He made a statement, however erroneously, that Europe is moving from the center to the right and left and that (implicitly) at the far right and the far left are dangerous forces in Europe (fascism and communism, respectively).
Geert actually isn't that conservative and Beck most certainly didn't call him a fascist.
That said, Beck needs to be very careful not to leave the wrong impression when discussing fascism in Europe.
But I agree with you, I did not hear Beck outright call Geert a fascist
HOLD ON A MINUTE THERE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhbWEI1mLpA
Beck CLEARLY said that the RIGHt in EUROPE IS FACIST!
He called Gert Wilders FAR RIGHT!
That is a CLEAR insinuation Wilders is FACIST!
If Wilders is FAR RIGHT and the RIGHT IS FACIST, then WILDERS IS FACIST!
Beck cannot escape this accusation!!
You have bought into a Big Lie. Don't feel bad, many have, the Left has been quite effective in pushing it for the last 65 years. Fascism is simply not Leftist. It was/is at core a socialist movement.
I would encourage you to read Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, which covers much of the history behind this. For right now, I offer you this quote by a trained contemporaneous observer, which I keep handy on my FR profile page:
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under "communism" and "fascism." As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, "the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of un-freedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."-- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
Of course, when Hayek was speaking of "the real enemy, the man with whom they [Nazis and Communists] had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type", he was speaking of a classical Liberal, or what we in the U.S. call a conservative. Liberal being yet another term the Left has misrepresented and mangled the meaning of in our time.
What's really funny is that sometimes, Glenn DOESN'T appear to make that mistake.