Fascism Doesn’t Find Martyrs. It Makes Them.

In this special episode, Alex argues that fascist and far-right movements deliberately manufacture martyrs by transforming ordinary, often messy deaths into powerful political myths. Through examples ranging from Nazi Germany (Horst Wessel), interwar European fascism (Ion Moța and Vasile Marin), to the contemporary U.S. far right (Ashli Babbitt), it shows how movements strip away context, rewrite biographies, and use ritual, propaganda, and repetition to recast these figures as innocent victims of ideological enemies. This process reverses responsibility for violence, turning aggression into grievance and death into moral justification. Ultimately, the essay contends that fascist martyrdom is not about honoring the dead but about disciplining and mobilizing the living, converting loss into loyalty and myth into political power.