Know It. Name It. Stand Against It.
America Has Always
Opposed Fascism
From the battlefields of World War II to the streets at home, the United States has confronted fascism with courage and resolve. This site exists to explain what fascism is, trace that history, and make the case for why it still matters.
Start HereWhat Is Fascism?
Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, rigid control of society and the economy, and ultranationalism — typically fused with a cult of personality around a single leader.
Unlike communism, which centers on class struggle, fascism often champions a mythologized national identity while scapegoating minorities, immigrants, and political enemies as threats to the "true" people of the nation.
Political theorist Umberto Eco identified fourteen recurring features of fascist movements — including the cult of tradition, rejection of modernism, fear of difference, obsession with a plot, contempt for the weak, machismo, selective populism, and the impoverishment of vocabulary and critical thought.
No single feature defines fascism. What matters is recognizing the pattern — and understanding why democracies are its natural enemy.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
A Record of Resistance
America's History of Standing Against It
Fascism Rises in Europe — and Finds Opponents at Home
As Hitler and Mussolini consolidated power, American veterans, labor unions, and civil rights organizations began organizing against homegrown fascist movements like the German-American Bund and the Silver Legion. Anti-fascist coalitions staged counter-protests and disrupted rallies from New York to California.
America Enters the War
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war, the United States joined the Allied fight against fascist powers on two fronts. Over 16 million Americans served. The war effort unified a nation around the explicit goal of defeating fascism — and the ideals of democracy it threatened.
The Liberation of Europe
From the beaches of Normandy to the fall of Berlin, American forces fought alongside Allied nations to end Nazi rule and liberate concentration camps. The Nuremberg Trials that followed established a global legal framework for prosecuting crimes against humanity.
Building Institutions Against Authoritarianism
After the war, the U.S. helped construct the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, NATO, and the Marshall Plan — all designed to prevent the conditions that allowed fascism to rise again. This post-war liberal order was an explicit rejection of fascist ideology.
Why It Still Matters
Fascism does not announce itself. It rarely arrives with jackboots and a full manifesto. Historians and political scientists consistently note that it emerges gradually — through the erosion of norms, attacks on press freedom, delegitimization of elections, and the cultivation of an enemy within.
Understanding fascism's history is not an academic exercise. It is a civic responsibility. The citizens of Weimar Germany did not believe their democracy could fall. It did — in less than a decade.
America's greatest generation did not merely defeat fascism on the battlefield. They understood that the values at the heart of democracy — free speech, free press, rule of law, equality before it — are the antithesis of everything fascism represents.
Knowing that history is the first act of standing against it.
Further Reading
Resources
The following are widely respected works for understanding fascism, its history, and how democracies resist it.
The Anatomy of Fascism
The definitive scholarly analysis of how fascism worked in practice, from Italy and Germany to Vichy France.
Ur-Fascism
Eco's landmark essay identifying the fourteen features of "Eternal Fascism" — drawn from his own experience growing up under Mussolini.
How Democracies Die
Harvard political scientists examine how elected leaders undermine democracy from within — and what history tells us about prevention.
On Tyranny
Twenty lessons drawn from the history of the twentieth century for citizens living in the twenty-first.