Associate professor of history John Broich said of the film's premise of connecting liberalism with fascism that the film committed a
category error, "a fallacy in which one compares or conflates things that actually belong in different categories". Broich said, "Fascism and leftism belong in fundamentally different categories, because the essence of fascism was, and is, anti-leftism." He said, "While historians certainly debate the details, they all agree with this basic precept about the core of fascism." Broich quoted fascism scholar
Robert Paxton, "[Fascism is] dictatorship against the Left amidst popular enthusiasm."
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