Image © Austin Cline, Licensed to About; Original Poster: National Archives
Fascism is more popular as an epithet rather than as a neutral description. People tend to label as "fascist" any ideology they don't like or which they see as threatening. Conservatives and Christian Nationalists appear to be becoming enamored of combining it with other labels as a smear against beliefs and positions they want to discredit. Thus it's not Islam or Islamic extremism, but Islamofascism -- even though Islamic extremism has no or almost no characteristics of a real fascism. We are also hearing about Demofascists as a substitute for Godless Liberals and Godless Sodomites.
Is there anything genuinely fascist about the political platform of the Democratic party or about the common attitudes of liberals in America? It's true that fascism can be difficult to define because it takes on a very different guise in each culture where it develops, but there are common characteristics which have been identified and which scholars tend to focus on. None of them apply to the Democratic party specifically or liberals generally. Demofascist is thus as much of a misnomer as Islamofascist, but why is it being used?
It's possible that those using these words really don't understand what fascism is and think that they are being clever for coming up with new way to smear those whom they dislike. Just as possible, and far more disturbing, is the possibility that this is a deliberate attempt to inure people to seeing the fascist label, to render the label meaningless, and/or to deflect attention from their own behavior.
The sad fact of the matter is that the political movements which exhibit a significant number of genuinely fascist elements are Christian Nationalism and other far-right groups whose ideologies have had influence within the Republican Party. This is not to say that they are fascists -- there are few genuine fascists in America -- though they might fairly be described as "proto-fascists." If one is concerned, though, that the fascist label might be too true for comfort, using it to attack everyone else is one way to prevent others from realizing this and deflect attention from one's growing fascist agenda.
The above image is based on a World War II poster exhorting munitions workers to "Keep Em Coming." I've used it to reference the use of Demofascists as if they were genuine fascists like in World War II, the idea that the conflict is between Christians and fascists, and the idea that violently combatting enemies is a manly task.