What the Nazi's did was horrifici, and it's incredibly insensitive, inappropriate, and, yes, juvenile, to water that down by using it for political point scoring.
It seems like you get butthurt from reading people calling moves very similar to fascism done by politicians you support, fascism takes many flavours, Italian fascism was different from German fascism. The way it's going the past month looks like to be shaping an American flavour of fascism.
There's no watering down, you are seeing with your own eyes a movement happening where the leader of the executive is attempting to snatch power, it never happens at once, it's always through salami slicing. What will be the breaking point for you, specifically? What signs do you expect so it can be called fascism?
You are all around this forum whining about "progressives" trying to heed a call about a dark path being traced. You never seem to acknowledge there are very worrying moves happening, for some reason you do not want to hear it, you want to shut off the discussion at every turn by using progressives as a slur, and anything said by that out-group as wrong or hysterical a priori. Can't you see how stupid it is? You are always attempting to throw a wrench into these discussions with vitriol, as a non-American I really ask you to inform and educate yourself better, to learn about the process of fascism before coming with knee-jerk reactions because you don't like "progressives".
Go read "Hitler's Beneficiaries", read any book on historical recounts of the process of fascism unravelling from the 1920s to the 1930s, you are behaving exactly as the citizens enabling Mussolini and Hitler. American Fascism will not be Nazi or Italia Fascista, it has its own shape and form (such as not being anti-semitic, completely different to Nazis) but even though the topography differs, the core principles are pretty much the same.
Don't be an enabler, you won't like to be on the wrong side of history.
I think that speaks for itself and I need not to comment on this.
Americans, why? Why are you so keen on dabbling with a homegrown fascism of yours? Why are you so keen on setting the world aflame?
I think some people just know a few images from the Nazis at the height of their power. Or the death camps, that were only discovered because the Nazis lost the war (the plan was to erase all traces, after all). No concept of the 1920s, not even "Mein Kampf", nothing.
No, that's the fucking end point of it, after all is done and the wheels have been far gone from the wagon, the process itself is much more nuanced and step-wise but the uneducated ones never ever heard of it. Feels like they live in a world where someone turned on a switch and everything changed at once...
Worst: it's coming from people who have lived through a pandemic, watched the social strife and divisions unfolding right in front of their faces, how can those same people not see that massive social movements aren't ever clear-cut? It's all just so stupid and ignorant.
Most Americans couldn't tell you much about how Hitler came into power. (Or Mussolini? Forget it.) The majority of what Americans know about it all are exactly what you said: black-and-white scenes of SS officers, Hilter giving speeches, and swastika armbands.
There's no lingering WWII war damage in the US. We don't have monuments dedicating places where major battles were fought. The war wasn't fought here. We don't see reminders of what all that was like.
When I was born, WWII was only 35 years behind us. Many of the people who were involved in it at the time (politicians, soldiers, etc.) were not only alive, but still active in public discourse in major ways. But today, WWII ended 80 years ago. Most everyone who experienced it is dead. Awareness of all of it is still present in Europe because it was all literally close to home. Not so in the US.
This honestly shouldn't be all that surprising. History repeats and rhymes, over and over throughout the decades and centuries. All it takes is a couple generations to forget its lessons.
I see comments in these threads from people who lived through the forming of dictatorships in their countries. I wish more people would listen to them.