" on July 9 the conservative Chicago Sun-Times (one of the United States' top 50 papers) ran a commentary on US fascism, stating that "fascism' is not an exaggeration", and adding that anyone who doubted this "doesn't know what fascism is".
"And indeed, the slippery slope of "groupthink" in effect provided the basis for the psycho-dynamics dominating the rise of 1930s fascism, its proponents of a "new order" perceiving endless lies, propaganda, repression, mass violence, and even mass murder as legitimate means to what they perceived as their "noble" ends, versus tragic and criminal delusions."

As discussed in ATol's July 8 article, the process of groupthink then in effect spawns "'socially patterned defects' that enabled large groups of people to adjust themselves comfortably to a system that, humanly speaking, is 'fundamentally at odds with our basic existential and human needs'". Burston then noted that this resulted in "deficiencies, or traits, or attitudes which don't generate internal conflict when, in fact, they should".

In a purely American vein, Parenti recalled that former US secretary of state John Foster Dulles had said: "To get the people to support large military budgets and intervention, you've got to conjure up a threat, and you've got to make this scenario of 'one nation is a hero, another nation is a villain'. It's got to be hero versus villain."

Notably, with the Nuremberg Tribunals, society long ago determined that those who may commit criminal acts while influenced by groupthink are nevertheless criminals, and should be judged accordingly.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG27Aa01.html