These days, fascism is slowly becoming synonymous with corruption; however, the term’s connotations extend beyond that. 

The exact definition of the word, according to Merriam Webster, is a “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader.” More than that, fascism is a form of palingenetic ultranationalism: the perceived need for a “national rebirth.” 

Those of us who have grown up learning about the Holocaust in our classrooms have come to recognize and believe in the ability to dismantle a fascist regime. Our confidence mainly stems from the belief that our awareness of the past will prevent history from repeating itself.

But can we honestly say we have not had similar events to the Holocaust in the past 80 years? 

In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge, a communist group, seized control of Cambodia and began targeting minority religious groups and educated citizens. Convinced that the citizens of Cambodia “had been tainted by exposure to outside ideas,” they implemented “re-education” programs. They murdered those who refused to adhere to the new system in the fields surrounding the commune. 

Ultimately, over a span of four years, the Khmer Rouge killed more than 1.7 million people through overworking, starvation and torture. 

Two decades later, Rwanda faced a similar tragedy, where approximately 800,000 people were killed in 100 days by ethnic Hutu extremists. Lists of government opponents were handed out to militias who murdered them and their families. Throughout Rwanda, neighbors killed neighbors, and some husbands even killed their Tutsi wives.

In both countries, leaders justified the mass violence as a quest for a national rebirth and cultural purification to make the nation great again. With these in mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to confidently argue that history won’t repeat itself. 

Today, those of us who spend a substantial portion of our days on the internet may believe that our widespread access to knowledge from the news and social media will set us apart from those who were oppressed by these systems due to their initial unawareness. After all, with 53% of United States adults, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, reporting that they “at least sometimes” receive news coverage on their social media, ignorance is inexcusable.  

On the other hand, 39% of adults in the U.S. state that they “sometimes or often avoid the news” entirely, as reported by the Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report. 

Furthermore, Jinping Wang, an assistant professor of journalism and communications advertising at the University of Florida, along with a group of researchers, analyzed 35 million Facebook posts between 2017 and 2020 and concluded that 75% of Facebook users repost without reading the entire post.

Essentially, people allow themselves to feel the comfort of having “done something” by spreading the news, yet they fail to acknowledge that collective passive engagement defeats its purpose: exhibition without an audience is meaningless.  

In all fairness, the news is depressing; users are constantly bombarded with videos of forests burning, global warming becoming irreversible, children being murdered, families being broken up and politicians failing society. It’s easy to see why people are trying to disengage from the news, desperately clinging to their own happiness. 

However, we are quickly becoming oblivious to others’ suffering to an extent where people are refusing to acknowledge the proven horrors of the past. Some of the comments under a video of someone showing the concentration camps in Auschwitz are “Never happened,” “Did this even happen?” “W Germany” and more.  

Beyond the disrespect to those who actively experienced the Holocaust, with a lot of them still being alive, these comments are truly concerning for our future. 

No matter what invisible country borders may imply, we all live on the same planet; the problems of one nation affect those of another, and misfortune tends to spread. In fact, there is a particular geopolitical theory known as the “domino theory,” which holds that when the political structure of one country experiences changes, the consequences of it tend to spread to neighboring regions in a “domino effect”

Overall, it is true that knowledge and remembrance will be our savior, but only if we choose to acknowledge history actively. 

Here is the information people need presented on a silver platter: When education is targeted, when censorship begins, when the marginalized are targeted and, most of all, when innocent people who have no part in the wars started by the exact political figures that are meant to protect them are harmed — it’s a fascist regime. 

We possess a unique advantage as USC students that many people do not. In the general education classes many of us complain about, arguing that future engineers and doctors have no use for subjects such as political science, we are invited to actively challenge misinformation rather than passively consume it. Yet our privilege means nothing if we disregard it by failing to confront injustice. 

I close with the words of Miriam Margolyes — a BAFTA-winning, British-born actress — to remind us all where our final destination could be, if we continue down a path of disregarding injustice: “Hitler won. He changed us. He made us like him.”