Miss Jean Brodie as an allegory about fascism

Is it any wonder that Miss Jean Brodie is a big admirer of Mussolini? Of course she would be drawn to fascism. And I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think of Spark's "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" as a kind of allegory - fascist forces (Brodie) thinking she's serving the good of others (her students) when in fact she's serving nothing more, or little more, than her own ego. The fascist leader is a narcissist above all, but secondarily the fascist is a bully and a coward - which Brodie is, at least the bully. How easy for the charismatic teacher to pick a group of girls, make them dependent on her every whim and mood, judge them constantly, humiliate those who don't bow to her will, and in particular the weak and vulnerable. All this puts Brodie in a very harsh light - far harsher than her students would. They (profess to) adore, or at least revere, her. But do they hold this view throughout their lives? One of the quirks of Murial Spark's narrative is the jump-forwards in time. The novel is set in the early to mid-30s, but written in 1962, and actually the narrative itself is from the POV of 1962. It's not like most other reminiscences of youth, which often have the narrative frame of an older person looking back. No, in this case it's an omniscient third-person narrator who seems to be simply telling the story of the girls in their youth (and Brodie in her "prime," as she puts it so often), but then will say, in describing one of the girls, something like: who 20 years later was to die in a hotel fire. Gradually, we learn bits about what became of each of the girls (and of Brodie). It's a narrative form that actually has a bit of the cruelty (to the reader) that replicates Brodie's cruelty (to her students): you will do it and see it my way, or else.