Dear America: Holding Normal Opinions Does Not Make One a Fascist
It is time for every American to declare they refuse to dehumanize others for wrongthink.
Social media reactions to the assassination of Charlie Kirk this week ran a predictable and well-worn spectrum. America has developed a habit it refuses to break, returning yet again to a dopamine hit of self-satisfaction and blame. "I'm on the right side of history, it's that guy who's to blame." No treatment plan has yet been strong enough to break us of this need for the dopamine hits we get when we point our fingers outward. Indeed, we've developed an entire culture of dishonesty and manipulation to justify and defend our addiction.
We cannot continue this way. It is long past time for deep, reflective introspection. America needs an intervention if it wants to survive as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
America needs her citizens to stop demonizing and dehumanizing each other.
It is little wonder, really, that a shooter took his position atop a building near Charlie Kirk's event, lined up his scope, and made an instant kill shot that left a wife without a husband and two children under 5 without a father. The inhuman environment that calls words "violence" made it easy—hell, even inevitable—that someone would take eternal justice into their own hands.
After all, wouldn't you, too, murder Adolf Hitler if you'd had the chance before he ascended?
The folks, largely on the Left, who have said they hated what Charlie Kirk stood for have filled their social media feeds with entreaties to "cool down the rhetoric" and "have a national conversation." The problem with that, of course, is that is exactly what Charlie Kirk was trying to do. And a deranged leftist shot him in the neck for it.
No, the folks on the Right who hold traditional views hewing to the original meaning of the Bible and the Constitution don't qualify as fascists. In fact, those views aren't the exclusive domain of the Right, although Republicans are undeniably better represented than Democrats in the traditional values department. The point is, though, the good and decent folks that make up America have been mischaracterized and manipulated for far too long.
The Tea Party movement began as a protest against government excess—spending, taxes, surveillance, and regulation. Opposing those things doesn't make one a fascist. Quite the opposite, actually. But you wouldn't know it from listening to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the congressional leaders at the time who tried to convince America that Paul Ryan wanted to kill grandma by opposing Obamacare.
That example seems quaint these days.
It didn't start with the Tea Party. Democrats have called Republicans fascists and Nazis for decades. When Barry Goldwater spoke after winning the Republican nomination for president in 1964, California Gov. Pat Brown (D) said it "had the stench of fascism. All we needed to hear was Heil Hitler." And who can forget the 1968 nationally broadcast debate between William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal on the Vietnam War. Vidal repeatedly referred to Buckley as a "crypto-Nazi," to which Buckley had a famously profane reply.
Hubert Humphrey, unsuccessfully running to unseat Richard Nixon as president in 1968, said, "If the British had not fought in 1940, Hitler would have been in London, and if Democrats do not fight in 1968, Nixon will be in the White House."
The 1960s saw some of the worst social unrest America has ever endured, with several prominent figures getting assassinated by communist-aligned shooters. Several other radical revolutionary groups conducted bombings on police stations and federal facilities. They used Republicans-as-fascists as their excuse.
It seems history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
A Democratic congressman from Missouri said Ronald Reagan wanted to replace the Bill of Rights with "fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf." Al Gore said George W. Bush deployed "digital brownshirts." NAACP Chairman Julian Bond accused Republicans multiple times of flying the American flag and "Confederate swastika" (whatever that is) side-by-side. Even Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan faced comparisons to Hitler and Goebbels.
In 1983, a radical pro-communist feminist group friendly with Fidel Castro planted a bomb in the U.S. Senate building to protest the United States military. It caused $1 million in damages and forced the Senate to beef up security. They used "the patriarchy" and "heteronormative culture" as their excuse to attack the "war-mongers."
In America, we say we revere the right to free expression and enshrined it in our founding document. And yet we tolerate those who would intimidate people accused of wrongthink for not aligning with the Approved Narrative. We brush off terroristic threats and terroristic acts committed by anti-American revolutionaries who would rather see our nation destroyed than to allow opposing viewpoints. And in an ironic twist, these revolutionaries hide behind the First Amendment, defending their violent actions as mere free expression.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a billionaire and a Democrat, referred to President Donald Trump as a fascist this week because he wants to use federal troops to remove Venezuelan gang member and drug dealers from the streets of Chicago.
This after Luigi Mangione, the man arrested for shooting to death the CEO of United Healthcare on the streets of New York in 2024, became a cult hero on the Left.
In May 2025, embattled former FBI Director and Russiagate figure James Comey posted "8647" on his Instagram account.
So James Comey—the disgraced former FBI Director Trump fired—just posted “8647” spelled out in seashells on his Instagram.
— Krista Monroe (@MsKristaMonroe) May 15, 2025
In case you live under a rock, here's the not-so-cryptic translation:
86 = eliminate. 47 = Trump.
This is a blatant threat from a man who once weaponized… pic.twitter.com/svg6DpuIsk
And now Charlie Kirk is dead. Killed by an assassin who held the view that what Kirk believed made him the equivalent of the worst genocidal leaders in history.
America, stop looking at the other guy or gal. It's long past time to point the finger in the opposite direction. This week's violence calls out for a national soul-searching. Are there some neo-Nazis in America? Yeah, probably, but the number is vanishingly small. Is your neighbor a fascist, just because she voted for Trump or reads her Bible regularly? Do you support genocide if you want lower taxes and a smaller government?
What, exactly, is fascist about what Donald Trump wants to accomplish in his administration?
When you try to put into writing the things that actually qualify as totalitarian about America's society and people, the futility of the exercise becomes evident right away. Our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution to guarantee the maximum amount of liberty for the maximum amount of our citizens. Evidence of it falling short at times does not constitute proof of dictatorial intent.
If you want to find dictatorial intent, stop looking at your neighbor and instead look to some place like China, Venezuela, or Iran.
Holding normal, traditionally American, free market, Biblical, constitutional values does not make one a fascist, and if you believe it does, you need to reexamine the basis of your beliefs.
