Skewing the Overton Window
22nd August 2025
Fascism remains the bogeyman of modern Western political culture. As historian Stanley G. Payne observes, “No major modern political phenomenon has been so thoroughly discredited and obliterated as European fascism was in the 1940s. Yet the f-word was never buried, for it had achieved a demonic status like no other, making it very useful in partisan polemics.” To label someone a fascist is to disqualify them from civil discourse entirely.
Despite its comparable—or in some respects greater—destructiveness, communism is rarely invoked with the same moral urgency. Given that fascism and communism represent the most extreme manifestations of Right and Left respectively, and that both left deep scars on the European continent, it is unsurprising that many politicians and intellectuals retain historical or nostalgic affiliations with one or the other. Such sentiments rarely carry serious implications for contemporary politics. Apologists for communism are unlikely to advocate reopening the gulags, nor do fascist nostalgists intend to implement racial laws against Jews.
The party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Fratelli d’Italia, is often described as “post-fascist.” Similarly, coverage of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale often highlights the fact that among the party’s founders was former Waffen-SS member Pierre Bousquet. Yet how often have you heard that Meloni’s principal rival, the Democratic Party, traces its lineage back to the Italian Communist Party, which was once faithful to Stalin? How frequently is it mentioned that French President Emmanuel Macron has cooperated with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a man with a Trotskyist past? Mélenchon’s coalition contains a variety of explicitly communist parties, yet this causes no scandal.