Democrat Fascist Hunters Think You’re Too Dumb To Know What ‘Fascist’ Means

On podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen’s show, Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman called Spencer Pratt a “mini Donald Trump” representing “fascism.” Pratt, an independent candidate for L.A. mayor who grew up around Democrats, who’s angry that Democrat policies have derailed his life, and who stands for family, God, city, and country is a fascist, apparently.

This is what we’re dealing with.

The “fascist” label is the Left’s go-to attack because it’s the only attack they have left. They can’t defend their policies or win an argument on the merits, so they hurl emotionally loaded slurs with the same masculine and triumphant energy as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz trying to load a gun. It’s pathetic, and it reveals one of two things: they’re either completely ignorant of history, or they’re counting on you to be.

What is this “fascism” Democrats speak of so incessantly? We heard about it in history books as kids: Benito Mussolini was a fascist, Adolf Hitler was a fascist, and they’re two of the most evil villains in history. So how did we get to the point where Democrats call every Republican they see with this emotionally and historically charged language?

Modern-day liberals fail to realize that fascism originated as a distinctly left-wing ideology born directly out of socialism in the early 20th century. The term comes from the Italian “fasci,” meaning a bundle of sticks stronger together than individually. It symbolized the supremacy of the collective over the individual. Mussolini, fascism’s founder and its most important historical figure, was a Marxist for most of his life and editor of a major socialist newspaper. He broke with international communism over exactly one thing: he believed true socialism had to be achieved nationally, not globally.

That’s where “national socialism” came from in Nazi Germany, too. A term that a lot of Democrats seem increasingly enamored with.

Mussolini and philosopher Giovanni Gentile framed fascism as the practical, workable form of socialism that subordinated the individual entirely to the state. Hitler followed the same blueprint, naming his party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. They weren’t ideological opposites of communism. They just rejected its internationalism in favor of a hyper-nationalist version of collectivism. They championed a powerful centralized state that glorified the collective (because it’s just so warm), the leader (because only they know what’s best for you), and the nation (because the individual on its own is just too successful and greedy). They imposed heavy regulation on private business, rejected classical liberal individualism and free markets, and built universal welfare programs run by the state, all in service of one idea: that the “good” of the collective must override private rights.

Sound familiar? (Remember, they’re trying to tell you that these fascist ideals are the marks of a conservative.)

Take today’s progressive Democrats: Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris, and the Squad demand single-payer “Medicare for All,” handing the state control over one-fifth of the economy. Their Green New Deal and Joe Biden’s industrial policy (Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act) poured hundreds of billions into directing private industry toward government-chosen goals. That’s the exact corporatist model Mussolini and Hitler used: businesses stayed “private” on paper, but served the collective state agenda. Add COVID, climate, and DEI mandates, government-tech collusion to suppress speech, and identity politics that elevate group grievance over individual rights, and you have the same anti-individual, top-down collectivism fascism always demanded.

In typical leftist fashion, post World War II — or World War Eleven if you’re Ilhan Omar — the Left quietly rebranded fascism as “right-wing” to smear conservatives and bury its own ideological DNA. A lie then. A lie now.

Fascism bears literally no resemblance to American conservatism. None. Conservatism traces back to the Founding: rights come from God or nature, not government. The state exists to protect those pre-existing rights, not to engineer society or dictate economic outcomes. Conservatives believe in private property, free enterprise, federalism, and a government small enough to stay out of your life.

Fascism is “right-wing” only in the narrow European sense when placed next to full communism. By any American standard of limited government and individual freedom, it is radically left-wing, and it always has been.

The real intellectual lineage of Mussolini and Hitler runs straight through 20th-century socialism and into the modern Democratic Left. The policies differ in scale and packaging. The philosophy does not.

So the next time a Democrat calls a Republican a fascist, don’t get angry. Laugh! Laugh loudly and often, until they’re finally embarrassed enough to open a history book. They’ve been counting on your ignorance for decades. 

Time to prove them wrong.