It doesn't bother me that someone created a fascist patch for Civ III. However, fascism is perhaps the most abhorrent of all political movements only equalled by Stalinism. As a University graduate who majored in history I can see the validity of including fascism in Civ III. One of the subjects I completed was called "Fascism and National Socialism". Being from a Romany background I needed to (try to) understand the phenomena of fascism - particularly the German variety.
Roger Griffin wrote a great book called "The Nature of Fascism" (Routledge: New York, 1991). The book mostly tries to define fascism as a generic term, whilst giving a detailed history of various fascist movements and states.
"Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic (read - reproduction of ancestral characteristics) form of popular ultra-nationalism" (Griffin, p.27)
I think there are a few posts here that deny that Nazism was fascist. I disagree, Nazism was an extreme form of fascism. Here is a sort of checklist for fascism as a political ideology - again courtesy of Griffin.
Fascist Minimum
1)"The values and worldview which fascism embodies will be expressed not only in theoretical writings, speeches, propaganda and songs, but in the semiotic rallies, symbols, uniforms: in short, the whole style of its politics."
2)"Fascism will exhibit a utopian revolutionary aspect when attempting to overthrow the existing order but proceed to assume a reactionary, oppressive one if ever installed into power, even if some idealists will constantly seek to 'reform' it by narrowing the gap between the theory and the practice."
3)"The utopia which fascism seeks to implement will never be realised in practice, only a travesty of it."
4)"No matter how 'propagandistic' fascist thought will appear to those who do not sympathise with its world view. its most committed activists and supporters will find in it an outlet for idealism and self sacrifice."
5)"Despite rationalizations of the fascist world-view by appeals to historical, cultural, religious or scientific 'facts', its effective power is rooted in irrational drives and mythical assumptions."
6)Commitment to fascism can exist on various levels of emotional intensity and active support and its ideas will express themselves in various degrees of sophistication or simplification."
7)"Genuine support for fascism stems in each individual case from a largely subliminal elective affinity to it based on material and psychological interests."
8)"Though a fascist movement may appear a cohesive ideological community and present itself as such, on closer inspection its support will prove to derive from a myriad of personal motivations for joining it and idiosyncratic conceptions of the movement's goals."
9)"Fascist ideology and the impact it achieves as the basis is not reducible to the theories and policies of any one idealogue or leader, for it acts as a transpersonal historical structure whose emergence and success are conditioned by its interaction with other structures ideological and non-ideological."
10)"Generic fascism is definable ideal-typically in terms of a cluster of values and goals common to all its permutations, in other words an ideological core."
(Griffin: pp.26-7).
I hope this helps readers understand the nature of fascism. The debate on defining a fascist minimum still rages, but for my money Griffin's analysis remains the best. Fascism is a term often used carelessly. I don't think the fascist patch site is offensive as it only shows related/relevant images from the most extreme form/period of fascism - National Socialism.
