u/ProlesOfMischief - originally from r/GenZhou
No. We should not allow our scientific worldview to be infected by the use of the imprecise, hollow language of liberals to transform serious analysis into buzzwords like "authoritarian" applied to anything we don't like. We are Marxists.
Fascism emerges with the collapse of liberal democracy and it's failure to deal with crises of capitalism in the face of a growing workers' movement. An "open, terroristic dictatorship" is needed to put down such movements. The result is bourgeois democracy itself is suspended and there is an open war against organizations of workers' power. This does not in fact apply to the United States. Until now liberal democracy in the U.S. has retained the ability to destroy workers movements and overcome economic crises (not well mind you, even by bourgeois standards, but enough to fend off the type of catastrophe that would threaten government) without fascism. Ingredients are forming however (bourgeois democracy becoming dysfunctional, growing labor solidarity, an economy on Fed money life support), so there is cause to worry.
Too many people on the left seem to think that to deny the U.S. as fascist is to pay it a compliment. This is erroneous. Fascism isn't a synonym for "bad", and saying the U.S. isn't fascist isn't saying it's not "as bad" as fascist Italy or German fascism. Bourgeois democracy is quite capable of the sorts of destruction and violence associated with fascism and even surpassing it. The U.S. is many things (imperialist, the primary obstacle to any global workers' movement) and should be opposed with the same conviction as opposition to Nazi Germany was in our ranks, but it is not fascist. Yet.