{"id":20076,"date":"2026-07-19T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=20076"},"modified":"2026-07-19T16:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T22:41:14","slug":"op-ed-what-is-fascism-actually","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/op-ed-what-is-fascism-actually\/","title":{"rendered":"Op-Ed: What is Fascism, Actually?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our failed, teacher\u2019s union-led, largely socialist \u201ceducation system\u201d has left Americans wholly ignorant of some simple truths of economics (no surprise there):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxism actually comes in three flavors, all leading to tyranny, and suppressed liberty for non-elites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) Democratic Socialism is the \u201ctraining\u201d phase, like a \u201cdrug dealer\u201d giving away \u201cfree samples,\u201d knowing you will be back for more, thereby moving society inexorably toward one of the more tyrannical forms of Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) Communism becomes so reliant on the foolish conceit of horribly incompetent government central planners (imagine a business run by AOC and Pete Buttigieg), it loses the ability to feed itself, and collapses, always, and everywhere. Workers ending in commune \u201cprisons,\u201d elites living in lavish excess, until it all comes crashing down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Fascism (increasingly in the U.S. & CCP today) is the most dangerous, because it was designed to address the principal failures of Communism. It is Marxist Socialism with a \u201cfunding source,\u201d and central planning shared with big business management \u201cexpertise.\u201d The collaboration of a few government-protected, monopolistic big corporations, and grifting big government, joined at the hip, for their mutual empowerment and enrichment, and your enslavement. The masses are \u201cappeased\u201d with socialist subsistence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Italian word root, \u201cFascista,\u201d refers to a small bundle of sticks being stronger than any one stick. Giovanni Gentile envisioned a small number of selected Big Companies, \u201cbundled\u201d with big government agencies. The axe head attached to their \u201cFascista\u201d bundle logo, symbolizes the tyranny of the state employed in service this bundle to enforce the will of the elites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The uninformed \u201cworking definition\u201d of \u201cfascism,\u201d in most common use after eighty years of indoctrination from the Left, is something like \u201cright-wing capitalist tyranny.\u201d This is most unfortunate because it causes us to be blind to what fascism actually is and how to prevent its rise, and because the left has used it to smear both the political right, and capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We keep hearing trends toward actual fascism labeled variously as \u201ccrony capitalism,\u201d \u201ccorporatist capitalism,\u201d \u201cneo-feudalism,\u201d and a dozen other foolish labels, even among opinion leaders we might be aligned with, on the Right, because the Left and our education system began to bury the economic truth almost a century ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fascism shows the false \u201cfacade\u201d of a market economy, but with large monopolistic corporations, suppressed small and medium businesses, and increasingly, all major decisions made by corporate and government \u201ccentral planners,\u201d not markets. Fascism is no kind of Capitalism, because at the market-driving level of big corporations and big government, it lacks any real competing \u201cmarket\u201d forces responding to supply and demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The principal \u201cadvantage\u201d of Fascism over Communism, is to add some practical business expertise to its big government central planning. It has the management expertise to grow, without completely starving its workforce, who nevertheless are still crushed by its tyranny \u2212 denied the liberty and opportunity of actual market-controlled Capitalism, with a thriving core of small and medium businesses, the \u201cincubational\u201d genius of true Capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have also been taught that Fascism is an ideology of the \u201cextreme right,\u201d which is a lie created by the Left after WWII, to protect their precious \u201cMarxism\u201d from being smeared with the evils of the NAZI holocaust. This absurdity has led recently to the further myth of \u201chorseshoe extremism,\u201d the notion that the extreme right and extreme left wrap around and meet, like a horseshoe \u2013 complete nonsense as we will see. Fascism and Communism are close cousins, like Suni and Shia Islam, they hate one another, but they hate everyone else more. Both Fascism and Communism are Marxist ideologies of the Left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The correct way to understand the Right versus the Left, is on the axis of \u201cliberty.\u201d The Left puts their conception of the \u201ccollective-good of the group\u201d over the \u201cindividual,\u201d while the Right goes to great lengths to maximize competing individual rights, best exemplified in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, things with which no Leftist government will ever concern itself. If one wished to identify an \u201cextreme right,\u201d it is not Fascism, it would be libertarians devolving into anarchy, no government beyond the \u201cself,\u201d unlimited individual liberty, \u201cmight makes right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our U.S., Constitutional, Democratic Republic is a very sophisticated maximization of individual rights, while following the Biblical mandate to neither allow the powerful to suppress the rights of the week, nor empowering the weak to demonize and destroy the strong; all men are to be treated equally under the law; famously \u201ca nation of laws and not men,\u201d in the words of John Adams. It should be noted that we are a Constitutional \u201cDemocratic\u201d Republic. Our founders abhorred \u201cpure democracy,\u201d which they correctly understood to be \u201cmob rule,\u201d but the \u201crepresentatives\u201d in our republic are not intended to be inherited, purchased, or taken through power, all of which are possible forms of a republic. We are a \u201cDemocratic Republic,\u201d because \u201cWe the People\u201d are able to vote democratically to both nominate, and elect our representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is another related principle here which our mostly Marxist schools have tactically refused to teach properly, the quote that \u201call men are created equal.