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What does "fascism" mean?

One common trait of radical authoritarian ideologies is that they will take words with rather specific meanings, dilute them until they pretty much lose all of their original meaning, and just use it as a generic insult, to try to discredit and offend anybody who has a differing opinion. "Racism" would be your quintessential example (as well as "sexism", "misogyny" and "islamophobia".)

One such example is also "fascism". That word used to have a rather specific meaning in the past, referring to a particular authoritarian nationalist political ideology prevalent in some European countries between the world wars, and some time after.

But like with all those other words, nowadays this one is also used just as a generic insult against basically anybody who has a differing political opinion. For example, during both elections of Barack Obama, he was accused of "fascism" by republican protesters. And, of course, during Trump's election he was likewise accused of "fascism" by democratic protesters.

It indeed seems that "fascist" in modern parlance simply means "somebody who holds a political opinion I disagree with." And, of course, it's one of the favorite insults used by social justice warriors.

Quite ironically (although not surprisingly), the modern regressive leftist social justice ideology can be argued to be to a rather large extent fascist. Genuinely fascists. Just consider this description from Wikipedia:
"Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties."
This sounds pretty much exactly what the regressive left wants.

It won't be long before the regressive leftists will advocate for the abolition of democratic elections.

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