Come here ’til I kill ya!
Who’ hasn’t been threatened with death by their own loving and giving Irish ma at least a hundred times when she was on her last nerve and you were acting the maggot?
We all know she didn’t mean it. However scary she can be, she’s not a fascist.
She was never in the business of trying to establish a political regime where her word is law and everyone who disagrees is silenced or eliminated.
It nearly goes without saying that yes, in an ideal world, your ma would love it a lot if you were rarely to be seen and hardly heard. She could have seen you far enough on many’s an occasion.
But she just doesn’t have it in her little green heart to continuously dole out the level of cruelty required to maintain that kind of a regimen. Anyway, when hardy comes to hardy, she wants you to be yourself! Out there in the world. Maybe just not in here. On the clean floor.
And here’s another thing: fascism doesn’t only come marching in jackboots at rallies or making flag waving political speeches.
It creeps into your home. It’s right there on your phone every day.
Look at your news feed: genocide in a faraway country, and we scroll past it like it’s yesterday’s weather.
Crippling energy prices that make heating your house feel like a luxury. Did you know that in Ireland, energy costs have surged by over 40% in just a few years?
Rising food prices that make a weekly shop feel like highway robbery.
Street crime up, white-collar crime ignored. Whatever happened to all that shite PPE somebody got paid millions for?
Ordinary people buried in bills. The A&E fit to bust and hospital waiting lists stretching so long you could write a novel while you wait.
Every day we’re hit with one more crisis, one more grim headline, and the more it piles up, the more we feel too small to change anything.
Fascism slips in under cover of all this stuff, creating your concerns then countering them with the empty rhetoric of strength, stability, and tradition, while it picks your pocket and points the blame towards anyone it can other.
The cost? It’s astronomical. Not just in moral bankruptcy or human suffering but in the everyday fabric of our lives.
It erodes from the inside out, and by the time you notice, it’s usually too late.
Healthcare. Education. Business. Industry. Culture. Government.
The military-industrial complex.
Healthcare: From Care to Control
In a fascist state, healthcare morphs from a human right to a tool of control.
Who gets care – and what kind – depends not on need but on allegiance.
Watch as public health budgets are siphoned into militarisation, leaving hospitals barren and patients helpless.
The most vulnerable become burdens – mental illness is framed as a moral failing, preventative care as wasteful.
Health becomes a privilege, not a right.
Education: Rewriting the Narrative
Fascism doesn’t just skew history. It rebrands it. Schools become factories of obedience rather than critical thought. Arts and philosophy are replaced with patriotism. History is rewritten to scrub out resistance. When education becomes indoctrination, you lose a generation to hollow nationalism.
Business and Industry: Profit Through Oppression
Fascism and big business go hand in hand—so long as they’re loyal. Monopolies thrive, innovation stalls, and workers become replaceable cogs. The state rewards companies that toe the line while crushing small businesses and unions. The rich get richer, while the rest are left to fight for scraps.
Culture: A Sanitised, Uniform Lie
Fascism fears culture because culture fuels resistance. The arts are purged of dissenting voices, replaced with propaganda disguised as tradition. Creativity is seen as subversive. Soon enough, people forget art could ever mean anything more than conformity.
Government: Absolute Power Corrupts
All power centralises under the guise of “order.” Civil liberties become weaknesses. Privacy is a threat. Laws evolve to punish thought rather than crime, and elections become farces. The justice system doesn’t seek truth; it protects the regime.
Military-Industrial Complex
Perpetual War for Profit
War becomes a necessity, a way to channel discontent outward. Soldiers enforce oppression, not defence. War profiteers thrive while the public foots the bill – in taxes, lives and lost futures.
Fascism, though. That’s a whole different beast.
It’s calculated, deliberate, and aimed at controlling people through fear.
What We Lose
Fascism is seductive because it promises strength and stability. But it’s a siren song. We lose the messiness of democracy, the freedom to disagree, and the vibrancy of diverse thought.
We lose our neighbours because fascism makes enemies of difference. We lose our culture, because uniformity is easier to control.
But most of all, we lose our humanity. Fascism thrives on fear of the other, of change, of freedom itself. And once entrenched, it costs more to uproot than we ever imagined.
Why We Must Care
It’s not just history. It’s healthcare, education, business, culture, government, and military – the interconnected web that makes up our lives.
Fascism doesn’t just destroy nations; it destroys communities, families, and futures. We must not only resist it but build a world where it cannot take root.
In 2025, when the world feels brittle and our institutions are stretched thin, remember: The cost of complacency is the death of freedom.
Fascism doesn’t start with stormtroopers in the streets. It starts when we let fear guide us, when we believe the lies that ‘real people’ are a certain way, and when we forget that democracy is messy, diverse and beautifully chaotic. Because it’s worth it.
Domesticky 
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