I was actually going to write this post, except that someone far more qualified than I wrote it first. And with far less profanity than I would have, too. A sample:
Fascism didn’t really come into play as a functioning ideology until Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini, defined it as the state as an organic being, controlling everything. “Everything in the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state” became the definition of a totalitarian state (total control over the economy, society, and culture). Where Marx envisioned the “withering away” of the state (totally skipping over human nature and the drive for power and control, whether over other people or just your own life), Mussolini and Gentile envisioned the state as the sole arbiter of life, the universe, and everything.
Small-government conservatives, by definition, are therefore not fascists.
It’s a lot easier to define “fascism” or “fascist” as an epithet by using George Orwell’s remark, written in 1944:
The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’
…to the accuser.
“the state as an organic being”.
So like the Gaia Hypothesis (Mother Earth as an organic being) writ small.
Yet another point of congruence between Fascists and Greens/Leftists/Progressives/Commies.
Reagan was right in 1964, there is no left or right.
“You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down – [up] man’s old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”
From this:
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/reagans/ronald-reagan/time-choosing-speech-october-27-1964
“A Time For Choosing”, yet it took another 16-years, and has been a constant fight ever since as Evil refuses to accede – perhaps upgrade to a .600 Nitro Express.