Spencer examines "ideal fascism" as a power-obsessed system where truth, laws, and treaties are discarded unless they serve its rise—like Hitler’s big lie or QAnon’s promised "storm." Modern factions, from Nick Fuentes’ neo-Nazism to techno-fascists leveraging AI, weaponize fear by targeting marginalized groups, but their real enemy is wokeness: acceptance and kindness. Practical fascism thrives on division, bullying dissent (e.g., Trumpist influencers or the Supreme Court’s immunity rulings), and replacing empathy with vengeance. Resistance lies in science, history, and rejecting hatred as a norm, urging listeners to choose civility over power’s distortions. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that sounds a lot better when I'm not recovering from a cold.
So, I'm Spencer, your host, and I am indeed, as you can probably hear, still a little scratchy.
But I can't wait for this any longer.
I'm going to go ahead with my podcast today.
Just me, no one else.
Solo episode.
A reminder, if anyone has any comments, complaints, concerns, questions, anything like that, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
So, today, I want to talk about fascism.
There's a concept in engineering that we call an ideal device.
The concept is about listing the properties of a device that it would have if it were perfect, and it helps people understand the differences between practical applications in the real world and what those devices would be like if they were ideal.
I'm going to transport this concept of an ideal device onto fascism.
Ideal fascism.
What would fascism look like if it didn't need to meld itself to a real-life practical application?
And could understanding this help us to understand some of the confusion created by differences between fascist governments and political actors?
Let's find out.
But first, we need to slice away a piece of fascism that is undoubtedly embedded in the minds of almost everyone who knows anything about it.
This is probably the biggest hurdle anyone attempting to follow along with this idea will have to leap over.
Fascism is usually described by its place on the even less tangible idea of the political spectrum.
You've probably heard of fascism as being a right-wing or far-right ideology.
And you might have even heard some people talk about something called horseshoe theory, in which the far-right and far-left ideologies are more closely related to each other than to the ideas that are supposedly between them.
Let's sort this out first.
The political spectrum is a completely arbitrary line graph, which attempts to create a visual tool with which political ideas can become more ordered and identifiable.
It first began as an observation about the French parliament after the revolution.
In that situation, aristocratic ministers sat on the right side of the room, and ministers who were commoners sat on the left side of the room.
This led to obvious ideological differences between the two, whose differences can be found in even the smallest study of the details of the French Revolution.
But suffice it to say that the sets of principles held by the right and the left in the French parliament of the late 18th century do not line up with the sets of properties held by the right and the left of any country today.
This is because the right and the left are mostly defined by each other, and the political spectrum is an intangible and arbitrarily determined line graph that shifts with each new generation.
For this reason, it has caused at least as much confusion when communicating political ideas as it has allowed for ease of communication.
For the purposes of today's discussion, I want to do away with it completely, on the understanding that it isn't all that useful.
It varies from generation to generation and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, from one country to another.
It's as useful as a weather vane in a tornado.
Ideal fascism is remarkably simple, actually.
It has one principle.
Just one.
Power.
All other principles get a lower priority to the accumulation and concentration of power.
There is no need for dignity or shame when trading in dignity or shame can make you that much more powerful.
Once you're powerful enough, you'll find that everyone treats you with the dignity you felt you deserved all along, and no one will remind you of any moment in the past during which you ever felt shame.
To ideal fascism, everything is subordinate to power.
Reality itself cannot be allowed to get in the way of obtaining more power.
So it is that fascists inevitably dabble in propaganda.
The broadcast of lies so thick they seem to blot out the sun.
Reality distortion on a scale difficult to imagine until you see it happening in front of you.
Other forms of government also use propaganda, but fascists take this to a new level.
Because reality is secondary to power, there are no limits to how or why fascists fabricate reality for their own ends.
So you get the concept of Hitler's big lie.
In Hitler's own words from Mein Kampf in 1925, people would not believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
Having only one principle, with all other considerations receiving less priority, tends to push someone into an all or nothing or absolutist thinking.
