Fascism is qualitatively different from the corporate, neoliberal semi-democracy we currently have in the U.S..

It is a whole lot worse.

Yes, liberalism and fascism are both political systems available to administer the common affairs of capital.

Yes, capital exploits labor under both political systems.

Yes, inequality of race and gender is built in to the social structure in both political systems.

But the political means available to address inequality and exploitation are vastly reduced in fascism.

So much for the basic facts. What follows from that?

Liberals do not acknowledge that fascism poses a threat. They dismiss it, ridicule and shout down those who have been warning against it, and insist that equality and democracy are simply destined to prevail.

Liberals made one exception to this approach of appeasement and denial:

Before the 2020 election, suddenly they became the alarmists, and trumpeted the threat of fascism to wield as a weapon against any critics from the left who dared to contradict Biden-Harris-etc

The Left has had its share of people issuing genuine, well-founded warnings against the threat of fascism. But largely, it has remained indifferent to it, on the assumption that bread-and-butter issues (M4A, $2k, etc) are more important than the form of governance.

Then, the liberal ruse of dangling the threat of fascism over the left, in order to bring it in line ahead of the election, convinced many on the left that the threat of fascism was just that: An empty, disingenuous, rhetorical device deployed by liberals to silence the left.

Finally, on the right, there has been a multi-tiered approach to fascism for about ten years.

First, promote it in word and deed.
Second, deny that you are doing that.
Third, accuse liberals/left of being the "real fascists"

Case in point, the right cries "fascism", when it is denied a platform on social media, or when it is asked to endure criticism of its ideas on a college campus, or when anyone accuses a white person of racism, or a man of sexism ...

... or when they are asked to wear a mask, or when an employer is made to pay more money to their workers.

The right, in essence, uses "fascism" to mean any coercion or compulsion exercised in pursuit of a purpose it does not share (equality, justice, public health, etc).

Here, the right has a dangerous overlap with the left in the way the latter uses the term:

Police taking Black lives, mistreating protester, running riot? Surveillance state targeting activists? Social media taking down leftist accounts? Fascism!

Of course, the left is closer to the truth than the right on this matter.

A fascist state would do the same things the current republic is doing, with more viciousness.
A fascist state would NOT, however, force people to respect the rights of POC and women.

Nevertheless, the danger is where both false definitions bleed into each other.

The surveillance state and social media censorship target the left and the right. Both have used the term "fascism" to describe that.

If this led to coalition-building, the left would be suicidal.

For this reason, I cringe hard whenever I see people on the left say, now they're coming for the fascists. We're next!

Yes, we're next. But if the fascists prevail, we're next, too, and with much more emphasis. The fascists will be fine.

The fascists will be fine, even if purged off social media, b/c they have endless funds from capital. Dark money flows freely to fund myriad propaganda and activist orgs.

Long story short:

Don't defend the "right to free speech" of fascists.

Don't dismiss the coup as AOC's "whining."

Don't for one second think that a U.S., successfully retooled into a fascist state deployed against its own population, will be no different from what you have now.

When Communists in the 1930s came around to the realization ...

... that they have to defend bourgeois democracy against fascism, any time and in working with anyone willing, they had gained that insight the hard way.

It was paid for with the lives of thousands of German democrats, liberals, socialists, communists, and anarchists.