They even admire those who steal from them.

Many years ago, when I was a student, I worked at a blue collar shop in Florida as an engineering technician. The state authorities had just arrested a man who was running a Ponzi home marketing scheme that had swindled thousands of people out of millions of dollars. You may have heard of this, it was the "Dare to be Great" pyramid scam. Some people had gone into debt, quit their jobs and mortgaged their homes to buy into this racket, and had lost everything, left with garages full of cheap merchandise they couldn't give away.

I was astonished that my co-workers (working-class types just like me) were delighted how this guy had "gotten away with it". Rather than feel outrage at how folks just like them had been victimized, they thought it was clever, cool, and that his marks were stupid sheep that deserved to be sheared. It was pretty clear they wished they had pulled off a swindle like this, and they fantasized how THEY would have been smart enough to cover their tracks and avoid getting caught.

Again, its a psychological archetype I have determined may be at the heart of fascism; a victim of a system that has exploited him, but rather than feeling anger at being robbed, or shame at how easily they had been conned, they instead wish to join that system and exploit others just like themselves. Perhaps it is the only way they can overlook how systematically and totally they have been oppressed themselves, by simply fantasizing how they could do it to someone else. Someone lower than themselves, someone who deserves to be fleeced.

Johnny Reb joins the Confederacy to fight for the freedom to own his own slaves--someday. What can men do against such reckless hate?

NO. "Fascism" is precisely the right term for this social dynamic. Don't even think about allowing them to convince you that you have not identified them correctly and described them accurately. They don't like being called Fascist for the same reason they don't like being called racist.
Fascism may originate from unscrupulous elitists, but it cannot function without the active collaboration and participation of its own victims. It convinces the oppressed that it is those below them in caste or class that have stolen their future and bled them of their labor. We've all seen this movie before, but too many of us have forgotten how it turns out.