My view is that conservatism is meaningfully distinct from fascism. They have some similarities (both are regressive ideologies), and can sometimes pursue similar policies (both Trump and Bush started new wars in the middle east), but are ultimately different families of political beliefs. I do not subscribe to either, I do not think either are good—indeed, I think both proceed from profoundly mistaken assumptions about the world—but, in my head at least, they are not the same thing.
There is an instinct to ‘flatten out’ the distinction between them that can take one of two forms. The first is the centrist impulse to deny the threat: this isn’t really fascism, conservatives have just lost patience with social justice, liberal disrespect, and being ignored. Those who vote for far right parties “aren’t unreasonable, they’re desperate” as British reactionary centrist John Rentoul put it. Politicians like Trump don’t really mean it, they’re just playing to the crowd.
The first problem with this is it doesn’t make any sense. Something clearly has changed, beyond just tone and tenor. If Trump is performing for the crowd, they must want the thing he is performing. If the crowd had ‘legitimate concerns’ there would come a moment where they realised these weren't being met. The ‘they don’t mean it’ narrative consists of disparate claims, incompatible with each other, and untethered from any of the known facts of the era. Not to mention it’s morally heinous. We shouldn’t recast vicious bigots doing incredible harm to vulnerable people as sympathetic ‘desperate’ sorts. Or demand we empathise with the abuser—and blame the abused.
The second flattening out I am more sympathetic to. This goes the other way: it’s not that the fascists are actually riled up conservatives, rather the people we assumed were conservatives were fascists all along. Our current moment is one of unmasking, or an inevitable conclusion, rather than a substantive change. This way of seeing things—for obvious enough reasons—is more common on the left.
This is also a ‘flattening out’ story. What is being claimed here is that fascism, conservatism, neoliberalism (and sometimes even regular liberalism!) are all different defenses of the same thing. Or perhaps evolutions in the trajectory of a thing, namely capitalism.
I call this narrative:
Fascism as the final boss of capitalism
Let's start with what this gets right: Developed countries are very unequal, and growing more so. This is simultaneously a massive inefficiency, a grave moral failing, and a structural factor destabilizing their political systems.