Stuff Fascists Like

The Playbook

Target a critic abroad → Lean on the relatives still within reach → Make family love carry the penalty → Teach every exile that distance will not protect the people they love

The Playbook

Call the campaign anti-corruption → Extend the state's reach beyond the border → Make exile feel legally fragile → Teach elites that distance will not save them

The Playbook

Commit the original atrocity → Erase the public ritual that remembers it → Recast mourning as subversion → Teach the public to forget on command

The Playbook

Refuse the substance of the question → Smear the reporter instead → Escalate to intimidation → Let fear censor the next question

The Playbook

Let vigilantes terrorize the target → Arrive in uniform after the damage is done → Force the victims out in the name of order → Bank the new reality on the ground

The Playbook

Crush people into custody → Treat protest as a medical problem → Use doctors and courts as cover → Call torture humane management

The Playbook

Use militant loyalists → Rebrand violence as patriotism → Erase the consequences → Invite the next round

The Playbook

Keep the election ritual → Mark dissent as foreign → Block the candidate → Call the managed result democracy

The Playbook

Call reporting a security threat → Hunt the source through the journalist → Raise the cost of scrutiny → Let fear police the press

The Playbook

Call honest history disloyal → Place the state beside the exhibit → Redirect visitors toward approved memory → Turn history into court messaging

The Playbook

Capture the institutions → Jail or exile the opposition → Reduce elections to theater → Abolish the costume

The Playbook

Call outside scrutiny illegitimate → Wrap impunity in sovereignty → Threaten countries that cooperate → Reserve law for weaker states

The Playbook

Treat criticism as a security event → Send agents instead of a rebuttal → Make the visit the punishment → Call intimidation routine enforcement

The Playbook

Brand dissent a security threat → Use exceptional law → Stretch detention into punishment → Call the wait due process

The Playbook

Call elections destabilizing → Extend the ruler's timeline → Move the choice into captured institutions → Call the grab reform

The Playbook

Claim fraud everywhere → Remove convenient voting methods → Add selective friction → Call exclusion integrity

The Playbook

Reduce a person to a case file → Treat procedure as more real than death → Call boilerplate neutrality → Let bureaucracy finish the dehumanization

The Playbook

Invoke foreign interference → Keep the trigger discretionary → Nullify unwelcome outcomes → Call it democratic defense

The Playbook

Lose in court → Turn humiliation into grievance → Send prosecutors after the accuser → Call revenge due process

The Playbook

Detain the dissenter → Force submission into a visible pose → Film the degradation → Brand cruelty as security

The Playbook

Invent an emergency → Feed the loyal contractor → Call it necessity → Turn contracts into court rewards

The Playbook

Jail the dissenter → Use custody as a torture chamber → Punish testimony as a second crime → Make fear speak first

The Playbook

Claim citizens abroad still belong to the regime → Treat foreign protest as domestic disloyalty → Make one dissenter an example → Teach every exile the state still follows

The Playbook

Make status temporary → Call the rollback routine → Turn records into targets → Let removability police behavior

The Playbook

Wrap the ruler in ritual → Convert luxury into legitimacy → Brand criticism as disloyal → Make poverty pay for prestige

The Playbook

Declare an emergency → Fill civilian space with troops → Keep them visible → Make force feel normal

The Playbook

Let coalition politics become drift → Make exhaustion feel like crisis → Offer one serious man as the cure → Call concentration competence

The Playbook

Build spectacle → Pour the bunker underneath → Call fear security → Keep the redoubt

The Playbook

Declare emergency → Delay democracy → Call freedom weakness → Make military rule permanent

The Playbook

Capture military chaplaincy → Pray for violence → Enemy deserves no mercy → Violence becomes sacred

The Playbook

Declare victory → Continue the war → Redefine violence as "mopping up" → Reality reasserts itself — after the cost

The Playbook

Defund civilian agency → Deploy immigration enforcement → Normalize paramilitary presence → The checkpoint is now theirs

The Playbook

Adversary investigates → Leader celebrates their death → Asymmetric rules enforced → Accountability becomes dangerous

The Playbook

Leader's face on currency → Route around the law → Loyalists approve → Leader becomes the state

The Playbook

Delegitimize press → Threaten licenses → Call it treason → Personal liability next

The Playbook

Start a war → Threaten media licenses → Vague standards = self-censorship → State censorship without a single revocation

The Playbook

Dehumanize via propaganda → Use war-crime vocabulary publicly → No consequences → Conduct follows language

The Playbook

Build for "security" → Remove oversight → Redirect toward domestic targets → Make permanent

The Playbook

Name it "Save America" → Restrict the electorate → Elections continue, outcomes predetermined → Call the result "the will of the people"

The Playbook

Extremist dehumanizes minority → Leader criticizes tone, validates premise → Overton window shifts → Incitement follows

The Playbook

Legislative hostage → Restrict the electorate → Admit the goal openly → Elections continue, outcomes predetermined

The Playbook

Oligarchs fund the movement → Movement wins power → Policy rewards the donors → Cycle repeats at greater scale

The Playbook

Sell war on moral grounds → Say quiet part out loud → Face no consequences → Next war easier to sell

The Playbook

Appoint loyalist → Purge professionals → Suppress reality upward → Catastrophic failures arrive too late

The Playbook

Courts return wrong verdicts → Create parallel system → Staff with loyalists → Due process on paper, gone in practice

The Playbook

Manufacture or exploit a pretext → Attack → Demand total submission → Dismiss international condemnation

The Playbook

Bomb first → Demand capitulation → Declare right to choose their leader → Call it liberation

The Playbook

Dehumanize → Criminalize → Escalate → Normalize

The Playbook

Control the story → Capture culture → Purge dissent

The Playbook

Claim history → Frame as defense → Test resolve

The Playbook

Reward loyalists → Signal impunity → Normalize violence

The Playbook

Install enforcer → Hollow institutions → Replace with loyalty