Don’t Use the F-Word: David Ost on Why the Red Pill, Not Fascism, Demystifies the Far Right

“Fascism is the term that is everywhere and nowhere in contemporary political discussions. We can talk about right-wing populism — but the type of politics they share with classic fascism is what I call red pill politics.” — David Ost

Please don’t use the F-word. At least to describe the politics of Trump, Orbán, Meloni, Netanyahu, Modi, Farage et al. Rather than fascism, the best way to demystify far-right populism is via the movie The Matrix through its idea of “red pill” politics.

David Ost’s new book, Red Pill Politics: Demystifying Today’s Far Right, argues that to grasp the threat we need to stop stepping out of the Third Reich and into The Matrix. The red pill, borrowed from the 1999 dystopian classic, has been appropriated by the far right as a metaphor for seeing through the liberal hegemony they claim distorts reality. Popping a red pill himself, Ost argues that while today’s far right shares the essential DNA of classical fascism, it nonetheless operates in a world in which outright dictatorship isn’t viable. Mussolini, Ost warns, didn’t become totalitarian until four years after taking power. Fascism, then, is a process. It takes time. Even dystopias require patience.

The book is also a manifesto for left counter-politics. Yes, Law and Justice in Poland and Orbán in Hungary have both been voted out, Ost acknowledges. But in Poland, he warns, the Tusk government won power in 2023 and then governed timidly, afraid of alienating the center, failing its own base on abortion and LGBT rights, and then losing the presidential election. So the lesson from Eastern Europe is that economic left populism, not liberal caution, is the best antidote to red pill politics. Mamdani not Starmer. Otherwise the F-word will once again become a reality.

Five Takeaways

•       The F-Word Has Become Meaningless: Every application of “fascism” to Trump, Orbán, or Meloni is immediately met with the counter: “Are we killing you? Are we throwing you in jail?” And seemingly the matter is put to rest. Ost’s argument: the f-word has become a conversation-stopper rather than a conversation-starter. It lets the far right off the hook by setting the bar at Nazi-level violence. The actual threat — the delegitimisation of institutions, the treatment of opponents as traitors, the erosion of democratic norms — is already underway, without the gas chambers that the f-word implies.

•       Opponents vs Traitors: The Defining Distinction: In a democracy, you have opponents. You disagree with them, you campaign against them, you try to vote them out. In far-right politics, you have traitors. People who disagree with you are not legitimate participants in a political contest — they are enemies of the nation, people who do not belong, people who are working against the interests of the real people. This distinction — not violence, not the gas chambers, but the redefinition of legitimate opposition as treachery — is Ost’s clearest marker of the transition from normal democratic politics to something else.

•       Mussolini’s Four Years: How Long Before Dictatorship? When Mussolini first came to power, there were still elections. He tried to rig the game — to gerrymander, to use contemporary parlance — and institutionalise his authority. He only turned to outright dictatorship after four years in power. That was a different time. But the pattern — of coming to power through elections and then slowly making it impossible to be removed through elections — is not unique to Italy. Ost argues we may currently be in the equivalent of Mussolini’s first four years in several countries simultaneously.

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