This sounds like a situation where a word has more than one usage? A classic or original usage and then a secondary usage that's based on the first. If lots of people start using a word to mean X, even though it originally meant Y, does that mean that it can't also be X?

I'm trying to define what people mean when they use the word. Now it may be that there isn't a singular secondary usage, but just a bunch of incorrect usages related to Italy in the early 20th century. I think a good way to test that is to see if we can find a definition that would work with all of the other usages?

Also the idea that fascism in Italy was distinct from Mussolini would be hard to believe. It essentially started with him and ended with him, it was a country where what he wanted was the absolute final word. And he wanted a unique combination of things that hadn't existed before or after, but that doesn't mean that those things define how we use the word "fascism" now. To me it seems like it was the belief that one person could decide what it would mean to be "the state" and what qualities it would have is what allowed Mussolini to create the country he did.