\u201d The Left likes to use this to argue for equality of \u201coutcomes,\u201d that if some are poor and others are wealthy, then the society is broken and the outcomes must be equalized by government. The correct understanding of this is that our Creator created us with equal \u201cmoral value and weight\u201d in His eyes, that the law should not favor one over another. No one ever believed that all men are born with equal intelligence, equal ambition, equal strength, or equal health, but merely that we all are created to be of \u201cequal value\u201d in God\u2019s eyes, and equally entitled to pursue our individual will, and reap the rewards or consequences of our choices. It is shocking today how few, even in the U.S., can articulate this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One often hears it protested that, \u201cthe U.S. is not a Democracy, we are a Republic,\u201d which is a confused misunderstanding. \u201cDemocracy\u201d comes from two Greek roots \u2013 \u201cdemos,\u201d meaning \u201cthe people,\u201d or \u201cthe common people,\u201d as in \u201cWe the People,\u201d and \u201cKratos\u201d (or \u201ccracy\u201d), meaning to rule, power, or strength. Pure, or simple \u201cdemocracy\u201d therefore means direct \u201crule by the people.\u201d Our founders protected us from this tyranny of pure democratic \u201cmob-rule\u201d in our \u201cdemocracy,\u201d and indeed never even used the word \u201cdemocracy\u201d in our documents, by buffering the potential excesses of democracy with democratically elected \u201crepresentatives,\u201d who are in turn constrained by our Constitution. The \u201cpeople\u201d do not directly \u201cgovern,\u201d but \u201cdemocratically\u201d elect \u201crepresentatives,\u201d who then are then expected to exercise their governing power to broadly follow the will of the people, while adhering to the constraints of our Constitution, and hopefully their best judgement. So, while we are a form of democracy, we are not a \u201cpure,\u201d or \u201csimple\u201d democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning to economics; in true, authentic Capitalism, the economic lifeblood of individual liberty, entrepreneurs must first become \u201cservants,\u201d they must \u201cserve\u201d the marketplace before being rewarded with any profit. An entrepreneur in Capitalism risks their capital in the hope they can create a product or service in which the marketplace will find enough value, that the entrepreneur can earn some profit, which especially in the beginning, they must largely reinvest into their business. The entrepreneur \u201csubjects\u201d their desire for success to the judgement of the marketplace of consumers, the people. The sole arbiter of their success is the free-will choices of the marketplace of consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Government\u2019s only role in true capitalism should be to create a \u201clevel playing field,\u201d enforcing such standards of moral and ethical justice as are broadly agreed to by the society. It must justly arbitrate disputes between parties without favoritism, protect a stable monetary system, and leave to the competing market forces of \u201csupply and demand\u201d to judge the fair exchange of value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In complete contrast with Capitalism, \u201cFascism\u201d was developed in Italy by Giovanni Gentile (30 May 1875 \u2013 15 April 1944), to be an \u201cevolved\u201d form of Marxism, attempting to cure the gross incompetence of government central-planning, by enlisting selected big business experts. Far from its opposite, Gentile saw Fascism as a perfected form of Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the NAZI Holocaust of WWII, Marxists found it embarrassing for \u201cFascism\u201d to be identified as Marxist, so they crafted and propagandized the myth that Fascism was the opposite of Marxist Communism, and largely succeeded in associating it with tyrannical Capitalism, and Nationalism. The Communists labeling themselves \u201cANTIFA\u201d (anti-fascist) was all part of this propaganda. Many have observed that the tactics and morality of ANTIFA more nearly resemble the extreme tyranny of the worst Fascists of NAZI Germany, than any true capitalism, which they routinely label as Fascist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marxist elites in the West tried to tell us that Fascism was \u201cracist nationalism,\u201d attaching the unrelated racist evils of Hitler\u2019s NAZI-ism, to Giovanni Gentile\u2019s Fascism. As for \u201cnationalism,\u201d which is just another word for \u201cpatriotism,\u201d it is like \u201cloyalty.\u201d In order to judge whether loyalty is good or evil, one must first ask \u201cwhat\u201d one is loyal to. Loyalty to a criminal rape gang is great evil, while loyalty to the God who created me, is arguably the highest possible moral good. It is the same with \u201cnationalism.\u201d If one is a CCP Communist nationalist, they will support great evil, while if one is a U.S.A. \u201cnationalist\u201d loyal to our constitutional government, one will be a respecter of the moral good of individual liberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NAZI Germany was indeed economically Fascist \u2013 big government, and monopolistic big business in partnership. Most \u201cFascists\u201d are not genocidal racists like the NAZIs, but just addicted to power and wealth for themselves, the Elites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this \u201cfascist\u201d collusion between select \u201cbig businesses\u201d and \u201cbig government,\u201d neither is fond of small and medium sized businesses. These are the greatest competitive threat and disruption to big business, and they are very difficult for big government central planners to measure and account for, and their individual economic contributions are too small to be useful to \u201cgrifting\u201d politicians. So big business colludes with big government to create oppressive regulatory and tax regimes in order to suppress small and medium businesses; obstacles that big business can just hire more lawyers and accountants to navigate. At best, Fascism ignores the needs of small business for justice, fiscal and monetary stability, and a legal \u201clevel playing field.