Ever since Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, there's been an ongoing debate about whether or not all this is fascism. Personally, I have no dog in that fight, as I find it to be more about semantics than substance. The modern American right and its anti-trans/abortion/etc program is both fascist in one sense (it's a far-right political project bent on domination) and not fascist in another (we have our own bespoke and long-standing tradition of oppression). This doesn't mean I think this discussion is necessarily foolish, bur instead that there are limits to its practical use in the face of a very real threat.
But there is something else that I think is relevant to this debate which does not concern internal coup attempts or even domestic policy at all: Our bi-partisan security state's conception of what fascism is within a foreign context. When America and its friends talk about fascism or "authoritarianism" or whatever, there is an emphasis on othering such inclinations, while also carving out exceptions for those doing our bidding. To illustrate this, let's review a couple recent examples. First, you have America's client state in the Middle East making the claim that one of the most famous, direct, and obvious anti-fascist works of art in existence is something more sinister:
Second, you have a western-funded media outlet from a country with a long history of right-wing nationalism and Nazi collaboration downplaying the use of Nazi imagery, and thus implicitly encouraging others (see the reply) to downplay Nazism itself:
Taken together, arguments like this serve to confuse and even invert the very conception of fascism. Explicit invocation of fascism becomes acceptable when displayed in the context of an American-backed military effort. Explicit rejection of fascism becomes the opposite when it dares to criticize what is possibly the most formally fascist modern state. The sum of this and all other American (and American-affiliated) characterization of foreign entities ultimately seeks to paint a Manichean picture where those aligned with us can't possible be fascist and those who aren't aligned (or elect not to choose) are deemed worthy of suspicion, at the very least. It's no wonder than when this judgmental eye is turned inward that even the most well-intentioned and conscientious people have trouble squaring what America says about those supposedly fascist others with what America thinks about its supposedly anti-fascist self. Perhaps the point of this obfuscation is to, like with American Right, deflect the sins of American empire onto those who fight back against it. Or perhaps it's just an example of the collective cognitive dissonance required to run an empire. Regardless, I think it falls to those who consider themselves anti-fascist to reflect on what such a position requires outside the confines of domestic politics. Which may ironically be the only way to truly answer the original question.