The idea that everything is for trade or for sale in exchange for power, and that after you get that power, you'll get back everything you previously traded away, leads people to take greater chances in order to get more power more quickly.
Note that this trade-off only works in favor of the people who actually get the power.
It can lead to a great deal of desperation among the people following fascism in the lower tiers because they have a lot more to lose.
That desperation can be an incredibly powerful motivator that encourages people to do very terrible things and is often weaponized to commit acts of terrorism and extreme violence in the name of the fascist goal.
Ideal fascism creates an absolutist environment of you're either with me or you're against me.
It thrives on the existence of enemies.
It forever needs some external entity from which it can gain power.
The desperation felt by the followers leads to a get away with anything you can mentality.
All laws are allowed to be broken as long as you're doing so to bring about the fascist ideal.
Fascism recognizes no authority except for itself and sees all other supposed authorities as only obstacles to maneuver around.
It pays no heed to national laws, constitutional amendments, court proceedings, international treaties, or the sovereignty of other nations until these things threaten its rise.
At that point, those things that stand in its way become the new enemy, with reality sometimes being distorted to claim that they were always the enemy and that more effort must now be expended for the fascist goal.
There are no hypocrites in fascism, though from outside it usually looks like there are.
If your only principle is power and whatever you're doing gives you power, then you are not being hypocritical.
A politician can be a thrice-married philanderer who is caught on tape declaring that he fondles women without their consent, and he can gain the support of fundamentalist Christians who otherwise say they want politicians to have quote-unquote family values.
And this is not hypocrisy to the fascists.
Being a politician who campaigns on an anti-immigration platform while placating billionaire immigrants and having an immigrant wife is not hypocritical to the fascists.
A porn star can support a political party that wants to make porn illegal.
And this is not hypocrisy to the fascists.
A political party can spend three years arguing that their opponent is too old to run, then have this aged opponent replaced for a younger candidate, all while running a candidate who is nearly as old and potentially in worse mental shape.
And this is not hypocrisy to the fascists.
A politician can have a history of calling a presidential candidate out as unfit to be president and America's Hitler, then later gets selected as that candidate's vice presidential candidate on the same ticket.
And this is not hypocrisy to the fascists.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
Stop looking for an internal consistency that accords with your own values.
Fascists have only one value, the advancement of their own power.
Fascists think that the application of laws should flex to make room for the powerful.
That powerful people should get forgiveness or even immunity from offenses.
This isn't hypocrisy if your only principle is the collection and concentration of power.
Laws take a back seat.
Once the fascists have power, they grant effective immunity through selective application of the laws for anyone who is currently helping them maintain power.
Note that it's never a thank you for having helped them attain power in the first place.
It's always about what you will continue to do for them in the future.
Once you're no longer of use, fascism will happily cast you aside.
This also is not hypocritical.
It follows the single principle of collecting and concentrating power.
Sentimentality has no place in fascism.
Ideal fascism is never at one unchanging power level.
In the situation that is most advantageous to the fascists, it is always rising.
But really, in practical fascism, it's always either rising or falling, never static.
It's always rising in power and influence until it is sufficiently opposed.
The sooner you pluck it from the garden, the sooner you stop it from using up your garden's resources.
If left unchecked, it will have no limit.
The desperation to get back the human things left behind by the fascists who have given up so much shame and dignity and other resources to gain the power will drive those same fascists to ever more desperate actions in pursuit of their goal.
It distorts reality in an effort to create the world that best suits it.
And entire populations can give in out of mental exhaustion and a need to feel safe.
To effect this end, fascists will always attempt to remind the people at all times that the world is dangerous and that the fascists are needed to keep the dangers at bay.
The unspoken part is that all hypocrisies and inconsistencies need to be forgiven by the people in order to keep the safety they feel they need from this coercive relationship.
Fascists are bullies, primarily.
Bullies do what they do to gain a sense of personal and social power.
This is the essence and the driving force for fascism and also a primary reason why people can flock to the banners and posters and slogans of fascism.
