The Big Lie

The Big Lie Plot Summary

Introduction

The political landscape in America today is deeply divided, with both sides accusing each other of the worst possible offenses. Perhaps the most serious charge leveled against conservatives and Republicans is that they represent a fascist or Nazi threat to democracy. This accusation has become increasingly common in recent years, with progressives often painting their opponents as dangerous extremists threatening the very foundations of liberty. What if this narrative is not merely mistaken but deliberately inverted? Through careful historical analysis and examination of primary sources, we journey through a provocative counter-narrative that challenges conventional wisdom about the ideological roots of fascism and Nazism. By examining the philosophical underpinnings, policy preferences, and historical connections between progressive movements and fascist regimes, a compelling case emerges that fascism's true home may actually be on the political left. This exploration forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about which political traditions genuinely championed individual liberty versus those that advanced collectivist ideologies requiring submission to state authority. The implications reach beyond historical curiosity to inform how we understand contemporary political divisions and the rhetoric employed in modern discourse.

Chapter 1: Fascism and Nazism as Left-Wing Phenomena

The conventional narrative about fascism and Nazism places them firmly on the political right, opposite to communism and socialism on the left. However, this categorization fails to withstand historical scrutiny. Fascism and Nazism were never right-wing movements in any meaningful sense. Both ideologies were fundamentally collectivist, statist, and hostile to individual liberty and free markets—hallmarks typically associated with left-wing philosophies. Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher who provided the intellectual foundation for Italian fascism, was a committed socialist who developed fascist doctrine as a revision of Marxism. In Gentile's view, which Mussolini endorsed, "All is in the state and nothing human exists or has value outside the state." This totalitarian vision represented not a rejection of socialism but its fulfillment through different means. Similarly, Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party) explicitly positioned itself as a socialist movement. Their 25-point program included the nationalization of major industries, profit-sharing in large corporations, and expanded old-age welfare—policies that would find more sympathy among progressives than conservatives today. Both movements rejected classical liberalism and its emphasis on individual rights, limited government, and free markets. Hitler himself declared: "We are socialists. We are the enemies of today's capitalist system of exploitation... and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions." The Nazis implemented economic policies that gave the state control over nominally private businesses, directing production and setting prices in ways that mirror progressive calls for government regulation of industry today. The misconception about fascism's place on the political spectrum stems partly from Marxist propaganda that sought to distance international socialism from its nationalist variants after World War II. Soviet intellectuals promoted the idea that fascism represented "late-stage capitalism," despite the anti-capitalist rhetoric and policies of both Mussolini and Hitler. This narrative conveniently absolved socialism of any connection to fascism's horrors while pinning blame on capitalism and traditionalism. Understanding fascism and Nazism as left-wing phenomena explains their philosophical similarities to modern progressivism: the subordination of individual rights to collective goals, centralization of economic planning, and the elevation of state power above civil society. The principal difference between fascism and communism was not their position on the political spectrum but rather their organizing principle—fascism mobilized around national identity while communism organized around class. Both, however, shared a fundamentally collectivist vision opposed to classical liberalism's defense of individual liberty and limited government.

Chapter 2: The Nazi-Democrat Connection: Shared Racial Ideologies

The ideological connections between Nazi racial theories and certain strains of American progressive thought reveal uncomfortable historical parallels. Nazi legal scholars explicitly studied and borrowed from American race laws when drafting the infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935. During a crucial meeting to determine the content of these laws, Nazi officials repeatedly turned to American legal precedents for guidance. As legal scholar James Whitman documented in his research, the Nazis found particularly useful models in American anti-miscegenation laws, segregation policies, and immigration restrictions. The Nazis admired America's legal framework for maintaining racial hierarchies, especially those implemented in Democratic-controlled states. Heinrich Krieger, a German lawyer who had studied at the University of Arkansas, became a key resource for Nazi lawmakers because of his expertise in American race law. The "one drop rule" that classified anyone with any discernible Black ancestry as Black was considered too extreme even by some Nazi officials, who called it inhumanely rigid. Yet this was standard practice in Democratic-controlled Southern states. Nazi publications regularly praised American racial policies. The official Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter frequently reported on segregated facilities, voting restrictions for Blacks, and especially lynching, which they celebrated as a method of protecting white women from "unrestrained black desire." Nazi racial theorists viewed these American practices as validation for their own racial policies. When international criticism of Nazi anti-Semitism increased, Nazi officials would counter by pointing to American racial practices, asking why the world remained silent about America's treatment of Blacks. Progressive intellectuals played a crucial role in developing the scientific racism that informed both American and Nazi racial policies. Eugenicists like Madison Grant, whose book "The Passing of the Great Race" Hitler called his "Bible," provided supposed scientific justification for racial hierarchies. The Immigration Act of 1924, championed by progressives to preserve "Nordic" racial stock by restricting immigration from southern and eastern Europe, later served as a model for Nazi population policies. Hitler specifically praised this law in Mein Kampf as an example of how a nation could preserve its racial composition through legislation. Democratic politicians in the South maintained systems of segregation and discrimination that closely paralleled Nazi racial laws, while progressive intellectuals provided the theoretical justification for these policies. The Nazi regime merely systematized and intensified racial theories and practices that had already gained acceptance in progressive circles. This shared ideological foundation challenges the conventional narrative that places Nazism and progressive racial thinking at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Chapter 3: Mussolini's Socialist Roots and Progressive Admiration

