@except that you are You can’t just claim as a sleight of hand that ‘links to finance’ doesn’t equal rigid control when the entire goal of these extremists is to create a world sharia state which precisely would have rigid control over the economy (the fact that fascists haven’t succeeded doesn’t make them any less fascist)—imagine a thousand fold move towards islamic concepts of morality in finance (as a matter of fact, one of the lesser known things about Al-Sadr is that he’s one of the driving intellectual forces behind this islamic system
of finance and economics) such as nisab, jizya, khum or concepts of interest etc taking hold of an islamic global state.

Just because you want to restrict fascism to the way in which it was used by those who associated with corporatism doesn’t all of a sudden invalidate the fact that the term has a wider reach in the way it has been used.
In fact there have been a number of ways in which fascism has been defined along with the mussolini inspired one. You’re being brutally dishonest to just take Milward’s constrictive argument as fact. Can I do that with Marinetti’s artistic definition, or Gentile’s definition? I mean, you’ve got to be just plain stupid if you can’t recognize that some of the precursor thinkers and originators of the term and idea had more highly developed artistic and literature based definitions or meanings ascribed to the term.

Not to mention that Milward’s definition and your sycophantic attitude towards it also display an inability to look at it critically—yes mussolini instituted high tariffs against most of the world, but they were just that, tariffs that restricted but didn’t shut off trade — would you suggest that for example india was moving towards an autarky and fascism until the 90’s–surely tariffs/autarky are not the end all to this defintion? This of course ignores the fact that these tariffs weren’t even in place for allies of mussolini like Germany– so the entire argument is incredibly flawed. Wow, tariffing your enemies and free trade with your allies? That certainly doesn’t constitute autarky. On top of that expansion to create final markets is precisely a side effect of creating some global state based upon an ideology which governs everything including economics—but hey you only want to score politicial points so you don’t care.

Prof. Paxton right here at good ol CU also has expounded another one of the popular and far reaching definitions of fascism:

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood 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.”

There’s nothing to suggest that paxton’s definition isn’t as valid. Now there’s certainly debate over the value of the term anymore as its definition and application has expanded and has been used in many ways (including as a political epithet), however trying to just chide away all those who use it in another way as ‘neo cons’ suggests that you’re guilty of a type of elitist semantic snobbery which is unduly influenced by your political beliefs.

This is particularly true in this case where your apparent fixation on the improper misuse of the term is incredibly shortsighted considering islamo-authoritarianism, etc. would miss out on some crucial elements in these extreme movements that those who use this term wish to highlight. Then again, for somebody who wishes to discredit an argument by making an ad hom and then admonishing apparently anyone who’s a
‘traitor to the left’ or a ‘neocon hack’ (show me a human rights activist who isn’t a neocon hack by the way) i guess your weak argument that’s riddled with so many flaws is just par for course.