Virgil Walker, Sola Veritas, Oct 4, 2025
The real fascists burned books, jailed pastors, and ruled by terror. Don’t cheapen their crimes.
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
– Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Today, the word fascist is hurled at parents, pastors, and justices—anyone who dares resist the left’s cultural agenda. But this isn’t fascism. And using the word this way isn’t just sloppy—it’s dangerous.
If everyone is a fascist, no one is.
What Fascism Really Meant
The word fascism comes from the Italian fasces—a bundle of rods tied around an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of unity and power through force. Mussolini’s Italy made it a political reality in the 1920s. His Blackshirts—paramilitary thugs—roamed the streets, beating opponents into silence long before he seized official power.
Mussolini defined his movement in The Doctrine of Fascism (1932):
“Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State.”
That’s not “big government.” That’s total government.
In Germany, Hitler took Mussolini’s ideas further. After the Reichstag fire of 1933, parliament passed the Enabling Act, handing him full dictatorial powers. Overnight, dissent became treason.
Hitler was blunt in Mein Kampf:
“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.”
And Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, stripped the mask off entirely:
“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.”
This is what real fascism looked like: book burnings, banned newspapers, outlawed churches, pastors in prison, and entire populations marked for destruction.
In May 1933, Nazi students piled books into bonfires across Germany, shouting, “Against the un-German spirit!” Those flames didn’t stop with books—they soon consumed people.
This isn’t a Twitter mob who says mean things about you on a post. This isn’t a blog article that you disagree with. This isn’t a law that you protest because you feel it’s unfair to those breaking the law. Real fascism was a regime of terror, not a social media spat.
The Irony of the “Fascist” Label
Here’s the irony: those who casually hurl the word fascist today are blind to the fact that in a truly fascist society, they wouldn’t be able to use that word at all.
In Mussolini’s Italy, opposition parties were outlawed. In Hitler’s Germany, critics vanished into camps. Book burnings paved the road to human burnings. As Heinrich Heine had warned a century earlier: “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people as well.”
Think about that. If America were truly under fascism, there would be no parents protesting school boards, no pastors preaching against cultural lies, no justices writing dissents. Fascism doesn’t tolerate critics. It crushes them.
The very freedom to cry “fascist” is proof you’re not living under fascism.
A Modern Example of Irony
For those reading this who think, “Yeah, but what about Jimmy Kimmel? He lost his job for a bit!” Let’s be clear:
First, he still has his job.
Second, it wasn’t conservatives who removed him, and it wasn’t the government. It was his own network—ABC—responding to poor ratings and affiliates reacting to outrage over his false comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Finally, if this were truly a fascist regime, Kimmel wouldn’t have been suspended and then quickly returned to the airwaves. He would have been dragged away by the secret police—the Gestapo in Germany or the OVRA in Mussolini’s Italy—jailed, tortured, and never heard from again.
So there’s that. Further proof this is not fascism. Stop it.
Why Misusing the Word is Dangerous
Words build regimes. Sloppy words build sloppy tyrannies.
If “fascist” simply means “anyone I don’t like,” then it means nothing. But when you call someone a fascist falsely, you hand justification to hostility.
We’ve already seen it: “Punch a fascist” isn’t just a meme—it’s a marching order. Once someone is dehumanized, violence feels justified. That’s exactly how real fascists paved their road to power.
Holocaust survivor Martin Niemöller saw it firsthand:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Or as survivors put it:
“The crematoria, gas chambers … did not begin with bricks, it began with words … they were permitted to proceed to violence because of the absence of words.”
The word fascist is soaked in blood. To use it carelessly is to dishonor the memory of those who suffered under its reality.
Where the Real Threat Lies
Here’s the bitter irony: many of those who cry “fascism” the loudest are practicing its tactics.
Censoring dissent? Check.
Demonizing opponents? Check.
Canceling those who step out of line? Check.
They rail against “authoritarianism” while demanding thought-policing, forced conformity, and state-enforced morality. It’s Isaiah 5:20 in real time: calling evil good and good evil.
The danger is not in the opponents they slander but in the slander itself.
Why This Must Stop
Misusing fascist cheapens the memory of those who suffered under Mussolini and Hitler. It poisons public dialogue. And it drags us closer to the very authoritarianism it pretends to resist.
Scripture reminds us: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). To twist the word fascist is not only a failure of history, it is a failure of truth.
Christians must be people of truth. That means refusing the propaganda of labels, rejecting lazy slander, and insisting on honest definitions.
Conclusion: Clarity Over Confusion
Inigo Montoya had it right: words mean things. If we keep bending them, they will break.
The next time someone calls you—or anyone else—a fascist, pause and remember: the real thing was brutal, violent, and unforgiving. The freedom to use the word loosely is itself proof that we’re not there.
But sloppy speech is never harmless. Lies pave the road to tyranny.
So resist slander. Insist on truth. And refuse to let propaganda define reality.
Yes, fascism is absolute despotism, the very thing the Founders rose up against.
No, fascism has never existed in the politically free USA but the lyin’ left uses that lie anyway to dismantle the existing justly functioning power structures so as to replace them with their own unjust statist, despotic, and fascist, ones.
Lies are their primary weapon they use against truth. Media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and all the rest have been doing exactly that to support the marxocrats, as have many Leftist NGO’s. Even the teacher’s unions have joined in.
The statist Leftists are the actual fascistic dictators who want to cancel American freedoms.