It seems one has to infer what fascism is from societies that have been called by someone at some point 'fascist', along with an evaluation of whether it was an accurate characterisation at the time (which is somewhat paradoxical). A friend of mine claims a necessary but not sufficient condition is that there is a strong corporate involvement in government, like all the contractors (IBM among them) in WWII.
Also, there is the etymological metaphor<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche#Similar figures of speech>- a fascis / fasces, as used as a symbol by the Roman legions, was/were an ax used to chop kindling, with said kindling bound by leather strips around the handle of the ax for easy transport. My 9th grade history teacher claimed that in fascism, people are uniformly and completely directed towards a common societal goal (world domination, economic prosperity/equality, racial purity in the case of the Nazis, although that may just be true stereotypically) in the same way that the kindling sticks are bound to support the handle. Irrelevantly, fasces are also bundles of connective tissue. -Arlo James Barnes
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