Benito Mussolini, far from being an anomaly who abandoned socialism for fascism, represents a logical development within socialist thought. His journey began as a prominent Marxist intellectual and activist. By 1912, at age 29, he had become editor of Avanti!, the official newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party, and was widely recognized as one of Italy's leading socialist voices. This background is crucial to understanding fascism not as a right-wing deviation but as a variant of socialism that emerged from internal socialist debates. The crisis within Marxism that led to fascism centered on the failure of Marx's predictions. By the early 20th century, workers in advanced capitalist countries were becoming more prosperous rather than more impoverished, and showed little revolutionary inclination. This contradiction forced socialists to revise their theories. Some, like Lenin, adapted Marxism by arguing that revolution would come from professional revolutionaries rather than spontaneous working-class action. Mussolini took a different approach, recognizing through his observations during World War I that workers responded more powerfully to national appeals than to class solidarity. Drawing on theories from Georges Sorel and the revolutionary syndicalists, Mussolini developed fascism as an alternative path to socialist goals. While maintaining the socialist critique of capitalism and commitment to a state-directed economy, he replaced class struggle with national unity as the mobilizing principle. As Mussolini explained it, "We have become, and will remain, a nation of producers." This fascist synthesis retained socialism's economic program while adding the new element of the state as the executive arm charged with defining and carrying out the overall good of the nation. American progressives responded enthusiastically to Mussolini's experiment. Distinguished journalists like Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens returned from Italy effusive with praise. The New Republic, under Herbert Croly, celebrated Mussolini for "arousing in a whole nation an increased moral energy" and for subordinating citizens "to a deeply-felt common purpose." Progressive economic planning during the 1930s explicitly drew inspiration from the Italian corporate state, with one New Republic editor, George Soule, openly acknowledging, "We are trying out the economics of fascism." The widespread progressive admiration for Mussolini reveals the ideological kinship between fascism and American progressivism. Both movements sought to subordinate individual rights to collective goals, centralize economic planning under state direction, and mobilize society toward what they considered the common good. Understanding Mussolini's socialist origins and the enthusiastic American progressive response to his regime undermines the conventional narrative that places fascism on the right and progressivism on the left of the political spectrum.

Chapter 4: FDR, Wilson, and American Proto-Fascism

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson implemented policies that significantly paralleled fascist governance, though this uncomfortable truth has been systematically obscured in progressive historical accounts. Wilson, America's first proto-fascist president, drew his governmental model from Bismarck's Prussia and Hegelian philosophy that exalted the all-powerful state. Unlike any previous American president, Wilson openly ridiculed the founders' ideas about individual rights, decentralized power, and checks and balances as simpleminded and outdated. During World War I, Wilson created a propaganda ministry that became a forerunner to similar ministries later created by Mussolini and Hitler. Wilson's government encouraged children to spy on their parents and neighbors to report on fellow citizens, while vigilantes were permitted to threaten and beat up ideological nonconformists. In Wilson's words, "conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty." This illiberal sentiment perfectly captures the fascist mindset. Wilson's administration arrested tens of thousands of Americans for criticizing the government, suppressing civil liberties more thoroughly than Mussolini did during the 1920s. FDR advanced Wilson's proto-fascism into something closer to full-blown fascism. Upon taking office during the Great Depression, FDR implemented the National Recovery Act (NRA), which empowered the federal government to establish coalitions of labor and management in every industry to set production targets, wages, prices, and working hours. The NRA was widely recognized across the political spectrum as a fascist project. The progressive writer Roger Shaw stated in North American Review that the NRA was "plainly an American adaptation of the Italian corporate state." Mussolini himself, upon hearing of the NRA, offered a single telling comment: "Ecco un ditatore!" (Behold a dictator!) The mutual admiration between fascist regimes and the Roosevelt administration was substantial. Mussolini reviewed FDR's book Looking Forward and noted that it was "reminiscent of fascism" in its interventionist economics. The Nazi press also praised FDR, with the Völkischer Beobachter noting in a 1934 article that Roosevelt's "adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies" showed his kinship with Hitler's approach. Hitler himself told a correspondent for the New York Times that he viewed FDR traveling down the same path as himself, saying: "I have sympathy for Mr. Roosevelt because he marches straight toward his objectives over Congress, lobbies and bureaucracy." When the Supreme Court struck down key elements of the New Deal as unconstitutional, FDR responded with his infamous court-packing scheme—threatening to increase the number of justices to gain a compliant majority. This contempt for constitutional checks and balances perfectly exemplifies the fascist disdain for limitations on centralized power. While FDR never achieved the absolute power of European fascist leaders, this was not for lack of trying but rather because America's constitutional system prevented this dangerous man from bringing full-scale fascism to America.

