Freedom Lovers Aren’t ‘Fascists’

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/12/freedom_lovers_aren_t_fascists.html

By J.B. Shurk

There’s nothing ‘right-wing’ about defending the Bill of Rights.

Being called “right-wing” or “fascist” is detestable. The label implies a preference for dictatorship, authoritarianism, and government supremacy over personal freedom. The exact opposite is true. I would describe myself as a supporter of autarchism in the sense that we should rule ourselves and not be ruled by others.

As someone who believes strongly in individual liberty, self-reliance, and self-government, I distrust all repositories of power -- whether such power resides in government, corporations, or social institutions. As Lord Acton advised: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In my estimation, nothing in this physical world can be trusted with power for very long. Regrettably, all forms of power eventually become abusive.

Nineteenth-century diplomat and political writer John O’Sullivan (the man who coined the phrase “manifest destiny” in 1845) helped to popularize a sentiment shared by other luminaries of his time such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain: “The best government is that which governs least.”

Government is Leviathan. It knows only how to grow its size and the number of its tentacles until it is capable of wrapping its predacious powers around everyone and everything.

Emissaries of Big Government globalism speak of government as a benevolent “friend” and “parent” whose job is to “protect” and “take care of” the people. But government is none of those things. Government is coercion. It is force, including the threat of lethal force. It robs people of their labor in the form of taxes. It presumes to know what is best for everyone. It insists on telling people how to use their property and how to live their lives. It intrudes into family households and inserts itself between parents and children. Whereas a friend will fight beside you and a parent will sacrifice everything for your well-being, governments start wars recklessly, sacrifice citizens callously, and ignore the pleas of those suffering.

The German Nazis, Italian fascists, Soviet communists, and Chinese Maoists were all Big Government socialists who justified murdering their citizens for the good of the government. Government is not a “friend” or a “parent.” It is a homicidal maniac that society tries to keep somewhat restrained lest it indulge its basest instinct: to kill everyone in its path.

Government does not “protect” people. It uses people to its advantage. Government does not “take care of” people. It bullies them, steals from them, and keeps them divided against each other. Anybody praising the “virtues” of Big Government is nothing more than a macabre salesman for institutional slavery, indemnified violence, and legalized theft.

Those of us who identify as liberty lovers and defenders of freedom harbor profound distrust of government. It is therefore galling when Big Government leftists, socialists, globalists, Marxists, and even outright communists (especially those exercising power as so-called “journalists” working for multinational corporate news organizations) call us “right-wing.”

What is “right-wing” about wanting government bureaucrats to just leave us the hell alone? I try to put myself in the small wingtips of someone such as CNN’s Brian Stelter. When I say, “I want government out of my life,” how does he hear, “Right-wing fascism is overtaking America”? Is Brian obtuse? Maliciously dishonest? Both?

I find it perplexing to hear Stelter, Jake Tapper, and their fellow ideological clones on cable news describe those of us who most ardently defend the Bill of Rights as somehow being threats to American freedom. Look around the universe of political writers today, and you will find that almost all of the staunchest advocates for free speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, and protections from warrantless government searches and mass surveillance are Americans whom Stelter, Tapper, and their cohorts would describe as “right-wing.”On the other hand, the very leftists and globalists whom CNN anchors adore are daily calling for mass censorship in the name of fighting “disinformation” and “hate speech.” Stelter has made an entire career out of playing a “truth-telling hall monitor” who believes he is empowered to tell social media companies what should be stricken from public debate. He has explicitly called for a “harm reduction model” of permissible speech by illogically claiming that “reducing a liar’s reach is not the same as censoring freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is different than freedom of reach.” He defends censorship in the name of “freedom” because he expects to be the corporate news umpire who gets to decide what is true or false.

Could there possibly be anything more authoritarian than CNN personalities claiming the authority to declare official truths?

Nonetheless, CNN ignores its own assaults on free speech and instead decries “right-wingers” who believe parents should have a say over whether elementary school libraries include books on “transgenderism,” abortion, sexual fetishes, and pornography. CNN’s talking heads even call those of us who oppose “drag queen story hour” for kindergartners “Christian nationalists” -- as if trying to be a moral person, a faithful Christian, a protective parent, and a patriotic American were the hallmarks of “fascism.”

Effective communication between human beings is difficult even when people speak the same language, share the same culture, and enjoy similar beliefs. When politicians and “journalists” defame as “fascists” those of us who fight for expansive personal freedom and against government tyranny, they rob society of peaceful public discourse and light the fuse of future violence.

Those in the “journalism” business who use words to sell fear and provoke bloodshed know exactly what they’re doing. When you demonize your political enemies long enough, some eventually get murdered. Charlie Kirk wasn’t the first, and he will not be the last. After all, there is an entire army of fascist Antifa terrorists who hunt “right-wingers” for sport. Or is that too much truth for Stelter’s “harm reduction model” to permit me to say out loud?

Image: Ivan Radic