> Even with a cursory understanding of history, the extreme right wing regimes are considered fascist, aka extremely top down.

IMHO the political spectrum has a circular topology where extreme left and extreme right merge into one point. As an illustration, consider Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union:

* Extremely brutal top-down dictatorship.

* Suppression of all dissent by means of secrete police (Gestapo vs NKVD).

* Single party rule (nazi party vs communist party)

* No meaningful elections.

Of course, there were many differences and nuances but the power structure was surprisingly similar.

EDIT: bullet formatting