The fascists feel joy at the prospect of committing violence against whomever is seen as the enemy.
Bullies must always have an enemy, and so it is with fascists.
They are one and the same.
But fascism is bullying on an industrial scale.
Fascism is hatred that feeds a marketing campaign broadcast continent-wide.
Every problem has the same solution, an expression of violent intent.
The violent thoughts are encouraged, fostered, preened.
Violent daydreams are celebrated in song and film.
The primary theme cast upon the populace is that of vengeance, retribution for losses real or imagined.
The difference between the real and imagined losses is deliberately blurred.
Any effort to question the veracity of unreal claims of loss is circled back toward the anger that is meant to be felt at the loss.
The anger at the loss becomes the proof that the loss is real.
This is a self-defining problem that is solved only by more hatred and more thoughts of vengeance.
You see, deep down inside, everyone is capable of being a bully.
Everyone is capable of seeking power for the sake of having power.
Everyone is capable of harming others for the sake of keeping themselves safe.
We need to teach each other and ourselves not to behave this way.
Fascism attempts to say that those teachings should be cast aside.
That there's some natural, primal, and ultimately righteous force within each person to demonstrate the willingness and even eagerness to commit violence against their enemies.
The nature of fascism itself declares that it must always have an enemy from whom power is drained.
The power must always bolster the efforts of the fascists involved.
Anything that strengthens the fascist movement and its leader is seen as good.
Anything that reduces that strength is seen as bad.
There's no middle ground.
Everything in the world is reinterpreted around this set of immovable principles.
Reality itself must flex to accommodate this axiom.
There is no treaty or truce with fascism, no more than you could have a truce with a scorpion.
It may be temporarily stunned or frightened away.
But if it ever gets too close, it will sting and seek to poison you.
If fascism is ever on the rise, it must be opposed with all available power until it is fully extinguished.
Ideal fascism works by providing a very clear set of rules by which society will be shaped.
The rules provided constitute both a reward for participation and a threat for dissidence.
This reward-threat system is given additional energy by the constant reminder of the illusion of inevitable victory of the fascists.
The illusion of inevitability causes the supporters to become more enthusiastic in anticipation of the coming hour to get back all the things they gave up and causes some of the defiant to lose confidence.
Those who lose confidence are constantly encouraged to join with the fascists to both avoid the punishment of defiance and gain the reward of being on the victorious side.
Reality is often severely distorted in the attempt to create the illusion of inevitability.
And this illusion of inevitability itself is a comforting thought to the fascists involved, and they will cling to it irrationally as they give up more and more of themselves in an increasing desperation to gain the power long promised.
For this reason, bluffing becomes a constant factor among fascist organizations.
The illusion of inevitable victory must be maintained like a constant ochre face.
Anyone attempting this who isn't capable of maintaining the veneer of eventual victory gets cast aside.
These are the potential fascists we never get to hear about, the ones history never relates.
Like would-be cult leaders who seek the kind of control over people they have heard about in books but lack the skill to mimic.
How confidently one behaves in the face of potential ruin while boldly grabbing up the power that will bolster that confidence is a hallmark of ideal fascism.
And the distortion of reality only improves the ability to convince first oneself that said confidence is warranted and then eventually one's cohorts that the sudden lurches for power are not only justified but necessary.
The threats for non-compliance with fascism will very often resemble revenge fantasies and in those cases will be declared with a kind of zealous glee.
We see these threats now.
Threats of a tribunal often dubbed Nuremberg II are trotted out by anti-vaccine ghouls who want to make people regret administering and promoting the COVID vaccines.
QAnon has a much prophesied storm, which is supposed to be a roundup of all the deep state bad guys in one fell swoop.
The cue drops don't specifically detail what should happen to these deep state actors, but the descriptions from QAnoners are usually things like public beheadings, while the good people of the world are meant to watch and cheer.
Also note that in the fascist world, not cheering when these things occur will be a sign of dissidence and would ideally be reported for the next round of societal purges.
