During ancient times, the Heralds would announce truces or deliver messages during ceasefires.

These Ceasefire Moments are messages meant to spark consideration. Inspire further investigation into the topic. Starting Points for digging in for more information.

When you hear the Herald's Message, don't respond with an immediate need to prove your original position. Take time to consider what is being offered. What can you learn from it even if you still do not agree.

Hearing the term Fascist and Fascism a lot right now. Let's take a look at the term Fascism.

It might surprise some to learn this term didn't even exist prior to the 1900s. My how things can change in a matter of 120 some years?

People who know what fascism original meant are over 85 - that is less than 2% of the worlds population.

1930s

The original definition is found in Benito Mussolini's writings from the 1930s:

• Nation over individual: prioritizing the nation, collective duty over the individual
• Self-Sacrifice: active engagement in building a higher spiritual life through self-sacrifice.
• Prioritizing national unity, sovereignty, or independence: emphasizing devotion to the interests, culture, or identity of a specific nation, promoting a centralized state under a single leader to restore national glory
• Strong centralized control: limited political freedoms, and the expectation of obedience to authority emphasizing state unity
• Military structure and values: strict, hierarchical system of order and obedience
• Rejection of:
  • Socialist ideologies: policies, or movements that advocated for collective or state control of resources, production, or wealth distribution
  • Materialism: the focus on economic, physical, or utilitarian concerns (often associated with liberalism, capitalism, or Marxism)—in favor of a spiritual conception, which emphasizes idealistic, non-material values
  • Representative government: with liberal principles, emphasizing individual rights, constitutional governance, and limited state power. It was characterized by free elections, rule of law, protection of civil liberties (e.g., freedom of speech, press, and assembly), and a commitment to pluralism, allowing diverse political and social views to coexist.
  • Individualism

WWII

Let's look at the definition most American's were taught because of the changes being brought at the onset of World War II. These people would be around 83+ and make up about 2.1% of the population.

Building up to and during WWII, it's definition was closely associated with Naxism at the time carrying the meaning of.

• Intense nation over individual: devotion to the nation-state,
• Prioritizing national unity: prioritizing its interests, identity, and supremacy above all else, often at the expense of individual rights, other nations, or minorities
• Aggressive expansionism: racial or cultural supremacy
• **Total centralized control: state control over society, including media, education, and the economy

Post WWII

After WWII, it was used more broadly to describe any authoritarian, nationalist government, and the wonderful scholars of the time decided it meant:

• Intense devotion to the nation-state: prioritizing its interests, identity, and supremacy above all else, often at the expense of individual rights, other nations, or minorities
• Centralized state power: revolutionary messaging, massing mobilization through propaganda and spectacle
• Rejection of:
  • Representative governance: rooted in individual liberties, rule of law, and constitutional checks, individualism, and free-market capitalism
  • Communism classes: abolition of private property, and internationalist revolutionary goals

1990s

In the 1990s, the definition was re-shaped as a radical nationalist ideology by historians and political theorists. They warned of the overuse of the word to describe non-fascist authoritarianism or populism (how ironic given today):

• Intense devotion to the nation-state: prioritizing its interests, identity, and supremacy above all else, often at the expense of individual rights, other nations, or minorities,
• Subordination of Individual rights to the group: the rights, freedoms, or interests of individuals being made secondary to those of the group.
• Populist appeal: a strategy of mobilizing support by presenting itself as a movement focused on the interests of "the people" against perceived elites, outsiders, or businesses and institutions
• Rejection of:
  • Representative governance: rooted in individual liberties, rule of law, and constitutional checks, individualism, and free-market capitalism
  • Socialist ideologies: policies, or movements that advocated for collective or state control of resources, production, or wealth distribution

Late 2000s

Welcome now to the years in the late 2000s where fascism is now defined as:

• Far-right: typically more associated with non-party extremist groups. However the Republican Party has increasingly been associated with far-right elements.
• Prioritizing national unity: prioritizing its interests, identity, and supremacy above all else, often at the expense of individual rights, other nations, or minorities ideology
• Centralized control: concentration of power in a single leader, party, or state apparatus
• Suppression of dissent: control over opinions, information, and media
• Promotion of myths: shaping how a nation perceives itself and its values with oversimplifying or distorting reality and history.
• Rejection of:
  • The Governed Consent: political power derived from the citizens who choose representatives and policies
  • Governance through elected officials: officials in institutional assemblies, balancing majority rule with protections for minority rights
  • Individual freedoms: Speech, press, assembly, and rule of law, enshrined in the Constitution and legal frameworks
  • Tolerance of political views: allowing competition and debate within a structured system.
  • Checks and balances: independent judiciaries, separation of powers to prevent abuse of power and ensure leaders answer to the citizens

If by reading through this, you only see one of the parties operating in pieces and parts of these definitions, you have a blind spot.

If you see neither party operating in pieces and parts of these definitions, you have a blind spot.

If you don't see YOUR party operating in pieces and parts of these definitions, you have a blind spot.

Ponder ... Regarding fascism in TODAY's United States:

• Am I too quick to label someone a "fascist" because they don't agree with me?
• Am I labeling people a "fascist" because I happen to be in the minority group?
• Would I recognize a true "fascist" if they agreed with my beliefs?
• Can giving citizens more freedoms result in a fascist society?
• How many restrictions on citizens does it take to end up in a fascist society?
• Using history, what are the one or two key freedom(s) which are typically taken first by those history has labeled fascists?
• What makes fascists leaders so bad for a country?
• Would it be possible for me to govern a society, and never be thought of as a fascist?

God a Fascist?

Reading through these definition - it sounds a lot like the movement Yah/God had going on in the Bible with Abraham, Moses, the Hebrews, etc doesn't it?

• Prioritizing national unity: prioritizing its interests, identity, and supremacy above all else, often at the expense of individual rights, other nations, or minorities ideology
  • Deuteronomy 7:1-6
  • Joshua 7:10-26
• Centralized control: concentration of power in a single leader, party, or state apparatus
  • Numbers 16:1-35
  • Exodus 20:3
• Suppression of dissent: control over society, including media
  • Numbers 16:1-35
  • Numbers 12:10-15
    Scriptures Referenced

Now, go consider what you heard in the Herald's Message.