Neoliberals, late capitalists and free trade advocates reading this will probably take exception at being termed fascist, and they would have a point. What is described above might be more properly termed "market absolutism", or "the market orthodoxy", and tarring it with the brush of fascism does not help us in understanding its pernicious nature. Further, applying the fascist label to this most pervasive of economic and political orthodoxies only dilutes our understanding of what fascism truly is. Global capitalism and fascism share the same enemies, but that does not make them the same thing. Global capitalism itself is resisted from both the left and the extreme right, but this does not bring the two ends of the political spectrum any closer together.
In order to resist global capitalism, we must have an understanding of what it is and how it operates. It is clear that its operation is not analogous to the rise of totalitarian nationalism in the 20th century, nor does it share many characteristics with the far right racist groups which currently blight most western nations. Fascism and nationalism trumpet themselves as easy solutions to complex problems. Global capitalism, on the other hand, does not even confirm its own existence, it rather presents itself as the natural order of things. In this sense, it is even helped in its project by the memory of totalitarian regimes in the 20th century. "Look," its advocates say, "why would you want to go back to the bad old days, when communists and fascists limited your freedoms? Surely you would prefer a system in which freedoms are unlimited, provided you can pay for them."
The market orthodoxy is a consensus of the centre. It is the unspoken agenda of politics, the issues on which business agrees, and which are therefore never debated in public. The difficulty in resisting this orthodoxy is that doing so requires one to abandon the centre ground, sometimes bringing oneself too close for comfort to one of the terrifying extremes.