Fascism is associated with brutality and hatefulness and I think that is what people are referring to when they use the word. That is unfortunate because it does not increase our knowledge and ability to resolve problems. It is just meaningless name calling like "Militant and Marxist". I assume we agree it would be nice if the meaningless name calling stopped? Not only does it prevent a good understanding of the present problem, but it also prevents understanding of the different economic and political theories. So we end up living in a world of people throwing stones at each other and accomplishing nothing good.