I need to talk about something that has been gnawing at me in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The left has been so thoroughly conditioned to slap the label “fascist” on anyone who dares disagree with them that the word itself has been drained of meaning. What’s worse is that most of these people have no clue what fascism actually is, yet they’ve managed to gaslight the public into believing it’s a right-wing ideology.

And now, in the wake of a horrific political assassination, the poison of that lie is on full display. We’ve already learned that the shooter had “anti-fascist” messaging scrawled onto his ammunition, and predictably, many on the left have responded not with outrage over a man’s murder but with smug satisfaction, accusing Kirk of being a fascist himself. It’s vile, it’s dishonest, and it’s exactly the kind of rhetorical rot that’s been eating away at our political discourse for years.

And we need to talk about what fascism really is, because the same people that called President Trump, Charlie Kirk, and pretty much everyone else on the right a “fascist” have no idea what fascism really is.

In a recent PragerU video, Dinesh D’Souza lays out the truth that the left doesn’t want you to know: fascism and Nazism were left-wing movements.

“The big lie is the transposition in the meaning of fascism and Nazism,” D’Souza says. And he doesn’t stop there: “The original fascism was, um, a phenomenon of the political left.” This isn’t just a semantic argument—it’s a reminder that the historical record paints a very different picture than the one Hollywood and academia have sold us.

The key is the economic agenda. Fascists and Nazis weren’t defenders of free markets—they were socialists through and through. “It was anti-capitalist, it was explicitly socialist, and hence the name Nazi, which is essentially a compression of National Socialism.”

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D’Souza points to the Nazis’ 25-point platform as proof: “And their platform, if you read it, it’s very clear. It’s state control of the banks, state control of industry, state control of education, state control of the churches, state control of the media.” Taken together, it looks nothing like a conservative agenda and everything like what we see from the modern left. “Does this sound more like Donald Trump or does it sound more like, let’s say, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders?” he asks. “It sounds exactly like Bernie Sanders. It’s the left-wing agenda.”

But after World War II, D’Souza explains, the left had to cover its tracks.

With fascism and Nazism discredited, leftist intellectuals realized their own ideas bore uncomfortable similarities to fascism.

“The progressive intellectuals who dominated American academia…realized that their own views were suspiciously close to those of Mussolini and not all that far from those of Hitler.” The solution was a massive rebranding, where, as D’Souza puts it, they “redefined fascism” away from economics and toward militarism and nationalism.

D’Souza is unflinching in pointing out how absurd the modern definition has become. Militaries exist everywhere. Nationalism is common to people across the political spectrum. “Genghis Khan had a military. Genghis Khan wasn’t a fascist….Gandhi was a nationalist, he wasn’t a fascist, right?” He underscores the stakes: the left has successfully moved fascism from the left column to the right column of the political ledger, enabling the absurdity of calling figures like Benjamin Netanyahu “fascists” with a straight face. “But because this project has been so successful of redefining fascism, that’s the na, that’s the big lie.”

D’Souza’s message is sharp and unflinching: if we want to understand history, we need to be honest about what fascism really was—and stop letting the left rewrite it for their political convenience. The left has done an incredible job of taking a socialist, collectivist movement and convincing millions it was right wing. It’s a reminder that if you want to defend historical truth, you have to go where the facts lead—even if it makes the elites uncomfortable.

And that brings us back to the tragedy we’re living through right now. Charlie Kirk’s assassination wasn’t just the act of a deranged individual—it was the inevitable outcome of years of the left weaponizing the “fascist” label to demonize their political opponents. By redefining fascism as a right-wing phenomenon and attaching it to anyone who dares oppose their agenda, they’ve created a moral license for violence. If you convince people that conservatives are “fascists,” then anything done to silence or eliminate them can be excused as righteous. That’s the poison at work here.

The left’s twisted “fascist” label has poisoned America’s political discourse, culminating in Charlie Kirk’s assassination. PJ Media exposes the lies mainstream media ignores—calling out the left’s dangerous redefinition of fascism. Join PJ Media VIP, use code FIGHT for 60% off, and stand with fearless conservative journalism. Don’t wait, join today.