Yes, in this case I am.

Because this represents a historical double standard. Hitler called himself a National Socialist, and his party bore that name, yet he is almost universally regarded as a fascist. Meanwhile, Stalin called himself a communist, implemented many of the same methods of repression, mass murder, political terror, and totalitarian control, yet he is not considered a fascist simply because he identified as a communist.

Some of the worst people in history seem to be allowed to define themselves by whatever label they chose, rather than by what they actually did.

That doesn't make sense to me, linguistically, historically, or otherwise. Stalin, , and others exhibited many characteristics commonly associated with fascist regimes. The fact that they called themselves communists or attempted to build socialist states does not, in my view, automatically negate those fascistic characteristics.

It's perfectly reasonable to disagree with an established historical consensus. We're not talking about hard sciences like biology or chemistry. We're talking about history, where conclusions are based on the interpretation of evidence rather than controlled experimentation. Whether history should even be considered a science is a separate debate.

For that reason, I don't think a historical consensus should be treated as infallible simply because it is widely accepted.

That guy literally won't even concede the fact that America uses prisoners for slave labor, lol. He doesn't live in reality.

No.

They're fascists by the very definition of fascism. The caveat in the historical consensus is that fascism is treated as a specific ideology, with the qualifier apparently being the underlying economic system. I disagree with that distinction. Just because Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot were communists does not negate the fact that they also exhibited virtually every defining characteristic of fascism. They embodied nearly every trait of what a terrible authoritarian ruler can be.

Likewise, just because a mass-murdering psychopath who happens to be in charge of a country calls himself a socialist does not automatically make him one in any meaningful historical or philosophical sense. Political leaders do not get to define themselves for the purposes of history. History evaluates them by their actions, not merely by the labels they choose to adopt.

I'm also saying that I disagree with the historical consensus on defining fascism strictly as an ideology. I'll reiterate that this is not a hard science. I'm not claiming that the laws of thermodynamics are incorrect because I have a philosophical disagreement with them. Rather, I'm arguing for a definition of fascism based on ideological consistency and observable characteristics, not solely on the economic system a regime claims to follow.