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Red Hats, Red Flags: The Authoritarian Creep You Can Spot From Your Front Porch

How fascism sneaks into your town hall — while pretending to care about kids

4 min readApr 16, 2025
Photo by Madison Oren on Unsplash

Red Hats, Red Flags: The Authoritarian Creep You Can Spot From Your Front Porch

Remember when local school board meetings were about vending machines or if the PTA had enough cupcakes for the bake sale?

Feels like a different planet now. These days, you’re more likely to sit next to someone decked out in a “1776 Restoration” hoodie, railing about drag queens, “CRT” (which they still can’t explain), and demanding to yank The Diary of Anne Frank off shelves because it might make kids “uncomfortable.”

Yeah — welcome to the suburban stage of authoritarianism. And spoiler alert: they’re not here for neighborhood unity.

Here’s how creeping fascism shows up in your community — not with tanks, but through library policies, school curriculums, and budget meetings. It’s not dramatic — it’s deliberate.

1. Book Bans in a “Parental Rights” Costume

It always starts with “protecting the kids.” Sounds noble, right? But scratch the surface, and you’ll see it’s really…

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Libby Winkler
Libby Winkler

Written by Libby Winkler

Freelance writer who loves exploring the messiness of humanity, while poking around in nooks of life and shining light on all the things that make us complex..

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