I dunno, I honestly hate the term because its so heterodox: ask 10 communists to define fascism and you’ll get 10 different answers, and 99% of the time none of them are anything that some liberal democracies aren’t doing or haven’t done.

IMO as communists we should focus on the horrors of colonialism, and make sure people see US and british colonialism as even more evil than 20s-40s axis powers. “fascism”'s use as a term is borderline western-supremacist at this point, it lets europe and the US off the hook, and puts all the hate on these dead, temporary, and unstable political forms that are only allowed to be publicly demonized because they attacked white people, a big no-no in public discourse.

Not really the former. In a true sense fascism was a thing in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. People, including on the left like to toss about the word “fascist” as a descriptor for extreme reactionary politics because it’s easily and instantly understand and has a demonizing characteristic and it’s not untrue (and indeed your average reactionary person often admires part or whole the fascist experiment and often consciously or unconsciously tries to replicate it and there are even elements of the bourgeoisie who likely lust after openly reviving it) but it’s not entirely academically accurate either.

What we have now is not fascism but fascism was unstable (look how long it lasted and the internal problems it had) compared to something like neo-liberalism and the current global NATO led order of barbarity, exploitation, and violence; in a real sense the US carried on the Nazis work but in a smarter way.

We may never see the exact creature fascism again rise to power. Which isn’t to say we won’t potentially see extreme, violent reactionary-ism rise to power and tear off the kind mask of liberal bourgeois ‘democracy’, just that it will likely be different even if it has similarities.

Fascism was capitalism in crisis and distress in the 20th century Europe. IF capitalism enters another state of extreme distress and pressure by proletarian movements it is possible elements of the bourgeoisie may dust off fascism or something like it in a desperate, ultimately self-defeating move to defend themselves.

However you’ll notice despite being the inheritor of the European empires, the grand defender of capitalism, the chosen knight of capital against communism, and overall a very reactionary, racist, sexist, anti-worker, imperialist murder machine, the US has in the decades since WW2 not once dusted off fascism and toyed with going that way and abandoning their well-worn puppet show of liberal democracy.

Because to some degree it works better. It’s stable. It allows genocide, brutalizing, imperialism, and neo-colonialism of the global south with buy-in from the national-level workers whose lifestyle is maintained off this system.

So the thing to say is liberalism is reactionary. Fascism was extreme reaction. Liberalism though it likes to pretend to be the nice form of bourgeois domination is not at all averse to embracing extreme reaction. Look no further than liberals and their support for open nazis in Ukraine, downplaying their crimes, accusing the Russians with projection of the very same, frothing at the mouth in a racist rage against Russians that would make Hitler proud.

Certainly in my opinion it is very much the former. It is a defense mechanism to destroy progressive movements when they threaten bourgeois rule. It is bourgeois dictatorship in its most dangerous and poisonous form.