...any remotely honest portrayal of a world stripped of the vestiges of a functioning social and political is going to be 'fascist' in its values. And why would it not be? Nature is 'fascist.' The laws of physics are 'fascist.' Reality is fascist. Fascism is the baseline: consensual, altruistic democracy is the deviation from the norm, a deviation made possible only by temporary material abundance and the mass delusion that it is rooted in something other than force or the threat of force.

Sorry, but that's a misunderstanding of fascism, as is Plotz' use of the word. Lord of the Flies was not about fascism either. What he really means is "reactionary" or maybe "Hobbesian," but those don't have the same visceral impact as "fascist".

The only difference between a Fascist world and a "Hobbesian" one is cosmetic. Fascism just fetishizes the violence.

Not very realistic; the very reason for the "temporary material surplus", was among other things, the very social cooperation and civilized behavior (to each other, at least) of the pioneers who did all the work. disigny

Not really: in virtually every democratic society - ancient or modern - exceptional prosperity significantly predated the development of a democratic society. In virtually every case in which a previously functioning democracy returned to autocratic rule, economic collapse preceded political failure. The level of prosperity necessary to maintain a modern democratic state is, in the long run, unsustainable, because it is dependent on the endless expansion of consumption. Democracies inevitably economically overgraze their environments.