WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris was asked this week as she thought Donald Trump was a fascist, and she replied, “Yes, I do.” She then called him the same herself, saying that voters don’t want a “president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

But what exactly is a fascist? And does the meaning of the word change when viewed through a historical or political prism – especially so close to the end of a charged presidential race?

Here’s a closer look:

What is fascism?

An authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is often associated with the far right and is characterized by a dictatorial leader who uses military forces to help suppress political and civilian opposition.

The two most famous fascists in history were Nazi chief Adolf Hitler in Germany and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, known as Il Duce, or “the Duke,” led the National Fascist Party, which was symbolized by an eagle holding a fasces – a bundle of rods with an ax between them.

At Mussolini’s insistence, in October 1922, thousands of ‘blackshirts’ or ‘squadristi’ formed an armed fascist militia that marched on Rome and vowed to seize power. Hitler’s Nazis similarly relied on a militia known as the “Brownshirts.” Both men eventually imposed one-party rule and encouraged violence in the streets. They used soldiers, but also fomented civil unrest, pitting loyalists against political opponents and larger parts of everyday society.

Hitler and Mussolini censored the press and released sophisticated propaganda. They played on racist fears and manipulated not only their active supporters, but also ordinary citizens.

Today, the term fascism has taken on a looser political definition and is often cited as a catch-all term for attempts to spread oppression and racism – and to decry dictators or leaders who embrace totalitarian tactics.

It is not just the left that has used the term to denounce a move to the right in the US and in many parts of the world. Some conservatives has decried lockdowns imposed during the corona pandemic as ‘fascist’.

What are other historical examples of fascism?

Hitler and Mussolini are the two biggest names, but it gets murkier from there.

Does the seventeen-year, ironclad rule of military dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile qualify? What about Indonesian strongman Suharto or Spaniard Francisco Franco? Were the regimes of Ferenc Szálasi in Hungary and that of Plínio Salgado in Brazil fascist? Where does American neo-Nazi leader David Duke fit in?

Critics sometimes even describe modern American extremist groups — including movements that have Trump cheeredlike the Proud boys – as fascists or neofascists. These labels are perhaps more steeped in political ideology than clear historical parallels.

Why does Harris call Trump a fascist?

The vice president has long criticized Trump as being mentally unstable and not a true believer or defender of the country’s democratic founding principles.

She notes that Trump suggested he would deploy the army to attack political opponents, including people he has labeled the “enemy from within.” The former president has long talked about attacking his enemies and declared to his supporters that he would be their ‘retribution’.

“He’s talking about the American people. He’s talking about journalists, judges, nonpartisan election officials,” Harris said at a CNN town hall Wednesday evening.

Trump has threatened to take action against television networks and news organizations for reporting he deems unfavorable. And when current President Joe Biden challenged him to denounce the Proud Boys during a 2020 debate, replied: “Proud boys, take a step back and stay with it.”

A gang of pro-Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn Trump’s loss to Biden after Trump gave a speech promoting falsehoods about the election and egging on the crowd to ‘fight like hell’. Among the people imprisoned in connection with January 6 were the leader of the Proud Boysaccused of orchestrating a failed plot to keep Trump in power.

Harris has worked towards the characterization. During the day an interview with her in Detroit on October 15, radio host Charlamagne Tha God said Trump was increasingly embracing fascism and asked, “Why can’t we just say it?” “Yes, we can say that,” Harris replied.

Then Trump’s longest-serving former chief of staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, said: warned that the former president meets the definition of a fascist. He said Trump suggested during his time in office that Hitler “did some good things” and that Trump valued personal loyalty over the Constitution.

Trump’s campaign has accused Kelly of lying and dismissed Harris’ criticism, with spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responding: “Kamala will say anything to distract from her open border invasion and record high inflation.” Trump has described January 6 as a “day of love.”

How do experts on fascism view Trump?

They are divided. Some believe that Trump does not meet the classic historical definition of a fascist, but that he is increasingly moving towards politics with fascist tendencies.

David Kertzer, a Brown University professor and Italian historian, said he was “a little bit shocked” when he heard Harris call Trump a fascist, given the “historical resonance” of the term. He said there are some similarities, including “mass movement, a cult of the strongman.” He noted that Trump sometimes sticks out his chin, although he is not inclined to take off his shirt and bare his chest, as Mussolini did.

Kertzer said that fascism “involved a one-party state, banning all opposition newspapers and jailing people who disagreed with it,” and that while Trump has talked about jailing opponents, he has not moved to other to embrace important facets of the movement.

“There are certain echoes, but in terms of turning the Republican Party into a one-party state that seems quite far-fetched at this point,” said Kertzer, author of “The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius fascism in Europe.”

David Clay Large, a senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said that “the alarm bells going off now may be a bit exaggerated.”

“Our democratic institutions, however besieged, remain far stronger than those of the European countries that turned fascist in the 1920s and 1930s,” Large said. Still, he added that there would be “a real danger to these institutions” during a second Trump presidential term.

The rise of far-right parties across Europe and Trump’s control of the Republican Party, Large said, create “an entirely new situation: the center can no longer hold its ground as it once did.”

Add to that social media, which in the digital age reflects the use of propaganda, amplifying emotions and divisions, he said.

“Where everyone is an expert, we have lost respect for factuality, objectivity and factual expert opinion,” Large said.

—- Kellman reported from London.