\u201d At worst, it seeks to crush them for being a nuisance to central planners, and dangerous competition for the favored-few big businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we often see today is \u201cbig business\u201d that often grows \u201ccancerously big,\u201d precisely because of the grifting favors, and legal protections of big government. This is not to say that all big businesses are in a fascist collusion with big government, but the temptations to do so are very great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China began as Communist under Mao, starving and murdering millions. Deng Xiao Ping took China into Fascism, with U.S. aid. Famously saying (paraphrasing), \u201cI realized I could either distribute poverty and starvation, or I could distribute wealth.\u201d The CCP today controls all big business, while wisely tolerating some small business for the tourists in the cities, while still retaining vestiges of ordinary Communism in rural agricultural areas. As result this vast nation increasingly has to import food to feed its own people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America began as classically free-market Capitalist, with maximized constitutional liberty. Then America began going Socialist about 100 years ago under presidents Wilson and FDR, emerging today as increasingly Fascist, with big businesses \u201cbuying,\u201d and \u201ccolluding\u201d with big government politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We often puzzle over why our constitutionally \u201crepresentative\u201d government fails to \u201crepresent\u201d our interests; it is of course primarily because they get wealthy \u201crepresenting\u201d instead, the interests of big business (Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Big Military-Industrial, etc. \u2212 think of mRNA \u201cfake-vaccines,\u201d AI data centers, forever wars, etc.). Most of us know this at some level, and have been taught it is a failure of Capitalism, but it is rather the beginning stages of allowing our Socialist \u201cbaby-steps,\u201d to evolve into Fascism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big business and big government can remain Capitalist, without necessarily slipping into the collusions of Fascism, but the power and wealth temptations of Fascist collusion tend to overcome men\u2019s better natures, and must always be scrutinized carefully by those who love the liberty that only Capitalism offers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proper role of our Constitutional, Democratic, Republican Government, necessary to prevent the rise of Fascism, is to establish and rigorously monitor an economic system of equal justice under law, with fiscal and monetary stability, no special political favors to preferred business, and no financial incentives flowing from business to government, for political favors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politicians must remain absolutely impartial in their legislative, executive, and judicial duties. Every time they give a special \u201ctax treatment\u201d for example, to a preferred big business, they push that big business ahead of its smaller business competitors, not infrequently even destroying these smaller competitors. In so doing they ignore the inconvenient truth that in the aggregate, small and medium sized businesses contribute more economically to a healthy capitalist economy, both as to absolute economic volume and growth, but especially as to \u201cnew innovation,\u201d than do the largest businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is another basic \u201cEcon 101\u201d lesson these people miss, crucial to the \u201cincome inequality\u201d debate. Great individual wealth, if acquired under actual capitalism, does not come at the expense of the lower, or middle-income persons, and controlling vast sums of money does not hurt the economy or hold anyone else back. Quite the contrary, a person who makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year creates many of the best jobs in the economy. They create jobs for fine craftsmen, artists, the best cabinet makers, the best car makers, the best chefs, the best custom home builders. They invest their money in stocks which create liquidity to help other entrepreneurs launch and grow other companies and create more jobs. They invest in municipal bonds which help fund roads and bridges and schools and needed infrastructure. They are far less likely to buy goods made in third world countries, and they hire many high-end service providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is actually very little that a wealthy person does with their money, if earned in a well-run capitalist economy, that is not better for everyone else in the economy, than an equivalent amount of money controlled by poor, and middle-income people. Very wealthy people are also very often huge philanthropists for the arts, building hospitals, colleges, museums, etc., often anonymously, asking no recognition for their largesse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leftist progressives, Marxists, and socialists have a simple-minded childish envy-based view of the economy as a fixed pie, \u201cif you have a larger piece, it leaves less for everyone else.\u201d But in a healthy capitalist economy, wealthy people grow the pie larger, and they grow it larger better than anyone else. One cannot do great good for others until one gets beyond meeting their own bare needs for mere existence. This is the fundamental brilliance of capitalism, which at its base depends on \u201cservice\u201d to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The income inequality political issue is borne of ignorance, and envy, and has absolutely no economic substance to it whatever, so long as that wealth is acquired under actual capitalism. The problem comes when fascist monopolistic control, political graft, and protectionism are the mechanisms for wealth accumulation, so it is not the \u201cwealth accumulation\u201d that is a problem, but the inherent cheating and fraud of Fascism, when that is behind the wealth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our failed, teacher\u2019s union-led, largely socialist \u201ceducation system\u201d has left Americans wholly ignorant of some simple truths of economics (no surprise there): Marxism actually comes in three flavors, all leading to tyranny, and suppressed liberty for non-elites. 1) Democratic Socialism is the \u201ctraining\u201d phase, like a \u201cdrug dealer\u201d giving away \u201cfree samples,\u201d knowing you will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":358,"featured_media":20077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[243],"tags":[321],"class_list":["post-20076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions-op-eds","tag-fascism","cat-243-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/358"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20078,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20076\/revisions\/20078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}