kohlrak: Judging from the comments section of the video i watched, he only made minor changes to accomplish this goal. Overall, the government is still a meritocracy, and service caters to disabilities, so no one's screwed just because they're disabled. Contrary to fascism, speech is not censored, but promoted (misinterpretation is understandable, given the focus on state sponsored messages), militarism is voluntary (you only loose the right to vote, which is tied to proving you don't have special interests by requiring service), government is regulated by a constitution, leaders admit mistakes, and the list goes on. Society is largely free, as evidenced by the pilgrims getting slaughtered by the bugs (they chose to ignore reason and became victims of evolution).
Without going too much into what fascism actually is (it mainly promotes the idea of one unified nation and protecting it against external enemies, strong leadership etc.; it has nothing to do whether the disabled people etc. are catered for or not), to me it was quite clear the movie was making a parody of the militaristic utopian(?) world of the original book.
I saw the movie first (and I did feel it had that same feeling of making parody of the world where it was set in, similarly like e.g. Robocop from the same director), and later I read the book. Besides the character and plot changes (like some characters had changed their gender in the movie (Dizzie Flores?), there were no love triangles, the romance between the protagonist and The Girl was merely a small footnote in the book, the book didn't really follow the life and career of Carmen much at all IIRC etc.). I found it interesting how the book and movie managed to explain the same thing so differently, in such a subtle manner.
For instance the whole idea of having a right to vote and citizenship only if you have joined the army: in the movie it was explained and argued in a terse manner, and left you with the feeling "oh wow, that sounds so f-cked up, having to go to military and war just in order to vote?". I got the impression that's what the movie wanted you to think about the idea.
The book used much more time arguing why it is a good idea, and in some way even managed to do it, by explaining that only(?) by going to army and war, you are proving that you put the life and needs of others before your own well-being, hence you are more trustworthy to select leaders for the nation (=to vote). People who don't join the army do so for selfish reasons, hence they shouldn't be allowed to vote. Or something along those lines. A valid argument, even though there are big holes in it (like some can't join the army even if they wanted, or people can demonstrate their goodness in other ways than fighting in wars).
What I mostly remember of the book was that at times it was quite preachy, using lots of text to argue why some idea (like the one above) is such a good idea. It presented these e.g. as the discussions between the protagonist and his teacher, or what the protagonist was pondering by himself. The movie didn't.
