They use the word without knowing the meaning, a constant problem with republicans, they don't know the definitions of the words they use.
In order for a word to have meaning, you'll also have to explain the definition of fascism and then apply it to what tRump and the GOP are doing. Just using the F word will otherwise fall into he-said she-said territory and you'll get nowhere. And you'll only break through to a fascist if they are open-minded enough to listen. They are not open-minded, otherwise they wouldn't be fascists.
No, the only way to attack fascism is to minimalize it, vote it out of power. Focus your effort on that.
Definition: A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Robert O. Paxton: “Hatred of the left in all its guises, from the most tepid to the most outré, is thus not incidental to fascism; it is at its core. The fascist route to power has always been passed through cooperation with conservative elites; without the acquiescence or even active assent of the traditional elites [fascists] could never have attained power.”
“Fascist regimes had to produce an impression of driving momentum—‘permanent revolution.’ They could not survive without that headlong, inebriating rush forward.” [This] “deliberate arousal of expectations of dynamism, excitement, momentum, and risk” was “inherent to fascism’s appeal.”
“Fascism does not require a spectacular 'march' on some capital to take root; seemingly anodyne decisions to tolerate lawless treatment of national 'enemies' is enough.”
“The truth was whatever permitted the new fascist man (and woman) to dominate others. . . . It was the unquestioning zeal of the faithful that counted, more than his or her reasoned assent.”
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