But if “Nazi” isn’t quite the right word for the fringe groups now attempting a takeover of national politics — if it’s sloppy and inexact and papers over just how widespread some of these bigotries are — then “Nazi” will, in a way, have returned to its roots. It began as a broad, imprecise and patronizing slur. Then it became a precise historical classification. (One that, you might argue, “conveniently erased” widespread anti-Semitism throughout Europe and America.) Now we find ourselves arguing over whether it can serve as a general epithet again — a name for a whole assortment of distasteful ideologies. Nearly 80 years after Kristallnacht, we are not exactly sure what a Nazi is, or should be.

Not so long ago, it seemed as though “Nazi” had lost much of its frightening power. A person with an abiding fervor for flawless syntax could quite casually be labeled a “grammar Nazi.” A comically exacting chef on “Seinfeld” could be called a “soup Nazi.” On right-wing radio, any woman with a challenging opinion could be called a “feminazi.” Some of these were jokes, others pointed accusations. But in each case, what the word described was a kind of outsize zealotry — a person who was too stern, too demanding, like an order-barking villain in a World War II movie.

This tradition has unexpected roots, too: It begins with surfers. Shortly after World War II, some surfers started toying with Nazi regalia, mainly out of a desire to offend. By the early ’60s, some young California surfers had begun wearing a Nazi-themed pendant called the Surfer’s Cross. (One teenager told Time magazine he liked it because “it really upsets your parents.”) Despite condemnations from the surfing press, this strange association eventually resulted in the term “surf Nazi” — which, oddly, didn’t describe beachside fascists but cultishly single-minded surfing fanatics.

Actual Nazism remained in circulation, becoming one of various extremist ideologies on the international fringes. In that sense, a Nazi was a very concrete entity. A Nazi was a believer in a very specific mythos. A Nazi was someone who murdered members of my distant family. At the same time, the word was also a frivolous way of comparing decidedly nongenocidal behavior — like using “whom” correctly or being persnickety about etiquette — to the best-known example of human wickedness. This double life was possible, in part, because professed Nazis had very little public voice; identifying as one disqualified you from mainstream conversation, a reality racist communities remain well aware of. As Wired’s Ashley Feinberg discovered, some members of the white supremacist forum Stormfront were concerned by the symbols used by marchers in Charlottesville: “Some were carrying swastikas and that isn’t good for our image, because of the propogabda [sic] embedded into everyone’s minds,” wrote one.