I'm italian, my grandfather was drafted in the balilla first at 14 and the fascist army later. And his stories of the time were all about the violence, the machismo, the open contempt for the gay, the jewish, any other minorities. That's fascism, no matter if it doesn't match your clinical idea of what fascism should or shouldn't be.

And yes, they were as silly and ridiculous as the tiki torches guys or the Jan 6 coup guys. Until they were fully in power. Then everybody stopped laughing, or wondering if they were really dangerous or not.

And to be quite honest with you, worry not - I think we'll find very, very soon how close those are compared to US democrats to actual fascists(tm).

Your link for this sweeping generalization is a single shooting in seattle months before the election of someone not old enough to vote.

That's the clearest definition of fascism I've ever heard. Where's it from?

If you read about fascism, their proponents viewed it as “Marxism 2.0” — where they could leverage the socialist ideas of collectivist authoritarianism without the problems encountered by the original Marxist revolutionaries with total state control of commerce.

A unified populace where “everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Mussolini himself said "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power".