Huh… I see you set a bit of a rhetorical trap there, where disagreeing or countering would make me seem like one of these fascist thinkers. Nice. Might not have been intentional though.
Anyways, I see them as different steps along the same spectrum. Authority is a component of authoritarianism, but the presence of authority is not necessarily indicative of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is authority taken too far.
On that topic, non-authoritarian authority is not always a good thing, nor does good authority necessarily stem from the will of the people. Sometimes the masses really don’t know what’s best. That said, democracy is probably still the best paradigm humans can manage on a long term.