I thought that was communism? But to be honest you just described any dictatorship on either side of the aisle.

The primary difference between Communism and Facism is that the latter has much better tailors.

Think about it. The Chinese and Soviet Communists wore dyed potato sacks. The Germans, Italians, and various S American Fascist regimes had really sharp uniforms. So it's really about Oppression +/- Tailors.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

LOL!! Damn good point.

And there you have the whole problem.

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War is god

I've always thought most South American dictators looked ridiculous in thier over the top uniforms. Almost as though they were compensating for something!

Depends who you ask, and about which fascism (eg German, Italian, British, American...).

But your definition could apply to a totalitarian system, which is generally used by fascist regimes (as are nationalism, one-party state, cult of personality surrounding the leader, militarism, class coloboration/ social order, the idea of new or ideal man or eugenics, corporatism, imperialism etc).

And running the trains on time.

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Swim. Overbike. Walk.

Fascism is poorly defined in general, but your definition doesn't really do it. Fascism is a political system characterized by authoritarian nationalism, generally built around a mythology of victimhood, societal decline, etc which will all be solved by the new party, which is anti egalitarianism, anti-liberalism, but also anti-conservativism.

However, these days, people have watered down the usage to basically mean anything they perceive as bullying or anything they feel takes away their choice in any way.

People are stupid.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Yes, and that's a shame as the original label is losing it's impact. The extermist wing of the left view everything right of moderate as fascist, by a matter of degrees.

Unfortunately, the groups which get labelled as fascist, such as alt-right (who, if anything, are mostly anti-left/Hillary or nationalist, but the group has been lablled by it's more extreme members), and then the left cry out about a huge upswell of fascism. I'd argue there's not a huge resurgence in fascism, but there has been a huge effort to relabel some groups as fascist, by those who seek to gain from a reaction against such groups.

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Swim. Overbike. Walk.

I thought fascism was when you tried for a pearl necklace but shot too high.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

"Alt-right" is also loosely defined, but it's not difficult to find factions within that umbrella who overtly self-advertise as neo-fascist. When you literally use the swastika it's kind of hard to rationalize that it's really all about Hillary or something like that.

Also, I'm sure it was unintentional, but don't forget that we recently got through 8 years of all kinds of anti-Obama people calling the Obama administration "fascist" so let's not pretend Godwins tendency doesn't swing both ways.

I think it also needs a component of racism and jingoistic nationalism. A dictatorial leader with outsized personality also helps.

We all rely on larger groups for our identity (I'm an American to the core). It has to be more specific than that. More zealous and more based on my tendency to see you as near sub-human because you have a different racial, religious, or cultural identity than I do.

You're absolutely right, and I was trying to make that exact point - the alt right contains many groups of people, with each group having it's own leanings, but due to one faction identifying as neo nazi the entire alt right has been branded as being a neo nazi organisation (despite the fact it's not an organisation, has no structure, has no agreed aims or goals other than some points which overlap each other - such as arguing against Hillary Clinton for president - but may arise out of different reasons).

Your second point illustrates the watering down of the term fascist / fascism wonderfully. If I wasn't clear, I believe this is a problem as it allows the real fascists/ nazis to believe their obnoxious views are shared by more than it actually the case, simultaneously watering the label down to the point of it being meaningless: hence you have a bunch of kids making Pepe the Frog memes because they're smart asses wanting to make trouble being called nazis or a black democrat president's administration being labelled as fascist.

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Swim. Overbike. Walk.

I thought I would find a funny (but not sexual) picture to go along with your post. I was thinking about someone covered with glue or some type of goop. I was a bit surprised with the NSFW images that appeared when I used the search phrase "girls covered in goo".

Don't forget sunglasses. Have you ever seen an African dictator without sunglasses? They wear them even inside.

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