Tea at Trianon: “FASCIST? PLEASE.”

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, November 2, 2025

“FASCIST? PLEASE.”

From Direct Line News:

“Fascism.” It’s the Left’s favorite seasoning. Sprinkle it on every Republican and—bam!—instant moral superiority.
They’ve been doing it for decades. When Ronald Reagan rebuilt the economy and defeated the Soviet Union, The Nation called him “authoritarian” and “proto-fascist.” ¹ When Richard Nixon talked about “law and order,” liberals screamed “Nazi tactics.” ² And when George W. Bush toppled Saddam Hussein, MoveOn.org and Michael Moore ran ads comparing him to Hitler. ³
See a pattern? Every GOP president since Eisenhower has been declared “literally Hitler” by someone with a blue check mark. If Trump’s a fascist, he’s in a long line of “fascists” who somehow keep leaving office peacefully after elections.
But let’s look at the facts. Did Donald Trump ever shut down protests? Nope. The “No Kings” rallies went on—megaphones, papier-mâché effigies, and a soundtrack of bad folk music. ⁴ Nobody got rounded up.
Did he jail people for memes? Not unless you count hurt feelings on X. Half the internet spent four years making him the punchline.
Did he order arrests of political enemies—Democrat governors, senators, or House members who fought him tooth and nail? No. They went on MSNBC nightly and called him every name in the book. CNN’s profits depended on him. He didn’t silence them—he made them rich.
Now, let’s talk about real authoritarianism.
Back in 2012, after the Benghazi attack that killed our ambassador, Barack Obama’s administration blamed a low-budget YouTube video. The filmmaker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was arrested and paraded as the culprit. ⁵ That wasn’t protecting democracy; that was finding a scapegoat.
Fast-forward to Joe Biden’s America. When the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020, Big Tech acted as if it were guarding state secrets. Twitter and Facebook froze the story faster than you can say “algorithm.” ⁶ The FBI whispered “Russian disinformation,” and Silicon Valley’s billionaires saluted. ⁷
Even The Post itself—the oldest daily newspaper in America—was locked out of its account for reporting facts that later turned out to be true. ⁸ That’s not democracy in action; that’s information control in a cardigan.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris flat-out called Trump “a fascist” on The Breakfast Club, ⁹ and Joy Behar declared him “a fascist pig” on The View. ¹⁰ Apparently, fascism now means disagreeing with progressive orthodoxy while still letting your opponents dominate prime-time television. (Read more.)