The corporazioni are not the modern corporations (società)

As Mussolini put it, fascism is just corporatism.

The core issue here is a failure to distinguish between corporate interest and Italian corporatism (corporativismo). I gave the definition of what Mussolini meant when he referred to corporatism or corporazioni. You are conflating it with corporations/companies/the firm.

You analysis of Italy and Germany fascism is suspect as they both had many industries and related commerce that were not controlled directly by the state.

Under Italian fascism, "corporations" referred to state-supervised industrial bodies rather than business firms like Fiat or Pirelli. Private companies remained profit-driven, but they operated within a corporatist system that sought to coordinate employers, workers, and the state. Private companies needed to align their production, wages, and output with the goals dictated by corporazioni.

Pretty much everything below this is secondary if you fail to note the difference between a state-run chamber (corporazione) and a private joint-stock company (società).

The definition of fascism matters

Like you said, "this combines feverish nationalism, obsession with security, militarism, scapegoating, and control of media.” We agree here. We disagree entirely on what the "this" is that drives the rest. That distinction matters because the "this" tells us who actually holds supreme power. In liberal systems, power belongs to the capitalists who capture the state. In fascism, power belongs to a totalitarian state that has captured capital.

China, of all places, would fit your definition to a T, but I highly doubt they would appreciate being called fascist, even if they are.

Both China and fascism have an economic system where the state exerts strong, direct authority over a capitalist economy. They are both dirigism. China resembles fascism in some functional economic respect and a rejection of liberalism.

But if we’re looking at Roger Griffin’s definition of fascism, he excludes communist projects from fascism despite being feverishly nationalistic with a overtones of rebirth (palingenetic ultranationalism) because fascism rejects the Enlightenment, rejects reason, and views the national rebirth as a violent, mystical awakening led by a cult of personality. The ultimate goal is the glory of the state and war for the sake of war.

Under Xi's heavy nationalism, the state justifies its rebirth through rationalist, progressive benchmarks: eliminating poverty, advancing scientific development, building out infrastructure, and achieving economic hegemony. The military is built to defend the state from liberal encirclement and requires technological parity to do so.

While this distinction isolates China from fascism, it leaves us with the United States. The US perfectly embodies the material hypocrisy of liberalism. It preaches decentralized free markets while structurally generating massive, private command economies. Fascism was a desperate attempt to sail between these two realities, but by an entirely different mechanism. Where free-market ideology acts as the linguistic mask hiding corporate autocracy, fascism is the moment the state actively seizes the steering wheel of that corporate machine to drive it toward total war.

This distinction is critical because domestic corporate tyranny and its external project, liberal imperialism, form an entirely different criminal enterprise than fascism. Flattening these systems into the same category makes it impossible to fight either one effectively, because combating a state captured by private capital requires completely different analytical tools and strategies than fighting a totalitarian state that has devoured capital. The presence of fascist actors within American institutions is an undeniable reality of modern political drift, but that remains structurally worlds apart from a fully realized fascist regime.

Clarifications on Capital

You speak as if Capital struggles to weaken the state to capitalize

Absolutely not. What I said was modern American corporations are “driven by private, bourgeois capital influencing, lobbying, or weakening the state to maximize private profit and deregulation.” They don’t struggle to do this. But all corporations aren’t operating in the same interests and different, but very powerful sectors have competing interests. Capital is in firm control of state, but capital isn’t a unitary.

Failure to Communicate

I think you may not be able to see this because you believe fascism can only exist in a specific economic model brought by a dictator’s hand as opposed to a natural result of corporate control of government.

I don’t know why you’re presuming that I won’t be able to see it. This quickly reads as a protective element that lets you neither wrestle with my critique nor do the hard work of actually explaining your position. If in the end you believe I won’t get it, why would you waste the time in connecting them?

If you want to argue that a political concept has evolved, you have to trace its actual structural transformation. For example, applying the term imperialism to America in the 20th century is a very apt thing despite the core not having an emperor. That’s because it’s structures operate either exactly the same way or have transformed through history in very explicit ways to benefit the core by exerting less energy to control the empire. With that said, I think a Lenin imperialist model was relevant in the first half of the 20th century, but the 60s onward we saw another transformation where it is better described by World Systems theory. In the same vein, what you are describing as a 'fascist tendency' is better understood through a Marxist lens as Late-Stage Capitalist Hegemony—the normal, mature state of regulatory capture.

As of now, you have not been able to identify the structures that they share and how the differences in structures were in service of a fascist core. If you are able to, then we can have a discussion of two good faith interlocuters. But if the whole of your argument is “modern fascism is a corporatocracy … this has evolved into neofascism” then it’s just a merry go round with trust me bro vibes.