Trump tested American democracy by consolidating power and was not successful, so we avoided being under a fascist rule
The fear is that we might get to test democracy again, and most of America doesn't seem to mind that. Maybe it's due to lack of understanding, not caring, or genuinely wanting fascism, I don't know.
I'm a centrist, the way I see it you go into storytelling hour with a grinding monologue aimed to gaslighting yourself and any listeners into a position of "we should execute our political opponents for being fascists, maybe some communism banners would be chic too"
It's a caricature of ideology that even chatGPT would laugh at.
And then the cult of traditionalism while strong in the NRx movement, is arguably stronger in the Republican side than in MAGA itself.
Ultimately Fascism is deeply spiritual but all I get from Trump is brash 80's boomerism. He's not ideological enough.
Anyway, all I'm saying is that based on common criteria the term Fascism is adequate for Trump's movement. I'm not claiming that it's strongly related to prior Fascist movements. These occurred in other countries at other times and I leave it to scholars to make comparisons if they must.
I'm personally also worried about the rise of left-wing authoritarianism in the US but that's another matter and far less of a general danger to the world at this time. But it's worth noting that authoritarian positions are popular on either side of the political fence in the US right now, and classical enlightened liberalism seems to be completely dead. (To be fair, it was never strong in the US to begin with.)