I agree with you about trying to avoid thought stopping terms, and the desire for more specific language in important topics. It's tempting to think that history repeats itself, but it doesn't. It really doesn't. Historians will find ways of comparing and contrasting one moment with another, but whatever is happening right now is not determined by any historical law playing out.

Our language is bending as it ever does to help people explain these political shifts—often people who see what's happening but don't have much education on the matters of history, political science, philosophy. Bear in mind that 21% of US adults are illiterate, and far fewer are even equipped to read, say, Thomas Paine.

We need ways of talking about the values that are winning (nationalist theocratic autocracy) and the ones that are not (the open society, secular liberal democracy), and the word "liberalism" in the US has beenn so tarnished, so I think "fascism" today has come to mean "anti-liberal." I'll take what I can get.