James Baldwin put it best:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

It begins with the courage to call fascism by its name.

This isn’t hysteria or alarmism, and it’s certainly not an incitement to violence. It’s clarity in the face of real and escalating danger.

We already see the crackdowns on journalists, comedians, teachers. It’s an accelerating event the regime knows exactly how to exploit.

Believe me when I tell you that more accelerating events are coming.

We cannot allow Charlie Kirk’s horrific shooting to be twisted into a reason for self-censorship.

Fascist movements seize on moments like this not to prevent violence, but to weaponize it — to twist it into political advantage, expand repression, punish dissent, and tighten control.

Orwell was right: sanitize the language and you sanitize the mind. Euphemism is how societies sleepwalk into tyranny.

That’s why scholars and historians tell us to be careful, and also to be clear. Avoiding the uncomfortable truth doesn’t make it less real. It just makes it harder to confront.

I get why people recoil from the word. It’s ugly, it sounds extreme.

But you know what’s uglier? Pretending this isn’t happening until it’s too late to stop it.