What’s it called when the state owns the company and silences the citizen?

Some words get so overused they stop meaning anything. 

“Fascist” is one of them. 

For years, folks on the Left have hurled it at everything they dislike. From policies they oppose, to people they don’t understand or jokes that land too close to home, it’s all “fascist.” 

Honestly, “ThAt’S fAcIsM” has become a punchline for those of us who actually read history and prefer clear definitions over slogans because it’s all just so ridiculous.

So you have to believe me when I tell you I take no pleasure in what I’m about to say.

But it really is starting to look a lot like fascism.

Last week the White House announced that the federal government is now an owner—about a 10% owner—of Intel. 

This isn’t a one-off bailout because of a financial crisis like we’ve seen in the past (not that that would have made it okay), but an actual equity stake, bought with re-purposed “grant” money, and structured to sit there. 

If you’ve studied economic systems, you know the word for this isn’t socialism (the state owning everything). It’s something older and uglier: the state allowing “private” ownership while putting the company under some type of political control. We call it “corporatism” and it’s what classic definitions of fascism relied on to fuse state power with industry.

This isn’t a one-off, either. 

The administration is apparently floating taking similar stakes in defense contractors like Lockheed and Boeing. They’ll frame it as “financing munitions” and “investing in healthy American companies,” but whatever they call it, it is NOT the free market and it is a definite, dangerous, slippery-slope that we do not want to start the slide down. 

It’s the politicization of the market, and once you normalize it, it spreads.

“Okay, sure, but Connor, aren’t you being a little dramatic here? Fascism also means that the state criminalizes dissent, and jails people for protesting.”

You’re right. Let’s just check in on what else the President did last week…

Oh.

Well, it looks like he signed an executive order to “prosecute” flag desecration “to the fullest extent possible.”

Although he lacks the power, and all the order actually does is direct Pam Bondi to find ways to add extra punishments to people who burn the flag while doing other illegal things, his statements show what he would do if he were King: “You burn a flag, you get one year in jail. You don’t get 10 years, you don’t get one month,” Trump said. “It goes on your record, and you will see flag burning stopping immediately.”

Look, even if you love the flag, loving a symbol of liberty should never outrank the liberty it represents. Moreover, the Supreme Court has been crystal clear—twice—that flag burning as political speech is protected by the First Amendment (Texas v. Johnson in 1989 and U.S. v. Eichman in 1990). 

The federal government can’t just make unpopular speech illegal by executive pen.

And honestly? You shouldn’t want it to.

So here we are. After years of rolling our eyes at how “fascism” had been reduced to meaninglessness by the screeching of the historic and economic illiterate, we’re now forced to concede: government ownership of industry combined with the criminalization of symbolic dissent? 

Yeah, that’s exactly the sort of thing the history books accurately describe as fascist.

And look, I get that this isn’t full-blown, send-people-off-to-camps, fascism. I get that it can, and has, gotten a whole lot worse. But this certainly is not a move toward a freer market or more respect for individual liberty. And it certainly is a move (even if by increments small by comparison) toward fascism.

So best start calling it out for what it is right now before it has the chance to grow into something much bigger and much harder to stop.

This is why we make the Tuttle Twins books, curricula, and TV show—because kids need a mental map for moments like this. 

If your family loves the Tuttle Twins cartoon, you’ve likely noticed how often the themes mirror today’s headlines. Take these examples from Season 3:

• “Cracking Conspiracies” teaches kids why it’s more important to learn how to think, than what to think—it shows how to separate claims from evidence when rumors and official narratives collide. Critical thinking is the antidote to politicized “truth.”
  
  

• “Evil Queens & Spying Screens” talks about digital privacy and manipulation—because power and abuse today doesn’t just exist in the uniformed and jackbooted pawns of the state; it watches from dashboards and phone screens too.
  
  

• “Ruins and Responsibility” shows that freedom and responsibility stand or fall together. When people outsource responsibility to a centralized “savior,” freedom erodes—quietly at first, and then all at once.
  
  

If you want your kids and grandkids to recognize creeping corporatism for what it is (and to love liberty more than slogans) our Season 3 Graphic Novels just launched and they’re the perfect next step. They adapt every episode of our fan-favorite TV show into high-energy, full-color stories your kids and teens will love. 

Grab Tuttle Twins Season 3 Graphic Novels now, and watch what happens around your dinner table in the coming weeks.

Talking about stuff like this at home is one of the simplest ways to inoculate your kids against the “state knows best” reflex and to anchor them in principles that don’t change just because the politics do.

If we’re going to keep liberty from becoming just another word on a bumper sticker, we have to raise young people who can spot the difference between free markets and state-managed markets, between patriotism and compelled reverence, and between truth and power’s narrative.

That starts at home.

— Connor