Chapter 5: Intimidation Tactics: From Brownshirts to Modern Left

The tactical parallels between Nazi brownshirts and modern leftist protest movements reveal disturbing similarities in their approaches to political intimidation. The brownshirts, or Sturmabteilung (SA), were Nazi Party paramilitaries who disrupted political meetings of opponents, engaged in street violence, and created an atmosphere of intimidation that helped Hitler's rise to power. Their primary function was to silence opposition through physical force rather than reasoned debate—a strategy now increasingly visible in contemporary leftist activism. In 1920s Germany, the brownshirts would arrive at political events held by opponents, typically in beer halls, armed with bats and sticks. They would disrupt speakers, shout down opposition, and engage in physical confrontations. Hitler boasted in Mein Kampf that while his opponents might outnumber his supporters, the brownshirts' willingness to use violence gave them an advantage. This approach finds modern parallels in campus disruptions where conservative speakers are prevented from speaking through coordinated protests, physical blockades, and sometimes outright violence. The philosophical justification for this intimidation comes from Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse, whose 1965 essay "Repressive Tolerance" provides the intellectual foundation for modern leftist intolerance. Marcuse argued that "liberating tolerance" means "intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left." He explicitly called for the "withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements" that opposed progressive policies. This framework justifies suppressing opposing viewpoints not as censorship but as necessary resistance against oppression. Contemporary incidents reflect this intellectual heritage. When conservative speakers attempt to give presentations at universities, they frequently face coordinated disruptions. At Middlebury College in 2017, political scientist Charles Murray was prevented from speaking by hundreds of protesters who shouted him down and later physically confronted him, injuring a faculty member in the process. At Berkeley, similar tactics prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking, as masked protesters engaged in property destruction and violence that forced the cancellation of the event. Social media has become another arena for this intimidation, with organized campaigns to "doxx" opponents (revealing personal information), pressure employers to fire those with dissenting views, and create professional and personal consequences for ideological non-conformity. This approach mirrors the Nazi strategy of making opposition so personally costly that many choose silence over facing the consequences of dissent. As with the brownshirts, the goal is not to win arguments but to ensure that certain arguments cannot be made at all. The modern Left's intimidation tactics reveal the fundamentally illiberal nature of contemporary progressivism. By abandoning the classical liberal commitment to free speech and open debate in favor of forceful suppression of dissent, today's progressive movement employs methods that would be immediately recognizable to the original fascists and Nazis, who similarly believed that some viewpoints were too dangerous to be permitted in the public square.

Chapter 6: Eugenics: The Left's Ongoing Nazi-Inspired Project

The eugenic impulse that motivated Nazi atrocities not only originated in progressive American thought but continues in modified form in today's progressive movements. American progressives pioneered eugenic policies decades before the Nazis came to power, implementing forced sterilization programs targeting those deemed "unfit" to reproduce. Between 1907 and the 1930s, more than 65,000 Americans were sterilized against their will under laws championed by progressive eugenicists who sought to improve what they termed the American "genetic stock." Nazi eugenicists explicitly acknowledged their debt to American precedents. When implementing their 1933 Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases, which mandated sterilization of the "unfit," Nazi officials cited American eugenic laws as their model. German eugenicist Dr. Eugen Fischer praised American leadership in the field, stating that the U.S. had "already accomplished" what Germany was just beginning. Hitler himself wrote admiringly in Mein Kampf about American eugenic laws, noting he had "studied with great interest" these policies that prevented reproduction by people whose offspring would be "of no value or be injurious to the racial stock." Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and progressive heroine, was deeply involved in the eugenic movement. In a 1932 article titled "My Way to Peace," Sanger proposed that "the whole dysgenic population would have their choice of segregation or sterilization," and called for a "stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted." In a 1934 article, she advocated that "no woman shall have the legal right to bear a child without a permit for parenthood." Sanger established special projects targeting African American communities, writing to a colleague that "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population." While the language has changed, the eugenic impulse persists in progressive abortion advocacy that targets minority communities. Abortion disproportionately reduces minority populations, particularly African Americans, who account for approximately 38% of all abortions despite making up only about 13% of the population. This racial disparity fulfills Sanger's original vision of reducing fertility among those she considered "unfit." The Left's transition from openly advocating eugenics to framing the same policies as "reproductive rights" represents a tactical shift rather than an ideological one. Eugenics also continues in the growing acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide, which increasingly target not just the terminally ill but also the disabled, mentally ill, and elderly. In countries with established euthanasia programs, the criteria for eligibility have steadily expanded beyond terminal illness to include psychological suffering and, in some cases, simple old age. This mirrors the Nazi progression from sterilizing the "unfit" to eventually euthanizing them as "life unworthy of life." The progressive movement has never fully repudiated its eugenic roots, instead repackaging these ideas in more palatable terms while continuing to advance policies that achieve similar ends. Understanding this continuity helps explain why today's progressives maintain such fierce devotion to abortion access and increasingly to euthanasia—both are modern manifestations of the eugenic vision that seeks to improve humanity by eliminating those deemed undesirable.