This folds the social experience upon itself to create a monoculture that is defined by hatred for whichever enemy is chosen by the fascist leadership.
The casting aside of hypocritical judgments and of facts that don't justify or support the illusion of inevitable victory becomes a requirement for the people enthusiastically following fascism.
A conscious virtue-signaling nod to the alternate set of facts that are now making up their reality.
These are signs of allegiance to the goal and are strong counterindications to anyone who attempts to point out the truth of these hypocrisies.
The crowd itself becomes the enforcing body for adherence to the fascist unreality.
There have recently been a few Trumpist influencers who have attempted to step away from the MAGA crowd only to be bullied back into submission.
Ideal fascism will tend to have many outward-facing indications of its presence.
It's not subtle.
Bold reaches for power, especially once they've exposed themselves and what they're up to, they tend to cross a nothing else to lose line and just lean all in.
When your goal is to grab all the power, the only time to hesitate is when there's a chance for failure.
Once the chance for success presents itself, no fascist can resist.
The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made some questionable judgments in favor of Trump.
Presidents now have immunity for official acts, and the line between official acts and other acts was left deliberately blurry, so that the court can, again, relitigate that distinction at a later time if needed.
The lack of definition from a ruling body that is meant to give very exact definitions isn't hypocritical to fascism.
It provides lower courts the opportunity to show their allegiance to the fascist cause by placing their ruling on the fascist side.
And it also provides the opportunity for a lower court to make itself the target by ruling against the fascist cause, all while silently assuring all of these lower courts about the inevitability of their judgment being overturned to the fascist cause anyway, on appeal.
And so we see this reward, threat, and inevitable victory system in action.
Fascists, in their pursuit for power at all costs, confront the world.
When the world fights back, fascists use the fact that resistance exists to justify its own existence.
It tells its followers that those followers need it.
And the proof of this can be seen in the way that, quote unquote, they work so hard to stop, quote unquote, us.
But then, when fascism isn't confronted, it merely continues to take and take until it is finally confronted.
There is no easy solution.
No silver bullet.
The only solution is to end it before it ends you.
There is no peaceful coexistence with fascism.
There's no deal with fascism.
No treaty or ceasefire.
There's no compromise with it that can be trusted.
Fascism wants all the power being currently held by the people who might foolishly trust such a compromise.
And fascism will always betray any trust that is placed in it and break any treaty that is signed with it.
Fascism will prematurely end all ceasefire agreements.
Fascism will shoot first while accusing the other side of shooting first.
All of these things are in line with its single principle.
Power for power's sake.
Ideal fascism will always create a cult of personality as a consequence of its single-minded need for power.
All power is concentrated upward toward a single individual, and this individual, as the focal point for all the power, becomes infallible and idolized in the minds of every other fascist beneath them.
Nothing this leader says can be wrong.
And if the leader ever says anything that sounds wrong, then this means that everything and everyone else needs to reshape itself to match what new thing that leader has said.
Any individual in a fascist community has power only at the grace of the person directly above them on the hierarchy.
One can never speak out against the person granting you power because power is the only concept of value, and the people above you are the only source of it.
This dynamic is true of everyone except the person at the very top.
All power is pushed upward.
In fascism, the leader becomes the state.
And the state is the thing which holds all the rights.
Individuals only have whatever rights the state grants them.
And in fascism, this is entirely reliant upon what each of those citizens is doing for the fascist state.
Nothing comes for free.
Very often, ideal fascism will attempt to cloak this cult of personality in groupism.
On a national scale, it'll be nationalism.
But fascism can be employed in a smaller scale as well.
Fascism will identify the nation synonymously with the individual at the forefront of the movement.
It will then claim that everything is being done for the good of the nation or the group.
Don't be fooled.
This is done as a sales tactic.
It becomes more palatable to say it's being done for the group.
But having the nation or group be synonymous with the leader gives away the lie.
If a fascist nation is offered the chance to get everything they want in exchange for having their leader step down, the answer will undoubtedly be a resounding no.
The purpose was never to get what they want for the group or nation.
