Quote of the Day
A distinctive mark of fascism is its conception of politics, best captured by Carl Schmitt, an early-20th-century German political theorist whose doctrines legitimized Nazism. Schmitt rejected the Madisonian view of politics as a social negotiation in which different factions, interests, and ideology come to agreement, the core idea of our Constitution. Rather, he saw politics as a state of war between enemies, neither of which can understand the other and both of which feel existentially threatened—and only one of which can win. The aim of Schmittian politics is not to share the country but to dominate or destroy the other side.
Jonathan Rauch*
January 25, 2026
Yes, It’s Fascism – The Atlantic
Via email from a reader.
Most of the body of the article is behind a paywall so I only have the part quoted in the email.
As many of you will point out, there is no compromise or coming to agreement with those who want you dead. There is no compromise with those who want a cradle to grave welfare state for everyone. But there is a better way to go about opposing them without risking a death spiral into your own purity test driven genocide of killing all the communists.
There is a fair amount of truth to what I could read in the quote above about the definition of fascism. And I prefer to use the oldest definition I can find. It is from an unabridged dictionary copyrighted in various years from 1927 through1946. In part, the Fascisti were:
… organized in connection with a repressive movement directed against the socialists and communists and the disturbances excited by them during 1919 and the years following, which regarded the government as criminally negligent in failing to deal with these disturbances, and took measure on its own account, often violent ones, to combat them…
Hence, one could say people opposed to socialists and communists meet part of the definition of Fascist. Aside from the increased ease of which the dirty label sticks there are other reasons to not defining yourself as opposed, especially violently opposed, to communists and socialists.
Remember the poem from a couple days ago: Laugh, and the World Laughs with You? If you are an unhappy, angry person you will have fewer people who wish to be around you and join your political bandwagon. Be for something good. Be for freedom. Be for liberty. Be for a booming economy. Be for a wealthy society.
Let the communists and socialist be against that.
* Rauch is not a new name to this blog:
The problem is one of the main attack methods for the commies is “Critical Theory,” where when you stand for anything, even something good, it gives them something to be critical of. Being for something gives them an attack surface. Being for prosperity means they'll attack that prosperity is unequally distributed.
Being for freedom means they'll use that freedom to attack you.
Being for wealth means you must hate poor people.
Etc.
That's why the commies are rarely for anything but in general platitudes, because they specialize in attacking anything specific positive statements.
“…people opposed to socialists and communists meet part of the definition of Fascist…” — but only the unimportant part.
The important part is “a repressive movement”. In other words, Fascism aims to replace the totalitarian system called communism by a slightly different totalitarian system. THAT is the essence of Fascism; its anti-communist nature is at best a sideline and more likely just an excuse.
So the notion that being anti-communist is in any way suggestive of being pro-fascist is seriously misleading, or worse.
I think you can b both. I am a happy person and promote the values that I feel are important such as family and freedom. But if pushed upon me I am happy to oppose communist and socialist in a manner which results on heads on pikes.
This is why I promote the National Divorce instead of “kill the Commies”. It is a lot easier to coexist with the Left when they are in a different country. We have been at peace with Canada for more than 200 years.