This is Fascism

Rutger Bregman is becoming one of my favourite writers – first for Utopia for Realists (2016), then for Humankind – a hopeful history (2020) (which I reviewed here) and now Moral Ambition – stop wasting your talent and start making a difference (2025) which I have just downloaded. He has just published in the Dutch “The Standard”, his usual haunt, this powerful article which quotes from Jason Stanley’s work

1 – Every fascist invokes a mythic past to justify his tales of a glorious future. 

If emotion is the fuel for fascism, then a fascist draws on a people’s mythic past to spark 

that emotion. Adolf Hitler dreamed of a Third Reich in the tradition of the great German 

Empires, and Benito Mussolini promised to return 20th-century Italians to Roman times. 

“We have created our myth,” said Mussolini in 1922. “The myth is a faith, a passion. 

It is not necessary for it to be a reality…. And to this myth, this greatness, which we want 

to translate into a total reality, we subordinate everything.”  

Trump uses “Make America Great Again”

2 – Every fascist uses propaganda to disrupt public debate and stoke a sense of 

“the enemy.” If a mythic past provides the spark and emotion the fuel, then propaganda 

is the machine the fascist operates to set the masses in motion. The idea is to sow division 

by blaming supposed enemies, foreign and domestic, for the nation’s decline. 

Every fascist points to relatively vulnerable groups. Fascism is like a bully, out to pick on 

the unpopular kid to build himself up. To make the enemy image stick, a fascist will have 

to lie brazenly and systematically, as Adolf Hitler reasoned in his book Mein Kampf: 

“At first all of it appeared to be idiotic…Later it was looked upon as disturbing, but finally 

it was believed.”

3 – Every fascist deliberately undermines the independent thinkers who can counter 

his propaganda. Journalists, artists, academics, and others are sand in the cogs of the 

propaganda machine because they’ve made critical thinking their vocation and public 

discourse their workplace. They are therefore per definition suspect. The fascist will portray 

them as part of a plot, citing as “proof” that they either ignore or debunk his conspiracy 

theories. He’ll take every opportunity to taunt reporters and will set up his own channels 

for spreading propaganda. As soon as he can, he’ll tether the free press and purge educational 

and cultural institutions.

4 – Every fascist destroys the truth. The loss of a shared reality clears the way for the 

propaganda machine. This goes hand in hand with the Big Lie, a propaganda technique 

concocted by Adolf Hitler. The Big Lie is an assertion so colossal that people presume 

there must be some truth to it—because surely no one would dare make up such a 

whopper. And, as Hitler says in Mein Kampf, “… the grossly impudent lie always leaves 

traces behind, even after it has been nailed down.” Hitler exploited existing antisemitic 

sentiment to this end, cooking up the tale of an international Jewish plot against Germany. 

He kept repeating it until people chose to believe him. 

5 – Every fascist establishes a new social hierarchy that’s all about who’s entitled 

to human dignity and who is not. The rights of minorities are stripped away, and people 

are persecuted not only for what they do, but for who they are. The people benefitting from 

this new hierarchy distrust those who speak out against it. An appeal to equal rights and 

equality is thus suspect and subversive. A mob of the meek helps uphold the new order 

out of fear they themselves will be targeted.

6 – Every fascist claims their own group is the victim of a conspiracy or plot. 

An example of this type of conspiracy theory is replacement theory, the idea that one’s 

“own people” are being pushed out by those deemed alien and hostile. Whether it’s a 

“conspiracy of deep-state politicians to kidnap babies,” a “flood of immigrants,” or 

“Jews who corrupt women”—the theory works with “almost any combination of enemies,” 

says historian Timothy Snyder. *
Once so-called enemies at home and abroad are treated as legitimate national security 

threats, the fascist will leverage the powers of the state to go after domestic enemies and 

pursue foreign conflict. 

7 – Every fascist defends rigid gender roles as a pillar of his power. Just as the leader 

is the “father of the nation,” the man is the head of the family—and things have to stay 

that way. Gender diversity is portrayed as a threat to the natural order. Where traditional 

male roles are few, the fascist leader tells us who’s to blame: “gender ideologues” or 

“foreigners stealing jobs.”
Women, meanwhile, are primarily there to have lots of babies, thus strengthening the 

position of the group. Mussolini waged a “battle for babies” for this reason, holding state 

ceremonies for prolific childbearing women and imposing a tax on unmarried men over 

the age of 25. Terms like “contraception” and “abortion” were put on a list of words banned 

in the Italian press. 

8 – Every fascist separates people into hardworking citizens and freeloaders. That 

division fuels the idea that opponents are inferior and lazy by nature, and therefore don’t 

deserve a proper place in society. Hardworking citizens are sorely needed, while the 

others—the intellectual elite, lazy state employees, people on welfare or disability—are 

not.  “Arbeit macht frei” read the signs posted by the Nazis at the gates of hell. But that 

work ethic is a smokescreen. Under fascism, the balance of economic power and the 

distribution of wealth don’t change much. 

9 – Every fascist pits rural against urban. Country life symbolizes the traditional, honest, 

hardworking man, while cities must be cleared of lazy, leftist radicals with their depraved 

ideas on gender, diversity, and inclusion. The Nazis saw farmers, for instance, as the 

“bearers of a healthy folkish heredity, the fountain of youth of the people, and the backbone 

of military power.”  

10 – Every fascist turns the state into a weapon to destroy his opponents. While he 

places himself above the law and rewards loyalists with impunity, the fascist claims the power 

to punish people he deems criminal—and without a fair trial. In this way, he destroys the 

rule of law without ever formally abolishing it.
Mussolini did this by capturing the legal profession. Lawyers were forced to serve “fascist 

justice,” so that representing “antifascists” against loyal party members was out of the 

question.  Hitler, for his part, had an “uncanny capacity for sensing ‘the potential weakness 

inherent in every formal form of law’ and then ruthlessly exploiting that weakness,” 

according to his own attorney Hans Frank. 

Further Viewing
The travel writer Rick Steves has a useful video which links the present-day world with events 
of a century ago, starting with a visual reminder of where the word comes from – strength 
through unity. The video on Fascism is essential viewing – particularly from 15 mins