"Fascism" Means Nothing Now

And that's much more dangerous than you think.

We need to talk about the most overused, abused, and cheapened word in the modern English language. No, I am not talking about “unprecedented,” “problematic,” or “influencer.”

We are talking about the word - fascist.

The nuclear option of modern political discourse. Or rather, it used to be. It used to carry the full, terrifying weight of moral condemnation; a label reserved for the kind of totalitarian ideologies that turned nations to meat-grinders across the twentieth century.

Now? “Fascist” is used what happens when you proudly wave the flag of your own country, or when you express a preference for strict border controls, or when you confess on Twitter that you don’t particularly enjoy the new Star Wars spin-off series.

If you walk onto a university campus, or open Bluesky (Remember that? It was Twitter for people who enjoy getting pegged), or turn on the news today, you will find a thriving industry of professional outrage merchants who treat these heavy historical terms not as precise diagnoses, but as all-purpose social media flashbangs. Fortunately none of them can actually throw.

We have entered an era of linguistic hyper-inflation. And just like real economic inflation, where printing money increases the supply but erodes purchasing power, - We've done to the word ‘fascist’ exactly what Germany did to the Reichsmark. You now need a wheelbarrow full of fascists to buy one actual Nazi.

Let's actually educate ourselves on what the word means, because the people flinging it around seem to think “Fascism” was invented on the /redpill subreddit. In 2016.

We have to go back much further than that, and a long way from Silicon Valley. While the ideals of this ideology can be traced back to the end of the 19th century, ‘fascism’ as it is commonly understood originates in 1920s Italy. Turns out those Italians gave us two things: incredible food, and totalitarian nightmare states. Swings and roundabouts.

Back then, it wasn’t an insult - it was a descriptor. One those being labelled with it would have happily accepted, like “conservative”, or furry. Back then, you would put “fascist” in your bio, proudly. There was even a Fascist Manifesto, for Christ’s sake - they called it that. Still I’d rather get caught reading that than the furry manifesto.

Fascism is a real thing, with real consequences. It has features we can identify, and in-borne attributes. Now we have a basic understanding of what it is, we can tell what it isn’t. And what it isn’t is 99% of what people say it is. Fascism is not just a vibe. It is not a synonym for "someone whose politics make me feel mildly uncomfortable." or "having a skeptical view on public spending." But you wouldn’t know it, if you listened to the internet. Or comedians. Or journalists. Or better yet, our political leaders.