Perfectly sensible question! Meanings of words drift. And these are historic real-world movements; the definitions don't come from dictionaries. Orwellian prop

Perfectly sensible question! Meanings of words drift. And these are historic real-world movements; the definitions don't come from dictionaries. Orwellian propaganda muddies the waters: the Nazis called themselves "socialists"; East Germany under the Soviet Union called itself the "German Democratic Republic". These quotes seem to be helpful: "I mean fascism pretty much in the traditional sense, [analogous to] a system in which the state integrates labor and capital under their control. The ideal is top-down control with the public essentially following orders." (http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Noam_Chomsky_Corporations.htm http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Noam_Chomsky_Corporations.h...) "Now, as far as socialism is concerned, that term has been so evacuated of content over the last century, that it’s hard even to use. I mean, the Soviet Union was called a socialist society by the two major propaganda operations in the world: the western one and the Soviet one. They both called it socialism for opposite reasons." (https://tansafte.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/some-footnotes-for-the-video-chomsky-on-socialism/ https://tansafte.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/some-footnotes-for...)