People on the right: Fascism is leftist.

People on the left: Fascism is authoritarian right wing nationalism.

Communists: Fascism is everyone but us.

Fascists: We’re not fascists, we don’t have silly little mustaches and this ain’t Italy.

Fascism (or the phenomena the word had come to describe as fascism even during the Second World War) ceased to be a specific ideology as soon as it was applied to any nation other than Italy. It became a description of a mindset driven by power above all else, one that is modulated by the culture it arises in and so can have widely varying yet always recognizable forms.

It’s the purest expression of power through authority, and can include a wide range of motivations.

It’s what remained of the urge for divine right to rule once the cat was out of the bag that divine right to rule was bullshit.

It strives to create an external validation for its authority that can’t be argued with to replace God(s) role in “selecting” our leaders. It’s essentially the attempt to circumvent rational/legal authority by leveraging existing social collectives to build support outside of the accepted political framework.