Actually we don't know enough about the start of the conflict to know exactly who started it. Yeah the Mormons were massacred after settling in the AQZ, but we have no way of knowing if that was the first event. Somehow it just seemed like the latest crisis to me. Otherwise the FedNet would have spent some time explaining the bugs instead of assuming the audience knew about them.
As to the Federation being fascists, that is simply rubbish. As was stated earlier, Verhoeven simply simply threw some stereotypical Nazi trappings onto the screen to give that impression. What the Federation is in the movie (and the book) is a representative republic with a requirement to gain the franchise and serve in the government.
You can argue whether that is a good or bad thing, but that does not equate to fascism.
As to the population controls there is a member of the current American administration who once advocated in a book (Ecoscience, nonfiction) for strict population controls. No one is calling him a Nazi. He was simply very concerned for overpopulation. Again it can be argued good or bad, but not fascism.
Propaganda is not a preserve of fascists either. Every existing society either does, or in the past has, made use of propaganda.
Someone mentioned speedy trial and punishment earlier. Again how is this fascist. If there is overwhelming evedence of "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt" then how does putting the execution 10 years off help anything. Something else that can be argued, but not fascist.
Other than those differences it could have been almost any western society today.
People throw around the fascist or Nazi label far to freely. I have noticed that those words frequently mean "government or political party I don't like" rather than an actual fascist organization.
