I respect that you have your own interpretation. I think you might have either misunderstood what the person above was trying to say, or maybe you may not consume much US conservative media.
Rural America leans toward conservative values, and from their point of view, the things conservative Americans would call "fascist" in today's political climate are things like:
- restrictions on gun rights
- institutions being required to cater marginalized social groups that they do not see as relevant to their communities
- required separations of church and state
- some contemporary public health requirements
- policies that disadvantage status-quo rural employers
I don't think anyone should care what they call "fascist". What I call fascist I call that due to my history education on the topic, which seems to coincide with the widely accepted definition from political science. This does not hold true for the things you describe.
Funnily enough, it's also widely accepted that fascist movements work hard to blur the meaning of words they don't like to be called.
Ah that's the disconnect. The comment you replied to above [0] was asking for clarification about what the parent commenter intended with the use of the word. We're aware that the word has established academic meanings, and that the person above was (almost certainly) not using it that way, but in a politically charged hyperbolic sense.
> The comment you replied to above [0] was asking for clarification about what the parent commenter intended with the use of the word.
Yes, and I was explicitly explaining my interpretation of what he meant. I didn't think I'd have to analyze this, but sure, here we go. The parent of the comment you linked wrote:
> At the rate the politics in rural America are being strangled by fascism, cities may have an imperative to deprive them of their subsidized agriculture. Especially if fuel costs continue to rise against electric generators.
They are saying that fascism is strangling rural America. This will both refer to fully rural areas, but also rural states (overwhelmingly red). He's proposing that the cities should deprive them of their subsidized agriculture, referring both to cities themselves, but also the states that are mostly influenced by cities (blue states).
This means that one answer to his question (what is meant by fascism strangling rural America) is the same as "what fascist actions are republicans taking in rural America", which I described in my comment.
My non-American interpretation of the use of fascism in this sense is relating to:
- taking away rights (e.g. abortion, and please don't argue technicalities)
- banning medical intervention which provably increases quality of life and decreases likelihood of self-harm
- suppressing dissident literature (e.g. recent "temporary" bans of books on Rosa Parks)
- lowering the threshold of the death penalty
- trying to introduce the death penalty for more things, especially what they call "grooming"
- associating entire groups of minorities with this idea of "grooming"
- aggressively suppressing and trying to exclude dissident politicians (e.g. the "Tennessee Three" or currently Zooey Zephyr)
- attempting to overthrow an election by both casting doubt in bad faith and literally working out plans on how to use a coup to take over power