The first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds is the most important for understanding fascism, it will take maybe 20 minutes and would be far clearer than any Lemmy comment string. However, the broad running theme with fascism is that, similar to to Communism and Socialism, it rises with Capitalist decay. The difference is that fascism is supported by the Capitalist ruling classes against the rising organization of workers, and as such has institutional support. It isn’t a hard and fast ideology to be adopted, but a defense mechanism the ruling classes deploy to retain power, violently.

Uhh, just in the sense of being a weak democracy that backslid? Lots. The OG fascists in Italy come to mind. In the really long run they tend to own themselves. If they survive, it’s by turning into the tried-and-true aristocratic autocracy.

Spain made the transition back to democracy peacefully, because Franco set it up to go that way once he died, and there was a lot of outside cultural influence to support it. That being said, I don’t know all the details there, and it’s a pretty unusual case. Italy got owned in war. Lots get owned by a series of coups, like Yakubu Gowon’s Nigeria, for one example.

The US is a new thing, though, in that usually the new dictator isn’t a crayon-eating moron, and never before has it happened somewhere with no living memory of authoritarian politics (which seems to make a huge difference). It’s not going to be exactly like anything else. I answered how I did because Orbon was elected but doesn’t really have a clear ideological agenda beyond power, while Hitler used his executive power non-subtly to shut everyone else down, which seem like the inevitable near-future features of new America.