The purpose was always to get what they want for the leader.
Ideofascism, as I've said, must always have an external enemy from which it can continually take power.
But it must also have an internal enemy.
It must have ways to divide the public, ways to make the public feel fear, and subsequently the continued need for the fascists.
Practical fascism always starts this way, but often gets bogged down and burdened with the human projects and prejudices of those in charge.
The weird fact about fascism is that it works better as an ideal.
Fascism needs to select groups to hate, but actually stopping to do anything about those groups requires resources.
Fascism wants all of those resources for itself.
If ordinary people take up that cause on their own, it works fine.
But for the fascists to do it is actually a distraction from the primary goal, collecting and concentrating power.
In fact, if the fascists actively remove the threat, then they won't have a useful fear-mongering tool on their propaganda workbench anymore.
It will actually loosen their grip on the people until they find a new enemy to cause the fear again.
For example, Hitler spent an enormous amount of resources for the Holocaust.
None of which moved him closer to the military victory.
Hitler also chose which countries to invade based in part on their Jewish populations.
This was also not useful for the purpose of military victory and eventually caused him to get bogged down in Russia.
If Hitler had been more hypocritical and believed less in his genocidal project, he might have been even more successful.
I worry that this is a lesson that modern fascists are beginning to learn.
The Republican Party has been complaining about immigrants for as long as I can remember.
They've said many times that they want to change something about the southern border, that something is always ill-defined and hazy.
They've had several Republican presidents in my lifetime, and almost nothing has ever been done.
A few months ago, Joe Biden and the Democrats attempted to pass a bill to make changes to the border.
And Donald Trump, a private citizen, told Republicans in Congress to kill the bill, which they did.
Without a border issue to complain about, Trump would have fewer reasons to rile up the fear about immigrants.
Doing something about the actual problem is counter to the interests of the fascists banging the war drum about the problem.
The modern neo-Nazi movement hopes to pick up the anti-Semitic project where Nazism left off, to cash in on existing residual anti-Semitic ideas that linger yet in our society.
But it doesn't work very well anymore.
At least, not as well as it did 100 years ago in Europe.
These are the lazy fascists of modern times, playing on old, worn prejudices, to create scare tactics and garner support.
This doesn't make them harmless or dismissible.
The hateful screeds that Nick Fuentes reels out to his audiences should not be ignored, but instead need to be countered with real information.
But we also need to properly categorize and separate what Nick Fuentes does from what Trump does, and these both from what techno-fascists do.
Techno-fascists believe that the power should come to them because of their superior technology.
Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the large-scale collection of public information are very powerful tools, especially when combined.
Some of the people who traffic in those circles imagine a future bereft of democratic influence and awash with power and influence flowing to them via their inhuman machines.
These are modern examples of practical fascism which need to be carefully watched and countered, lest they make their own lunges for power.
Fascists always want to divide the public and inspire fear.
This can be done in many ways, but the best way is to say that the enemy walks among us.
They're inside our group, and we will need to remove them in order to achieve the safety we so desire.
Inevitably, the hidden enemy that walks among us is defined as the people who show dissent to the fascist cause.
You might think that in our current political climate, this role is being played by immigrants.
It's true that immigrants are vilified, and there's a great deal of blame placed upon them.
The fascists will lie about immigrants taking jobs, occupying houses that could be lived in by someone else, degrading economic performance, cheating in elections, all lies.
But all of these things aren't really the enemy that walks among us.
Immigrants are certainly a focal point of hate, and pointing out this rhetoric is absolutely on point.
But this isn't what the fascists really despise.
It's not the antidote to fascism, not the silver bullet that could take away their power.
Inviting more immigrants to spite the fascists will only increase their ability to smear immigrants, and in some ways, is something the fascists hope their opponents do.
Also, agreeing to let in no more immigrants will also only serve the fascist interests.
No, this isn't the natural enemy the fascists so fear.
You might then say that the chosen hidden enemy of the fascists is transgendered people.
It is true that many people online engage in so-called transvestigations to point out people they claim are trans whenever they want someone to be vilified or when one of their own steps out of line.
