(ELI5) what actually is a facist
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honestly it depends entirely on what you want it to mean and why it matters to you what it means. do you accept old definitions of the word that were established by the people who created their own political ideology and actually ran governments while openly and proudly self identifying as fascists (this is going to be more than one definition as there was more than one fascist nation. for example italian and german fascism were not identical and german fascism came second decades later), or do you want to believe newer definitions that have been altered to be more vague to encompass people nowadays who don’t fit the classical definitions, but people want to call them fascists anyway because that’s a somewhat effective political weapon so they’ve reworked a newer definition with broader and vaguer stipulations to apply to their political enemies where older definitions would have disqualified them because of a lot of specific factors they don’t meet.
basically as long as everyone isn’t agreeing on one definition regardless of whether that definition is politically expedient to them personally, the word means whatever anyone wants it to mean while they’re using it. whether or not this renders the word worthless and meaningless as a political descriptor is also up to your personal feelings to dictate.
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