Fascism does not need to win the argument to succeed. It only needs to watch its opposition tear itself apart. Across history, authoritarian regimes have consolidated power not because they were strong, but because the opposition was fragmented, divided, and consumed by its own internal policing.

Today, the Right advances under the banner of MAGA nationalism, corporate capture, and violent state power. But on the Left, instead of building coalitions, we often fall into purity politics—each group becoming its own fiefdom. One camp elevates feminism while dismissing class; another elevates race while ignoring gender; another draws lines by generation, sexuality, or identity. Instead of building solidarity, we build walls.

The result? Brave, resolute voices who do not fit the “preferred narrative” are cut off, belittled, and pushed aside. Resistance becomes boutique activism. Movements collapse into celebrity worship at the top and endless gatekeeping at the bottom.

History Repeats

This is not new. George Orwell (1946) warned of the Left’s capacity for “smelly little orthodoxies” that reduce common cause into endless sectarianism. The Weimar Republic’s left-wing movements collapsed in the 1930s not because their ideals lacked merit, but because their rivalries and purity tests left them powerless to stop Hitler’s rise (Evans, 2003).

The lesson is clear: fascism thrives when its enemies cannot unite.

The Danger of Left Authoritarianism

Let’s be honest: the policing of identity on the Left begins to resemble the authoritarianism it claims to resist. This “left fascism” is not about concentration camps—it’s about exclusion and control. It’s the insistence that unless one is the right race, the right gender, the right generation, or the right orientation, one’s voice does not matter. It is not liberation—it is just another hierarchy.

And the masses, weary of right-wing fascism, are told to accept this exclusion as a “progressive” alternative. But this is no alternative. It is surrender dressed in self-righteousness.

Breaking the Cycle

If resistance is to mean anything, it cannot be built on gatekeeping. It must be built on:

  • Coalition over clique. Every person willing to fight authoritarianism has a role, whether they come from the fields, the factories, the universities, or the streets.
  • Task-based solidarity. The standard cannot be ideological purity. It must be: “Are you willing to act?”
  • Calling out the warlords. Leaders who turn resistance into their personal fiefdoms are no better than the enemies we face.
  • Eyes down, not up. Real power comes from the people lifting, not the celebrities being lifted.

Fascism wins when we fight each other. Democracy wins when we remember the field hand and the feminist, the black activist and the queer activist, the old radical and the young protester—when we fight together.

The choice is simple: solidarity or defeat.

References

Evans, R. J. (2003). The coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin Press.
Orwell, G. (1946). Politics and the English language. Horizon, April 1946.

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