Kyle Rittenhouse expressed dismay about Trump's electoral chances a few months ago and within hours was accused of being secretly trans in a flurry of transvestigations.
He realigned himself back to the MAGA cause the next day.
Trans people work hard at normalizing their appearance and transvestigations turn this upon itself as a weapon to drive a wedge between the trans community and the rest of society.
And this is a terrible practice.
The idea that trans people are somehow more dangerous when you can't identify who is and who isn't trans would definitely be used by some fascists in a pinch, but it's not the real enemy that walks among us.
No, the real hidden enemy in the fascist mind today is wokeness.
You see, fascism only works when the people are fearful and angry and vengeful.
Fascism weaponizes the worst instincts of humanity.
It tells people that these darkest emotions are not only reasonable and justified, but encouraged and celebrated.
Fascism tells everyone who is already angry that their anger is the correct response as long as the target is the one fascism agrees with.
Fascism more than merely normalizes hatred and bigotry.
It elevates it to that of a virtue and social expectation.
So how do we possibly counter such a juggernaut of human energy?
Understanding, care, kindness, welcoming people from other cultures, appreciation of people with different sexual preferences and gender identities.
Knowledge of science surrounding these human experiences.
Study of history to remind us that none of us are special simply because we happen to have more of something or are currently in the most popular group at this moment in time.
Reminders that we're all just people trying to get by in the world, and the solution isn't to continue taking from others.
That's why wokeness is the natural enemy of fascism.
Because offering acceptance to those who are different is anathema to an ideology that wants to exploit those differences.
Reaching out with a caring hand is poison to an ideology that wants to keep people as afraid as possible forever.
Forgiveness and the ending of grudges removes the ability for fascists to use vengeance as a national policy.
So think about this when you use the word woke as a curse.
Whose aims are you helping?
Are those goals useful and good for the future?
How can an ideology that seeks to promote assistance and understanding be something you despise?
How can a willingness to see people suffer become something you cheer?
And how can the people who would weather the threats of Nuremberg II and still be willing to reach out with a helping hand be weak?
How can anti-vaxx claim they're helping the world by saving it from vaccines justify threats of hangings, while the medical professionals they threaten still express a determination to save the lives of the anti-vaxxers who just threatened them?
And how can anyone look at these two groups and decide that the one that would arm itself with clubs and firearms and threats of murder be better than the one that arms itself with stethoscopes and bandages and words of understanding?
How can an effort to understand the invisible torment of a person suffering gender dysphoria become an act of violence against our culture?
And how can a concerted and increasingly organized effort to increase violence against transgendered people become virtuous?
How can Haitians who contribute to Springfield, Ohio become the enemy of the people while the white guy who was actually killing the geese in Springfield is accepted as a good citizen?
And think about yourselves and your own words that you choose.
Do you amplify hatred and bigotry in order to justify your own ill feelings?
Do you lean toward an ideology of vengeance because you feel that you deserved a better outcome in life?
Bullying and fascism will always be an available method for gaining social power.
The antidotes to these will also always be available.
Anytime you speak out in hatred or encourage others to do so, you foster an environment more suitable to bullying and fascism.
Anytime you reach out a helping hand or seek to understand those who are different, you push back against those same ideas.
And it's fairly telling that people rarely self-apply the word woke anymore.
It's nearly entirely used to describe others.
Negatively.
A set of ideas that are meant to become undesirable.
A set of people who are meant to be cast as those working against the smooth functioning of society.
The woke are cast as disruptors and infiltrators, indoctrinators.
An insidious peril to the highly treasured thing called the culture.
But the culture is just whatever we determine it to be by the ways in which we live.
It isn't decided by talking heads on a screen.
It's determined by the collection of our individual decisions.
So with that in mind, I choose kindness, civility, politeness.
I choose understanding, learning, and study.
I choose redemption and forgiveness and a helping hand.
I reject a social environment that expects hatred and bigotry and vengeance as a standard level of participation.