Use Wikipedia with extreme caution. The Web-based encyclopedia has become a frequently used tool, based on the assumption that anyone can edit it and thus the entries will be balanced, objective and neutral.

One example calls that into question.

Under "fascism," the entry is highly biased and partisan. Moreover, attempts to balance it with facts have been rejected by the moderators -- whoever those mysterious people are.

The article portrays fascism as a right-wing philosophy of government.

Wikipedia's article bases its interpretation on what it calls the "traditional" political spectrum.

"Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left-right spectrum," it says.

There is no traditional political spectrum.

Anyone can construct his own, but any rational spectrum of politics would run from total government control on the left to complete individual freedom on the right.  Fascism as historically practiced in any nation never has involved individual freedom to any extent.

There is nothing in conservative philosophy in any of its variants that endorses a totalitarian government.

The left identified conservatives as "fascists" because, following Hitler's abrogation of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and invasion of the USSR during World War II, communists around the world began identifying fascism as "right-wing," and the characterization was widely accepted by journalists and academics.

But the Nazis were socialists, who differed with communists only on the means, not the ends.  This is covered in considerable detail in Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg.

Goldberg documented how liberal philosophy historically has been much more aligned with fascism than with conservative philosophy.  (He specifically and repeatedly stated, however, that he was not calling modern liberals "fascists.")

"The quintessential fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade-school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore," he wrote.

He noted the fascist-like policies and beliefs of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt and also recounted the New Deal's mutual admiration society with Italian dictator Mussolini.

Goldberg's book is not listed as a source in Wikipedia's long article, and the moderators rebuff efforts to include it as a reference.

In 1945, George Orwell said, "The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'"  This remains true today.