ONE MORE TIME!

In my never ending quest to explain that the government in Starship Troopers isn't any more fascist than our very own...

Fascism is:

Any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship and forcible suppression of opposition.

First!  It's not an autocracy.  It's a representative democracy with a different eligibility requirements for both the candidates and the voters.  Not enough information is given in the text to determine how centralized government power is, but we can infer that it's not too different from 1959 USA.

No evidence is given showing that the federation is any more (or less) nationalistic than 1959 USA.

We have Juan Rico's own father as an example that the regimentation of industry, commerce and finance are decidedly not following fascism.

Emilio isn't a citizen.  He cannot vote.  He's, therefore, not a Party member.  Yet he owns a company that manufactures something.  He mentions, in passing, that his business is not on a war footing in a way that says that it's his decision.  He makes his own arrangements to leave the business to Juan should he not survive his eventual decision to join the Army; he even got to choose his own caretaker while he was away.

Free speech is mentioned in little different terms than we would in regards to censorship.

By the standards of the people attributing fascism to Starship Troopers, Stripes is also fascist!