Chapter 7: Breaking the Gleichschaltung: Fighting Modern Fascism

The Nazi concept of Gleichschaltung—the process of bringing all aspects of society into ideological conformity—provides a powerful framework for understanding the Left's dominance of cultural institutions. In Nazi Germany, this meant coordinating universities, media, arts, and civic organizations to promote Nazi ideology and exclude dissenting voices. Today's progressive movement has achieved something similar through its control of academia, mainstream media, and entertainment industries, creating what amounts to a state-within-a-state that enforces ideological conformity. This progressive Gleichschaltung operates through several mechanisms. In universities, faculty hiring decisions and tenure processes heavily favor progressive viewpoints while systematically excluding conservatives. A recent report by the Oregon Association of Scholars documented how diversity statements have become tools to screen out faculty with non-progressive views. In media, editorial decisions about what constitutes "news" and how stories are framed reflect progressive assumptions, with alternative perspectives relegated to "conservative media" that reaches a fraction of the audience. Hollywood similarly enforces progressive orthodoxy, with conservative actors like Tim Allen reporting that they "get beat up" for expressing non-progressive views. Combating this cultural monopoly requires a multi-faceted approach. First, conservatives must decode progressive media messages, recognizing that facts are often being spun to serve a progressive narrative. This intellectual independence enables resistance to manipulation. Second, alternative institutions and platforms must be developed and supported. Online universities, independent media, and entertainment companies that allow for viewpoint diversity can break the progressive monopoly on information. Legal and political measures are also essential. When state universities ban conservative speakers, Republican lawmakers should move quickly to cut off their funding. Federal support for explicitly progressive cultural institutions like National Public Radio should be eliminated. Most importantly, the violent tactics of progressive street activists must be met with legal consequences. When protests cross into property destruction, assault, or intimidation, prosecutions with serious penalties are necessary to restore respect for the rule of law. The ultimate goal is not to create a conservative version of Gleichschaltung but to restore genuine intellectual diversity and freedom of thought. Unlike the fascists who sought to impose a single worldview, the fight against modern fascism aims to create space for multiple perspectives. This requires courage to stand against intimidation, creativity to build alternative institutions, and commitment to classical liberal principles of free speech and open inquiry. Victory in this struggle requires understanding what we face. The fascist tactics of the progressive Left cannot be defeated through normal political engagement because they operate outside the boundaries of democratic norms. Just as Mussolini and Hitler could have been stopped before they consolidated power, today's progressive fascism can be defeated—but only if we recognize its nature and respond with appropriate determination and strategy.

Summary

The core insight that emerges from this exploration is that fascism, far from being a right-wing phenomenon, originated as a variant of socialism and shares fundamental characteristics with modern progressivism. Both ideologies subordinate individual rights to collective goals, centralize economic power under state control, and enforce ideological conformity through intimidation. The Left's success in portraying fascism as right-wing represents perhaps the most consequential political deception of the past century—a big lie that has effectively concealed progressivism's intellectual and tactical kinship with the very movements it claims to oppose. This understanding transforms our perspective on contemporary political divisions. What presents itself as anti-fascist resistance often employs classically fascist methods: silencing opposition, centralizing power, and mobilizing street activists to intimidate dissent. Recognizing these parallels does not require equating today's progressives with the genocidal regimes of the 20th century, but it does demand acknowledgment that the philosophical foundations and tactical approaches share disturbing similarities. For those committed to preserving individual liberty, limited government, and genuine tolerance, this recognition serves as both warning and call to action—the first step toward breaking the progressive Gleichschaltung that increasingly dominates American cultural and political life.

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Dinesh D'Souza

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