Fascism and bigotry are the twin engines of the same smoke-belching death machine, each pumping toxins into the other until the whole system roars loud enough to drown out reality. Strip away the slurs, the scapegoats, the dehumanizing spectacle, and the authoritarian machine coughs once and dies. Fascism doesn’t merely use bigotry. It feeds on it. It marinates in it. It survives by convincing a frightened public that salvation requires a villain, and that villain is always weaker, poorer, browner, newer, or simply unlucky enough to lack political protection.
INVENTING ENEMIES BECAUSE THE TRUTH IS TERRIFYING
No fascist movement has ever risen to power without first inventing someone to blame. Not a policy failure. Not a broken system. A group. A cartoon villain drawn from the bones of real people. Bigotry steps in like a well-worn script, offering a clean, simple thesis for a chaotic world: the cause of your suffering is not corruption or inequality or the predations of the powerful. It’s them. Pick a minority, paint them with the broadest possible brush, and you’ve built the seed crystal of fascism.
THE HYPNOTIC POWER OF SIMPLE LIES
Bigotry is the fascist’s cheat code. It compresses complexity into a blunt emotional payload. Nuance dies. Evidence becomes irrelevant. All that matters is the adrenaline hit: those people are the reason your life hurts. The seduction is its simplicity. While real solutions require intellect and sacrifice, bigotry requires only belief. Fascism thrives in that environment because belief is easier to manipulate than thought. Once a society accepts easy lies over difficult truths, the authoritarian door is already cracked open.
DEHUMANIZATION AS A GOVERNING STRATEGY
Fascism cannot operate at full power unless a segment of the population is declared less than human. Bigotry performs the dirty work: stripping a community of individuality, dignity, and moral worth. Once dehumanization takes root, the fascist state can justify anything — surveillance, displacement, imprisonment, violence — while insisting it is acting with noble purpose. Bigotry becomes the moral anesthetic that makes cruelty feel like duty.
LOYALTY THROUGH HATRED
Bigotry binds the in-group together with the emotional intensity of a shared enemy. People do not rally around tax policy or zoning laws; they rally around fear, resentment, and myth. Once hatred becomes a badge of belonging, questioning the movement feels like betraying the tribe. Fascism gains followers not through persuasion but through the narcotic thrill of righteous superiority.
DISTRACTION AS A FORM OF GOVERNMENT
A fascist regime never solves the problems it promises to fix. It just changes the subject. Bigotry is the perfect diversion. Economic collapse? Blame “outsiders.” Infrastructure crumbling? Must be “them.” Institutional corruption? Not the leaders — the marginalized. Bigotry becomes the magician’s flourish that keeps the public staring at the wrong hand while power quietly consolidates in the other.
FEAR AS THE CURRENCY OF CONTROL
People rarely surrender their freedoms willingly. Fear pries their fingers loose. Bigotry creates the threat; fascism weaponizes it. If citizens can be convinced they are under siege by an internal enemy, they will tolerate — even celebrate — repression. Fear becomes the permission slip for authoritarian rule. And once the population is scared enough, the state’s abuse becomes their comfort.
CITIZENS TRANSFORMED INTO ENFORCERS
The most efficient fascist police force is a frightened public. Bigotry trains people to monitor, report, and punish each other. Suddenly the state doesn’t need to expand its security apparatus; the citizens do it for free. A glance, an accent, a rumor becomes evidence. Bigotry dissolves social trust, turning neighbors into informants and communities into surveillance networks. Fascism thrives when the people enforce their own chains.
THE UNRAVELING OF DEMOCRACY
Democracy cannot coexist with bigotry-driven hierarchy. Once a society accepts that some citizens are less deserving of rights, the entire democratic framework collapses. Voting rights, due process, equal protection — all become conditional goods. Fascism steps into the vacuum, replacing the idea of shared citizenship with a ranking system based on purity and allegiance. Bigotry is the acid that dissolves the very concept of equality.
THE MUTUAL DEPENDENCE AT THE HEART OF THE SYSTEM
Bigotry gives fascism its emotional engine. Fascism gives bigotry its institutional teeth. One radicalizes hearts; the other radicalizes laws. Together, they metastasize into a form of politics that cannot be reasoned with, because it is not built on thought — it is built on grievance, fear, and the promise of domination.
THE HOLLOW CORE EXPOSED
At its center, fascism is nothing but a void wrapped in violence. It has no vision beyond exclusion, no philosophy beyond hierarchy, no future beyond decay. It is a political system built entirely on who it can crush. Bigotry keeps the machine running — not because it offers answers, but because it prevents people from noticing that fascism has none. Remove the hatred and the whole structure collapses into dust.
This is why fascism needs bigotry.
This is why bigotry becomes fascism’s bloodstream.
And this is why every society that tolerates it ends up staring into the same abyss.
This post has been syndicated from CLOSER TO THE EDGE, where it was published under this address.