I disagree that people generally have a good idea what a fascist government looks like, or else there wouldn’t be this level of confusion. I think most people at best, know what countrys had a problem with fascism in the past, without any certainty of what parts of of those governments were where the fascism was, just guesses.

Thats why comparisons to nazis and such are so common I would say. People find it a lot easier to point out similarities to known fascism than to try and concisely point out the exact point where an action became “fascist”