> things could get a lot worse! And they just might!
Looks like they will. Do you care to bet what sort of party will make them so? You can see them in action across the world and in our past.
> They just aren’t that similar.
That's where we disagree. I say they're similar where it counts the most, at the core. Where did the fascists come from?
There's a combination of xenophobia and populism, this tendency to offer simple solutions to complex problems that tend to involve blaming and getting rid of people that are "different". It usually goes hand in hand with a certain latent or overt brutality, doesn't it, the tendency to not care about the suffering inflicted, about the humanity of others. There's a generous streak of authoritarianism there, wanting to suppress differences, a hostility towards the mechanisms that allow these differences to be expressed and balanced and protected. A disdain for courts that don't rule the right way, for journalists that don't write the right thing, and a soft spot for what we call "alternative facts" these days and for "remigration" - I think the nazis entertained such an idea, too.
I agree that there's an inflationary use of calling out "fascism", but you don't need to look deeply into that Swedish party to see the similarities. From what I read, much more likely than not, somebody like their boss would have been an ardent nazi even before the 1930s, golden party badge and all - and if not, then only because he'd have a competing party for a while.
So yeah, sometimes it's right to call a spade a spade. Another one of the reasons that accusations of “fascism” fall flat is that people just don't want to be associated with _that_, and there are enough differences to talk about to avoid looking in the mirror of the past. You don't need to have arrived at the extremes for people to understand where your heart is, and what is at least the direction you want to go. It's the one that's consistently turned out to be worse.