It Was Fascism All Along, by Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis – 6 April 2026

From Liberal Currents

Toby Buckle’s “It Wasn’t Fascism All Along” is exactly the kind of argument worth engaging directly. It is a serious argument that seeks to address a real epistemic problem, which is the impulse to flatten all right-of-center politics into a single undifferentiated mass. There are real differences between the different brands of conservatism in practice, and it matters—not least because we must understand our opponent, so that we may successfully confront and defeat our opponent. And ultimately, we both agree that at this current moment, there is nothing to redeem or to save in the conservative project—fascism has won the argument within the right decisively.

But unfortunately, I just cannot accept his core argument—that distinguishing conservatism from fascism is a more accurate theoretical framework for understanding right-wing politics, and thus, a better framework for opposing it. I deeply and vociferously disagree. While on the surface, they are distinct ideologies, with different forms of praxis, this fundamentally obscures the structural logic that ties the right-wing project together, and we must address this logic to understand what we face, and how we must fight it. Because the distinction is not merely false, it is false in a way that risks repeating the same cycle.

I, the author, am a Black trans woman. This is not merely an autobiographical fact—it informs my experiences, and thus, my analysis. Buckle accurately identifies the hierarchical frameworks involved. But he errs in separating them into discrete ideological boxes; they are in fact different strands of a unified, cohesive ideological project that has aimed at the eradication of people like me for centuries. As such, understanding the exact distinction between conservatism and fascism is critical to understanding what we face, and critical to organizing around that understanding, as opposed to an idealized version of the conservative project that said project has never consistently adhered to.

[READ THE REST]

Except where noted otherwise, original writing and translations produced by the Left Renewal Blog Collective are published under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Republished and translated material remains subject to the licence and terms of its original publication.