Fascism

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

Can the chaps in chaps smash fascism?

I have spent a small portion of my time lately wondering what I would do if I thought communists were about to take over Britain. At the more civil end of things, I could see myself going on an anti-communist protest, though I would shrink away if I noticed that my fellow marchers were flying swastikas. I don’t exactly know what I would do next. Perhaps I would hope for another election soon, and do what I could to unite other anti-communists. One thing I am fairly sure I would not do would be to dance. In fact, were this country facing the prospect of Stalinism coming at us full force, the last thing I would do would be to get a DJ, book a stage in Trafalgar Square, hire some go-go dancers and rave it up.

fascism

Friday

Neal Pollack

When Donald met Zohran

“I’ll tell you,” the President was saying. “The press has eaten this thing up. I had a lot of meetings with world leaders, and the press didn’t care. The biggest people in the world come over and nobody cares. This one, they care about.”   President Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, wearing a red tie. Standing next to him was the Boy Wonder, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York City, wearing a blue tie. Their hour-long meeting at the White House had just concluded. In recent weeks, Mamdani had called Trump a fascist. Trump had called Mamdani a communist and a “lunatic.”  Anyone expecting acrimony or fireworks, though, would have been disappointed by this joint press appearance. Cats and dogs, living together.

zohran mamdani

Thursday

Alex Castellanos

The left’s favorite F-word

Randi Weingarten, the US teachers’ union boss, has screeched out a new book: Why Fascists Fear Teachers. That’s right. If you thought the problem in our schools was cratering test scores or chronic absenteeism, you’re misinformed. The real menace stalking America is jackbooted conservative parents goose-stepping through PTA meetings. The left’s unhealthy obsession with the word “fascist” has become less of a warning than a tic, a nervous verbal cough. Every time a Weingarten-style progressive spots a parent questioning the school board, a voter challenging an irregular ballot, or a grief-stricken mourner at a Charlie Kirk vigil, the F-word erupts. Before we let this tic define the debate, a little perspective: If words matter, so should history.

Monday

Kara Kennedy

The boorishness of Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres, the former queen of American daytime television, says she escaped the social turmoil of the United States by finding a $29 million farmhouse in the English countryside. And she would very much like the rest of us to take note. She and her wife, Portia de Rossi, reportedly arrived in Britain the day before the 2024 US election. When the results came in, accompanied, she says, by a flood of sad-face-emoji-laden texts from anxious friends, the couple made their decision: they wouldn’t be going back. Now they’re happily settled in the Cotswolds, that beautiful part of southern England where celebrities, rockstars and former politicians play out their fantasies of rural living.

Monday

Ross Clark

The Europe of American imaginations no longer exists

Since the United Kingdom left the European Union five years ago, the pair have been in battle to prove who has performed better. But the real story of the past five years is not a stagnant UK falling behind a buoyant EU, but of Britain and Europe being trapped in the same cycle of relative decline. It’s America that has quietly raced ahead of Europe this century. Following the pandemic it has become impossible to ignore the gulf in economic vitality between the US and Europe, the former growing by 16.3 percent per capita since 2008. There are very good reasons for America’s success, or rather, Europe’s decline. The EU and the UK increasingly treat their industries as pieces of heritage which must be preserved against disruptors and foreign competition.

Europe
Elon
Bridget Phetasy

Elon Musk’s critics are more autistic than he ever could be

I’ve managed to keep most of my liberal family relationships and friendships intact, even after going public about voting for Trump. Most of them shrugged and applied the principle our grandparents taught us — blood is thicker than politics. That is, until Elon Musk. He has proven to be the straw that broke the liberals’ back. Realizing that they’d rendered calling Trump “literally Hitler” ineffective, many normie Democrats and liberal commentators have redirected this energy toward the “Chief Twit." First there was the hand gesture at the post-inauguration rally.

