Fascism is a rightwing social ideology. It's the idea that people should all be united in a quest for national greatness. 100% of the time this has some theory of ethno-cultural superiority attached to it.
The weak should be culled, the strength of the group is the most important thing. Other people's are a means to an end -- and its legitimate to kill and enslave them if their in your way.
This is conservative socially not liberal socially. So we call this rightwing all over the world.
In this country, rightwing is also associated with economic liberalism. If I say I'm a liberal in Germany, they assume libertarian not some kind of economic leftist.
That's why there is so much confusion about the fascist label. To many Americans, it's a bit counter-intuitive in this country why Hitler would be considered rightwing if he wasn't a market fundamentalist or something. It was because his social stance on German superiority and his Imperial ambitions on behalf of Germans.
The fact that he happened to try to package himself as a socialist (he killed socialist as threat no.1 in reality) or did a few welfare programs (not a leftwing only thing in Germany) is just incidental. Its all a red hearring.
Edit: Stalin was the military dude in Russia that took power when Lenin died. He was very much a conservative socially -- even though ironically he dressed everything he did up in Marxist ideology. Basically, he was the rightwing General in a regime of radical Leninists. Hitler once praised Stalin for successfully creating "Red Fascism" and some people indeed look at it that way. But there are some concrete differences between Germany and Russia in ideology and the way the economy was structured -- so in some contexts it makes less sense to equate Stalin to Fascism. Private property was a thing is Germany -- for example.
This is all considered advanced level political theory because its easy to get bogged down in the weeds.
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