The destruction of the freedom of speech in America today is being carried out by the Leftist establishment that dominates the political sphere, the social media giants, the establishment media, the educational system – virtually everything, really. The Left is using the Capitol riot of January 6 as its Reichstag Fire moment to criminalize, silence, and destroy utterly not just President Trump, but all Americans who still dare to oppose its sinister woke totalitarianism. In doing so, Leftists are revealing themselves, for all their rhetoric about how Trump and his supporters are fascists, to be quintessential fascists themselves.

This fact is all too often waved away by those who insist, quite correctly on one level, “They’re not fascists, they’re Communists.” The National Socialists of Germany strongly identified with Mussolini’s Fascists in Italy, and brawled on the street with the Communists. Hitler made his determination to destroy Communism in Europe a centerpiece of his agenda. So many assume that Leftists today, carrying the banner of Antifa, an organization that was born in 1920s street fights with the National Socialists, could not possibly be fascists.

Yet they can be and they are. Contrary to what many believe, being a Communist and a fascist is not a contradiction in terms, like being a Republican Democrat or an honest journalist. Communists and National Socialists were bitter enemies in Weimar Germany in large part because they were competitors in the same arena: in the late 1920s and early 1930s, they were the two major German parties that wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic and impose authoritarian rule. They just disagreed over who would be in charge.

They disagreed about more than that as well, of course. Marxism is based on total government control of the means of production, whereas the National Socialists, although they flirted with this idea in various ways for years before coming to power, allowed for private enterprise. However, this, too, was not as large a gap between the two as many people assume it to be. Hitler biographer Peter Longerich notes that “six months after the ‘seizure of power’ with its various upheavals, Hitler had reached a deal with German business, according to which their authority within their enterprises was increased in return for an agreement to submit to overall direction by the state.” The means of production were still privately owned, but they were wholly under the control of the National Socialist state.

This deal between Hitler and the German business titans was one of the principal reasons why his regime is called “fascist” at all. The word “fascist” comes from the Latin fasces, “bundles,” usually bundles of wooden rods. It might seem at first glance to be an odd name for a political movement, but the idea was that the disparate forces in society were bundled together in a unity of purpose and allegiance. Thus for the ancient Romans the fasces were a symbol of governmental authority, and from that Mussolini took the name of his movement. In ensuring that private businesses could remain private but had to work for the good of the state as a whole and under direction of the National Socialist government, Hitler was bundling together the titans of business, unifying them in service to his agenda.

So it is today. The social media giants and the Leftist government elites, the swamp that has reasserted its hegemony by installing Old Joe in the White House, are working in lockstep. The government doesn’t own the social media outlets, and it doesn’t have to: whether Big Tech is submitting to overall direction by the state or the state is submitting to overall direction by Big Tech, the outcome is the same: every major force in American society is marching in the same direction, while dissenters are stigmatized, demonized, framed for crimes they didn’t commit, silenced, and isolated.

Thus what we are seeing in the last few days, with the banning of the president of the United States from the main means of communication today, and the unity of purpose between the media, Big Tech, and the Democratic Party in propagating the Big Lie that Trump incited violence and attempted a coup on January 6, is fascism in action. And if the fascists aren’t stopped soon, what we have already seen will be just the beginning.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.