Well yeah, fascism doesn't have an actual definition. People even disagree about what it is. Is it a political ideology, a worldview, a form of government, a mo

Well yeah, fascism doesn't have an actual definition. People even disagree about what it is. Is it a political ideology, a worldview, a form of government, a movement, a type of psychosis? And yet people do retrospectively agree that certain people or groups were fascists. There's an idea in peoples' minds that defies a simple dictionary definition. For an idea like that, we turn to a list of soft criteria. People can and will disagree on that exact set of criteria, or over whether one is met under specific circumstances. But really, that's true of all language outside of hard mathematics. Who gave Britt final say? Nobody in particular, and yet his criteria are often cited and used in more serious discussions of fascism. So a lot of people seem to think his criteria are useful. Language is a collaborative thing, meaning comes from diffuse and tacit agreement. If you expect that some power authorize and enforce a rigid definition of any political or sociological term, prepare to be deeply disappointed when you realize that nobody can provide such solid and concrete definitions of any terminology, even words you think you understand. What's democracy? Capitalism? Authoritarianism? Socialism? They're all defined by tacitly approved sets of criteria invented by an unofficial source and iterated upon by academics and misconstrued by and to the broader population.