The term fascist continues to elude definition.
All fascist movements combine … in varying proportions, a reactionary ideology and a modern mass organization. Their leaders, when in opposition, extol traditional values, but they appeal for support to the masses, and exploit any form of mass discontent that is available. In their original ideas they often closely resemble old-fashioned conservatives, but their methods of struggle, indeed their whole notion of political organization, belong not to the idealized past but to the modern age. Their outlook may be nostalgic, and it is certainly elitist, but as a political force they are more democratic than oligarchic.
…The word ‘reactionary’, perhaps even more than the word ‘fascist’, has become a term of abuse in political propaganda. Yet the word has a perfectly clear and legitimate meaning. A reactionary is one who wishes to resurrect the past, and reactionary ideologies are based on visions of the past, usually more mythical than real, which are intended to inspire political action in the present. A conservative, by contrast, should be one whose aim is not so much to resurrect the past as to conserve what he believes to be valuable in the traditions and institutions which still exist. In practice the difference between reactionaries and conservatives has been blurred. Reactionaries have usually called themselves conservatives. The Right in most European countries has had a reactionary wing, in some cases forming a distinct faction, in others operating within a larger conservative group.
Those ideas derived from the European Right which have been important in the intellectual formation of the leaders of fascism have been essentially nostalgic and reactionary.