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The steelman of this step in the reasoning is the idea of slippery slopes and logical endpoints. The claim is that any fascistic system of government will inevitably trend towards uncontroversially evil policies like mass murder because those are the natural extrapolations of its founding principles, even if the initial proponents don't intend to go that far. So maybe moderate fascism is benign or even beneficial in the short term, but if you elect a moderate fascist, there is a serious risk that he will gradually turn into a full-blooded fascist dictator - perhaps because he was always more ruthless than he made himself appear, perhaps just because power corrupts - simply because that's the result of putting his money where his mouth is.
Mark that I present this as a steelman, not something I claim is the belief of everyone who uses Trump-is-a-fascist rhetoric. But I do think it's a relatively mainstream understanding of why it's meant to be such a devastating blow to call him a fascist, given the almost voyeuristic lust for a flashpoint they can describe as a mask-off moment, crossing the Rubicon, etc. Hence, I don't think it's quite as simple as a case of Scott's "Worst Argument in the World", which is what the "Magic Word" complaint reduces to. The claim is not just "Trump fits this technical definition of a fascist, the most famous fascist regimes were horribly evil, therefore you must shun Trump", but "Trump fits this technical definition of a fascist, the most famous fascist regimes were horribly evil, therefore you shouldn't be fooled by current-Trump's relative benign-ness: he will predictably get exponentially eviler if he continues along the current trend".
Of course, one might fairly ask if this is uniquely true of fascism, or if any political ideology taken to "its logical endpoint" can turn into an evil dictatorship.
But Mussolini did not carry out any more mass murders than any other authoritarian regime would have(nor did Franco, or half the axis, or Metaxis…) A few fascist governments did. They openly said they were going to do this; Hitler did not pretend that he loved Jews they just had to follow the rules. He campaigned on antisemitism.
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