had since, probably, Gladstone's by setting V in a dystopian statist Britain. This appears to have occurred to precious few of those whose job it has been over the last month or so to come up with copy about the new cinematic version for various publications, who have, to a man, perpetuated the fatuous meme that Thatcher's was a fascist government because a writer of graphic novels said so. They may be interested to read this list of fourteen defining characteristics of fascism (I know, I know: they'll have to get the link from a blog they actually read. Permit me the posture, at least), on which I suggest they will find two or three, certainly no more than four at the outside, evinced by the Thatcher Government. (At least as many, if not actually the same ones, are characteristic of the Blair Government.) A corresponding list of defining characteristics of free societies would certainly bear far greater resemblance to Thatcher's Britain.

Ideological muddles aside, however, V for Vendetta has one great thing going for it: it's about the struggle against oppressive government, something that usually gets American conservatives all tent-trousered. This one, unfortunately, is a religious conservative, which means a full sense of humour bypass, the attachment of an overactive sanctimony gland and the graft of a blind spot for allegory.

Let's go back to that list. There at number 8: Religion and Government are intertwined. In other words, in V's world, because religion is a tool easily used to manipulate public opinion, Christianity has become part of the fabric of the Fascist state. Is this a slur on Christianity, "Dr." Ted Baehr, or is it merely an honest depicition of the underhand tactics of a repressive regime? You fuckin' dolt.