"Fascist" is one of those words like "liberal" that has so many meanings it's become meaningless unless you precisely define how you're using the word. One highly influential definition comes from Umberto Eco's 1995 essay,
"Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt", which is an excerpt of his larger article
"Ur-Fascism".1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
(See the essay for more in depth explanations of each of the 14 features.)
Eco is a famous author, and certainly has first hand experience of true fascism -- he grew up in Mussolini's Italy. He doesn't make the mistake of using fascism as a synonym of totalitarianism, or as a simple epithet (e.g. calling the cop who pulled you over a "fascist"), which I think is important. Another important distinction he makes is that fascism isn't a coherent philosophy or movement. It's not socialism, with all its crazy theorists talking about the labor theory or value or new moons. It's not even national socialism, which is a very specific ideology. Some of the 14 points he lists also contradict each other, and that's not a mistake or an inconsistency in the list. Rather, it's a reflection of the nature and source of fascism. It's opportunistic, and perverts rather than displaces its social, political, and national environment.
I think that's an important insight. It's worth remembering that Mussolini was never an intellectual or theorist. He didn't create fascism as a fully thought out set of axioms and ideals, which he then tried to implement. Instead, he worked with what he had, and shifted as needed to adapt to the changing circumstances. Mussolini started as a socialist, and he used that as his framework. But he also adopted elements from extreme nationalism, and whatever suited his ego or the political needs of the moment. Fascism was fluid and inconstant.
But I ultimately think Eco's definition is garbage, because he's defining it too broadly. Fascism is Mussolini, and Franco, and not much else. It's not really a philosophy, or even a specific set of tactics. It's just how a few specific strongmen acquired, maintained, and exercised power. You can't stretch it into an ur-anything, because attempting to differentiate it from dictatorship or totalitarianism in general means you have to draw arbitrary lines and call a random set of attributes "fascism".
It's lot more useful to use a label to precisely define something, and to note specific correspondences, than to apply a meaningless label.
Note Taggie (whom Bugle quoted in the thread's first post) appears to be working off Lawrence Britt's 2003
"The 14 Characteristics of Fascism", which is apparently based on Skip Stone's 2002
"Hallmarks of a Fascist Regime". I'd be inclined to say both are ultimately inspired by Eco's list, but Skip Stone says later in the linked thread that "his [Britt's] and mine are still the only lists of fascist attributes that I know of" as part of his claim that Britt plagiarized him, which makes his petulance risible. In any case, the same critique applies to both, because they are even vaguer and more general than Eco's definition.
Edit: I grabbed my copy of Madeline Albright's
Fascism: A Warning, for comparison. I forgot she made a decent point, in the first chapter: She recounted an open discussion with a class of graduate students at Georgetown, where she came to the conclusion that "Fascism should perhaps be viewed less as a political ideology than as a means for seizing and holding power", which echoes what Eco said, and which I largely agree with. They also came up with a list of characteristics that resembles the ones above (charismatic, controls information etc.) -- but ultimately they have trouble differentiating fascism from other forms of authoritarianism. Albright ultimately rejects an academic's attempt to define fascism based on a set of characteristics for a diplomat's intuition, i.e. she uses a variation on the "I know it when I see it" doctrine made infamous in court cases. Which is why I found her book useful for insights into geopolitics, but useless for its purported task of warning against something called "fascism". In practice, Albright's fascism is anything that goes against her neoliberal, globalist, intellectual elitist sensibilities.