Friday

Becket Adams

The great Nazi moral panic

We’re in the throes of a full-blown moral panic, but this time it’s Nazis instead of Dungeons & Dragons. Nazis are everywhere in the United States. There are signs of them everywhere. Their influence is unmistakable, from beverages to hobbies to views on the nuclear family. It’s eleven o’clock. Do you know where your Nazis are? At least, that's the current state of America, according to the same industry that attempts every year to convince you that someone may sneak high-grade narcotics into your child’s Halloween candy. This week, our brilliant commentariat convinced itself that billionaire tech tycoon Elon Musk had performed two "Sieg Heils" during President Trump’s inauguration festivities.

Saturday

Christopher Sandford

Remembering Mussolini’s March on Rome

Shortly after 11 on the unseasonably warm Monday morning of October 30, 1922, a 39-year-old, one-time schoolteacher-turned-political journalist — and former Socialist Party activist — named Benito Mussolini stepped down from a train arriving at Rome’s Termini station. He had traveled in overnight from his home in Milan, and before embarking he told the local station master, pausing to cast his black eyes up and down the empty platform, “I need to be punctual. From now on there must be no more delays.” This was the source of the sardonic joke that at least under Mussolini the trains always ran on time.

Monday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Giorgia Meloni is no springtime for Italian fascism

Is it springtime for fascism in Europe? First, it was Sweden. Now, it’s Italy. To judge by the reaction to Giorgia Meloni’s victory in the Italian elections on Sunday, the moment to say arrivederci to democracy has arrived. “Giorgia Meloni will be a minister-president whose political examples will be Viktor Orbàn and Donald Trump,” Katharina Barley, the vice-president of the European Parliament, declared. Maybe so, but will she actually be able to transform her country? Fratelli d’Italia, the Brothers of Italy, is a nationalist party that traces its roots back to Mussolini and is led by the charismatic Meloni. It's about to play a starring role in the Italian political firmament.

Wednesday

Bill Zeiser

The MAGA infiltrator is sad, not brave

Last weekend brought some minor internet drama courtesy of Amanda Moore, a progressive activist who outed herself as having spent the past year “infiltrating” right-wing groups. On Twitter, she posted pictures that she'd taken with various luminaries of Trumpworld such as General Michael Flynn, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. She also claimed to have been given a counterfeit vaccination card from a member of a QAnon conspiracy group and to have worn a wire the whole time, recording the details of her meetings and chance encounters held under false pretenses. “We were literally at the same events,” she crowed at a photojournalist who sent a somewhat vulgar tweet mocking her.

maga exposure therapy amanda moore

Sunday

Ian Thomson

A tinpot Caesar

In 1919, an obscure political agitator called Benito Mussolini assembled a ragbag of Blackshirt diehards in the Lombard capital of Milan and launched the movement that was to become, two years later, the National Fascist party. The party took its name from the classical Roman symbol of authority — an ax bound in rods, or fasces. Once in power, Mussolini introduced the stiff armed Roman salute after the handshake was deemed fey and unhygienic. At times he wore a richly tasseled fez and thrust out his chin pugnaciously for the cameras. For all his posturing and demagoguery, Mussolini was widely admired in pre-war Britain, where Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail routinely carried flattering portraits of him.

mussolini

Tuesday

Godfrey Elfwick

A milkshake a day keeps the fascists at bay

Yesterday a hero appeared in our midst. A valiant warrior armed only with a cold milk beverage. Not since the Normandy Landings have I seen such bravery against an impending Nazi invasion. Over here in the UK we have our own version of Donald Trump. His name is Nigel Farage. Like Trump he is a hideous Nazi, Hitler incarnate. A walking harbinger of xenophobic hatred, spewing fascism and racism. He is the cause of Britain’s pain and division. He was the one who decided that we should hold a referendum on whether to leave the glorious EU. It’s the mark of a typical fascist authoritarian to inflict democracy upon the ignorant masses. The result of that hateful vote has split our once tolerant and peaceful country in two.

milkshake godfrey elfwick