The ubiquity and frequency of the word fascism have grown significantly in recent years to the point that it is now used as a weapon as opposed to a philosophical argument. Declaring that another is a fascist is a way to discredit the accused fascist and silence debate about the topic at hand. For most, this logical fallacy was obvious and showed that true intellectual dialogue could not be continued, however that all changed on September 10th of this year when the accusation of a fascist led to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Since the declaration of fascism now gives the power and authority to murder in cold blood or physically harm others, it is long past due to look at where the word comes from and what it means to be a fascist. Words are necessary for our society to exist and if we are going to accuse others of the heinous crime of being a fascist, we should all be on the same page of where fascism came from and who actually is a fascist in our country.

It should come as no surprise that at the same time that the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazism) was gaining traction, a similar socialist party was rising under Mussolini in Italy. His Fascist bloc used an emblem from the Roman times: the fasces which is a bundle of rods strapped around an ax. This emblem came to signify the main tenet of fascism which is the use of state force to unite everyone under their power and authority. Fascism was not an insult to them at the time; it was a self-identifying belief in a political movement born out of revolutionary socialism. Fascism was not born out of a desire to protect the greatness of what Italy used to be but rather a radical reimagining of what governance should be that would reorganize society and deliver national greatness through modern planning and aggressive central control. Mussolini explained the goal of fascism rather bluntly when he said, “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” From this statement, it is very easy to glean the political, economic, and cultural goals of fascism.

A necessity of fascism is to create an authoritarian regime by which the goals of fascism could then be achieved. They did not believe in having checks and balances on the government and abandoned the idea of limiting the government and its bureaucracies. To achieve that end, fascism directly attacked the belief of individual rights and believed that the rights of the people outweighed the rights of individuals. This was typically portrayed and communicated through the ultranationalist argument using the good of the nation to justify a host of grievances including censoring the press, banning opposition parties, and jailing or outright killing opponents. It seems quite obvious then that the economics of the country would be neither outright socialism nor any sort of free market. Instead, they used corporatism and unions to allow the state to direct how private property was used and utilized. The unions allowed the state to set wages, working rules, and production priorities but at the same time they did not allow strikes. Independent unions were quickly crushed as were any corporations that did not want to listen nor embrace fascist control. For the good of the nation, fascism believes in state direction, coordination, and discipline of every major industry. Culturally, they squashed any semblance of free speech or the right to peacefully assemble. Any satire or criticism of the government was seen as treasonous. Fascists do not believe in moral relativism but neither did they believe that truth was absolute. Instead, the state was the source of truth and any disagreement with the truth was by extension a disagreement with the state – a very dangerous position to take.

This naturally begs the question of how does fascism present itself in our society? The simple answer is that unless someone is a self-identified fascist there is a high likelihood that they are not indeed a true fascist. What does bear a deeper analysis is where each party falls on its proclivity towards the fascists’ goals with respect to government power, nationalism, economics, and the culture. Perhaps the speediest analysis is to investigate first what an antifascist truly is. Any individual that supports the following is in fact supporting anti-fascism: decreasing the size and scope of the government; limiting the power of bureaucracies and government officials; support for free speech in all of its forms (individual speech, freedom of the press, the ability to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances); representative and democratic governments; free markets; individual rights and moral absolutism. Missing from this list are two main ideas that bear greater scrutiny and nuance: socialism and nationalism. Even though the fascist movement was carried into existence by the socialist movement, both Hitler and Mussolini aligned their fascist movements against Marxism for a critical, pragmatic reason: it is much easier to consolidate power if you co-opt capital rather than outright nationalizing of all industries, thus the abandonment of socialism once the vehicle of power was under their control. Fascism and socialism/Marxism are very similar in their economic goals with minor differences on how private property is “defined” because even though fascism allows for property ownership, what ownership do those individuals truly have of their businesses if the production is controlled by the state? So how then do we deal with nationalism as this term appears to produce different thoughts under different regimes? Fascist nationalism uses the national identity to justify breaking individual rights to bow to the collective whereas civic nationalism is much different. Civic nationalism, that most conservatives follow, is a love of the country because of the ideals our country is founded on which is why many citizens can say they love America but in the same sentence denounce a strong central government – something a fascist could not do. Thus, to say that anti-nationalism is anti-fascist is a sophistic argument, when the more correct argument would be that to justify mistreatment of an individual or group based on the needs of the many is one side step away from mirroring a fascist, nationalistic ideal.

The ultimate irony is that the individual who assassinated Charlie Kirk bears more resemblance to a fascist than Charlie Kirk ever did. As opposed to standing on the side of free speech and individual rights as Charlie did, the assassin instead believed in using force and violence to silence those who had opposing views. It is dangerous for us to use words improperly especially when those words are used to silence debate and discussions which are in effect censoring opposition. If we as a society begin to throw words around without knowing their true meaning, how can we expect to self-govern? When activists, media members, or politicians point at Republicans and declare they are fascists, they are doing two things at once: lying about what fascism is and creating a permission structure for violence against Republicans. We must stop allowing lazy people on both sides to throw the word fascist around just to shut people up. We must demand for the correct definition and historical accuracy; we must request to argue like adults, not toddlers who can call you a poo-poo-diaper-baby in order to win the debate. If words are going to now mark targets for elimination, then there must be an accountability for using those words.