The National Party

Thats not remotely the same as saying they aren't a party based firmly on fascist principles. They are dangerous because their public profile enables those fascist elements of our society who would happily murder immigrants and transgender people in the name of their fascist beliefs.

Assaults on immigrants and LGBT people have gone through the roof recently, so don't try to claim that these people aren't dangerous.

Why are you defending people who openly holdFascist beliefs ?

What's in it for you ?

It's not difficult to find the evidence

https://lgbt.ie/lgbtqi-sectoral-response-to-garda-hate-crime-statistics-published-today/

Did Hitler actually kill anyone with his own hands. No he enabled a killing machine to kill millions.

I know you don't agree with the hate crimes legislation but it is designed to deal with enablers of violence - people like Barret. Words have consequences.

Fascists are a threat to everyone and the fact that their gaining support in this land should be a concern to you - but evidently it's not.

This is absolute nonsense. There is no expiry date on fascism. They are fascists.

The number of votes he got is of absolutely no relevance as to whether he is a fascist or not. It's his views and utterances and actions.

If he got 5000 votes would you be willing to admit he was a fascist? It's a nonsensical claim on your part that electoral failure makes a fascist not a fascist somehow.

For someone who claims to condemn and ridicule the National Party you are spending a lot of time defending them.
You have defined fascism within narrow, time bound ,parameters to support your argument.
It’s all rather strange.

Fascism existed long before and long after the time frame you mention.

What you have here is a list of characteristics of a specific fascist regime - the Nazi regime in Germany - rather than the broader characteristics of fascism.

The mental contortions not to admit that Fascism is an active force in the world today. I would argue that Trump has set out an agenda for American Fascism in his declarations regarding another term in office. This is what the Republican party has been steering towards right back to Bush Senior and his penchant for associating with fascistic groups who he willingly allowed to campaign for him (until they were found out). They cloth themselves in the cross but scratch the surface and they are white supremacists with an authoritarian theocratic agenda. The worst thing is that they are financing right wing groups across the world and even here in Ireland.

Fascism is an ever present threat to democracy and life.

This makes me laugh, what a pathetic man

The BNP effectively ceased to exist back in the 1990s, it had nothing to do with UKIP.

Yes. The National Party does have all of these features.

a dictatorial leader / centralized autocracy (Barrett/Reynolds making diktats)

forcible suppression of all political opposition parties (Barretts violent past from Youth Defence, Michael Quinn assault on Izzy Kamikaze, John Tate involvement in Dublin Riots)

militarism / positive view of violence in political pursuits / expansion of the nation into empire (Amassing Gold)

belief in a master race / racial superiority (Racist abuse of Hazel Chu)

economic self-sufficiency / autarky (Amassing Gold)

It does.

Here's one or two examples. I can easily find more.

a dictatorial leader / centralized autocracy (Barrett/Reynolds making centralised diktats)

forcible suppression of all political opposition parties (Barretts violent past from Youth Defence, Michael Quinn assault on Izzy Kamikaze, John Tate involvement in Dublin Riots)

militarism / positive view of violence in political pursuits / expansion of the nation into empire (Amassing Gold)

belief in a master race / racial superiority (Racist abuse of Hazel Chu)

economic self-sufficiency / autarky (Amassing Gold)

Their Party Vision fits into these features too

An Páirtí Náisiúnta is an Irish nationalist party dedicated to the fulfilment of the Irish national idea. We believe in the Irish people, our right to exist as a nation and our right to defend and lay claim to our homeland. We seek an Ireland united, Irish and free.

We stand against the criminal financial institutions which have enslaved future generations of Irish men and women to debt without end. We stand against the corrupt and amoral establishment who push replacement level immigration which will in time completely destroy Irish nationality. We stand against the project of a federated European Superstate which is explicitly anti-national and therefore anti-Irish. And most of all we stand against the decay of national spirit at the heart of our society.

The men and women who died for Ireland fought always against that most insidious of enemies, the enemy within; the corruption of the national spirit by foreign ideas, interests and outlooks, all of which are in evidence today in that assembly of traitors called Dáil Éireann. What the men of 1916 saw as the coarse grubby materialism of the British Empire is at large in our own time in the form of international liberalism which infects the whole western world.

Each nation must choose for themselves whether they will stand against the tide of national dissolution, which sweeps away peoples, homelands and traditions. Will Ireland live or die, endure or vanish? That question will be answered in this generation. As long as there is an Ireland to defend and love and unite, the fight must go on.

There's no desperate attempt at anything. The National Party fit into your defined features of fascism.