How People Let Fascism Take Hold

I was thinking about how fascism gets into power—how people let it happen. It’s unsettling, really, how something so heinous becomes part of everyday life. How the ordinary citizen just… lets it in.

From a Canadian perspective, it’s especially interesting. We’re not as far down the fascism development scale as, say, the United States. We’re more at a stage I’d call fascism-tolerant. Not here, not at home—but over there? That’s fine. As long as it’s in Israel, not here. We’ll look the other way.

And even then, it’s not just passive tolerance—we actively support it. Economically. We're capitalistically tolerant of fascism. We won’t lock people up in gulags or disappear them like the U.S. is willing to do, but we’ll sell the rope.

And yeah, I get it—some people will say, “Why should I care what’s happening over there?” Or “Why does it matter if you’re calling this a genocide?”

Well—because. Because there’s a mountain of historical evidence showing how fast fascism spreads once it infects a host society. Because we’ve seen the horrific outcomes, time and time again.

And because right now, we’re standing at a point where our government says it’s against fascism—but it’ll still do business with Nazi Germany. It’ll keep the trade flowing, even while knowing exactly what’s going on in the extermination camps.

We’ll condemn fascism, sure—but we’ll also conflate it with communism so we can condemn both. That way we still look like the good guys, while reaping the benefits of trading with fascists.

And we’re not ignorant of what’s happening. There’s 24-hour, real-time documentation of these atrocities. We know. We benefit. We stay silent.

That’s the part that sticks. If we’ve already seen where this road leads, wouldn’t you want to know if your government is, in any way, shape, or form, condoning it? Even just tolerating it?

I want to know. Even if it’s not within our borders. If my government is tolerating practiced fascism anywhere—I want to be aware of that. Because being able to recognize when that’s happening? That matters.

How else do you operate with impunity, if not for the tolerance of the people around you? Either we tolerate it… or we outright choose to let it continue because we think it’s fine. That’s the line.

I think a government that tolerates fascism at all is one that has no spine.

And I don’t know—maybe I’m not trying to draw a neat conclusion here.

Maybe there isn’t one.