Modern Fascists 101

🕵️ What Is Fascism, Really?

Forget the clean textbook definitions or the way high school teachers lump it into “things that happened in Europe before the good guys won.” Fascism is not just Nazis and Mussolini. It’s a living, mutating virus — and it has long since taken root in American soil.

Modern fascism doesn’t wear brownshirts. It wears cop uniforms, business suits, tactical gear, and red hats. It shares Facebook posts about “saving the children,” rants on YouTube about “globalists,” and quietly trains in gun clubs across Portage County.

Fascism is not just brutality — it’s myth + power.
It needs a lie about the past and a dream of returning to it. Whether it’s the Confederacy, the Crusades, or some imaginary 1950s where everyone “knew their place,” fascism thrives on nostalgia, hierarchy, and fear.

🧬 The DNA of Modern Fascists

Let’s break it down: What defines a fascist in 2025? Not all of them goose-step. But they tend to share these traits:

• Authoritarian worship: They want a strongman. Doesn’t matter if he’s dumb, cruel, or incoherent — as long as he punishes “them.”
• Hierarchy obsession: Race, gender, nation, religion. Fascists believe some people should be on top, and others must be kept down.
• Violence as virtue: They don’t just tolerate brutality — they admire it. Against protesters. Against immigrants. Against queers. Against you.
• Conspiratorial paranoia: QAnon. Replacement theory. “The woke mob.” The Great Reset. Their worldview depends on invented enemies.
• Scapegoating: The economy’s failing? Must be the drag queens. The schools aren’t safe? Blame Black kids and teachers with rainbow flags.
• "Anti-elite" posing: They pretend to be rebels, outsiders, underdogs. But their leaders are almost always rich, white, and deeply connected.

Modern fascism often pretends to be about “freedom” — but it’s a freedom to dominate, to erase, to punish. It is freedom for the wolf, not the sheep.

🏠 Why Ohio?

Why not.
Ohio is a laboratory. For voter suppression. For right-wing recruitment. For white flight and suburban segregation. For militarized police forces in sleepy towns.

But Ohio is also a place where real resistance grows: union halls, campus movements, abolitionist roots, and a long memory of betrayal by power.

Fascism here wears a smile. It runs for school board. It signs book bans. It funds fake clinics. It volunteers at church and whispers “parental rights.”
It calls itself a patriot.

⚠️ Don't Wait for a Swastika

If you wait until someone’s waving a Nazi flag in Ravenna, it’s already too late.
Fascism starts with smirks and memes. With school policy changes. With cops emboldened. With silence in the face of cruelty.

You know these people. You hear them in diners and barbershops. You see the Blue Lives Matter flags. You’ve driven past their billboards.

Don’t just spot them — learn how they move. Watch where they gather. Track how they talk. Know your terrain.

🔥 What Do We Do?

• Organize: Don’t just tweet. Show up. Build networks. Talk to people. Make it local.
• Expose them: They hate the light. Document what you see. Share it.
• Disrupt their spaces: Don’t let them recruit unchallenged. They want a passive public.
• Defend your community: Know your neighbors. Protect your people. Train for more than just debate.

🔥 Final Word

This isn’t a warning. This is a recognition. We are already on the battlefield. The sooner we act like it, the better our chances.

Fascism is real. But so are we.
And in Portage County, in Northeast Ohio, we write back.

Contact: hellisrealtpaine@proton.me