What is fascism and how do we know we have it?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Fascism is the greatest dirty word in politics imo. It will never lose its power like typical swear words because it has the power of the Nazis behind it. You can call a million different things fascist and people will still take it seriously as if you just dropped some serious knowledge on them just because you injected that single word into your complaint. But what is fascism and how do we know if we actually have it?

Here is a short (23 pages) pdf, The Five Stages of Fascism by Robert Paxton that attempts to define and single out what fascism and fascist policies might actually be. http://w3.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello...of Fascism.pdf It's a good read imo, but my first question to everyone is if he got anything wrong.

A second, much more simplified attempt at knowing if there is fascism within our countries politics is a one page article called the Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism by Lawrence Britt. http://www.secularhumanism.org/libra...britt_23_2.htm

This second page is a lot easier to digest, but my second question for you guys is to look at the general accuracy of the second article after reading the first and say whether or not the characteristics are indeed a good guideline to calling out fascism, or if they are the kind of general vague kind of descriptions that allow anyone to be targeted as the next Hitler.

I ask this because I see the second article float around a lot among other forums I go on (particularly the left ones) and everyone loves having big circle jerks about it, picking out so and so politician for being 10 out of 14 or 11 out of 14 and etc.