Columnist Andrew Bolt has made a habit of talking of "Left fascists". But fascism historically was a regime of the Far Right.

A popular American book declaims against "liberal fascism". Yet one thing that unites fascists is their deep hostility to political liberalism, in all its forms.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini ( Wikimedia Commons )

In Australia, some have called Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton a fascist. At the same time leading European thinkers of the "Nouvelle Droite", who draw upon the ideas that seeded interwar fascism, strenuously deny the title.

Political scientists have agonised over whether there could be a "fascist minimum". This would be some set of features that define a political agent, regime or movement as fascist.

One feature of fascism, as opposed to the other great modern "isms", as author Anthony Paxton contends with others, is its ideological fluidity or hybridity.

Yet certain things should be ventured, lest this "F-word" degenerates into nothing more than an angry label that every party uses to name their enemies, of whatever political stripe.

Fascisms are political movements that aim to take over the state, destroying liberal institutions like an independent media, and individual rights. But not all movements that aim to do this are fascist.

Fascists feel licensed to use fraud ("fake news", propaganda) and, if need be, force in order to achieve this revolutionary aim. Yet again, not all movements that aim to do this are fascist.

To fascists, all life is kampf

One step further, fascists embrace the view that all life is struggle (kampf) or war: between the strong and the weak, within nations, and between the nations, races or peoples.

Fascists claim almost mystically to speak directly for a morally pure People. ( AAP: Tracey Nearmy )

Politics is a continuation of war by other means. Ideals like equality, tolerance, progress, and pity are the ideological rationalisations of weakness.

Many fascists, including leading Nazis, are thus deeply opposed to the values enshrined by the biblical prophets and Christianity, seeing in them (following Nietzsche) the product of a regrettable "slave revolt" against the masters in antiquity.

For the fascist, we should embrace hierarchies within nations, based on strength and "selections", to use a chilling National Socialist word. We should accept differences between peoples — so long as groups, "in essence" different, are kept separated by fences and borders.

Many forms of fascism thus base their ideologies on pseudo-biological doctrines concerning race, like the Nazis. But not all fascists are biological essentialists. The cultural specificity and history of a group, nation, or "People" (Volk) might be what is being idealised and fought for.

Andrew Bolt called students protesting against appearances by Canadian conservative Lauren Southern (pictured) fascists, but are they? ( AAP: Bradley Kanaris )

Not all populists are fascists

Fascisms always appeal to myths of national or popular rebirth ("palingenesis"), leading scholar Roger Griffin claims. At some point, the Nation or Race or People has lost its way, whether in 1918, after Vietnam, or indeed after 1789 — whence hailed the hated modern values of "liberty" and "equality".

Fascists are populists, claiming almost mystically to speak directly for a morally pure People. ( AAP: Dan Peled )

Fascists are thus populists, claiming almost mystically to speak directly for a morally pure but imperilled People. They prioritise appeals to emotion, aesthetic spectacles and rallies, identification with a Strong Leader, and a divisive rhetoric of Us versus Them over reasoned public debate. Yet, not all populists are fascists.

The People, for fascists, has not simply lost its way. It has been betrayed. Some "Other" (such as in Nazism, the Jews), working with treasonous internal "elites", have corrupted the naturally virtuous People. Fascisms hence always involve forms of conspiracy theory. But not all believers in conspiracy theories are fascists.

Accordingly, for fascists, minority rights must be rolled back. Ideally, dangerous minorities should be segregated from the People, deported, or even killed.

It's not a helpful word

As for the elites, we must "drain the swamp" or, as Mussolini already said, "drenare la palude".

Ideally, opposition political parties, and unfriendly media and NGOs should be shut down, using the executive arm of the state.

Fascists have often used or concocted dire national emergencies, like the Reichstag fire, to legitimate their hostile takeovers of the state. Yet not all governments that respond to crises by declaring temporary states of emergency are fascist.

If accepting all, or even most of these propositions is necessary to make someone a fascist, it seems as unhelpful to call Mr Dutton a fascist as it does for Mr Bolt to decry as fascists student activists who opposed Canadian conservative Lauren Southern staging public events.

Clearly, this is not to say that we should not passionately disagree with either Mr Dutton or these activists.

To fascists, dangerous minorities should be segregated, repatriated, or else physically killed. ( ABC News: Cassandra Bedwell )

Fascists have scant regard for language

Fascists have often used or concocted dire national emergencies. ( ABC News: Gregor Salmon )

Albert Camus claimed in 1948 that by "defining a certain number of keywords" — like fascism and democracy — "so that they will tomorrow be effective, we work for freedom".

One final feature of a fascist (although, again, not she or he alone) is their feeling licensed to use language with scant regard for consistency, clarity or accuracy.

"If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth," as Benito Mussolini boasted, "then there is nothing more relativistic than fascist attitudes and activity."

When the end is so great, all means are good.

Matthew Sharpe is an associate professor of philosophy at Deakin University.