The Boy Who Cried Fascist — A Rebuttal
By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com
Evelyn Quartz’s essay The Consultants Who Cried Democracy is sharp, well-written, and almost brave — until the very moment it blinks.
She’s right about much of what she describes: the “consultant class” that monetized moral panic, the pundits who built careers on warning that Trump was about to end democracy, and the endless chorus of self-styled defenders of freedom who were really just defending their contracts.
But just when the argument gets interesting, Evelyn retreats into the same narrative she was critiquing.
She repeats the magic words — “Yes, Trump is a fascist.”
No evidence. No definition. Just ritual obedience to the progressive catechism.
That’s where her piece stops being analysis and becomes protection — not of democracy, but of reputation.
And that’s the tragedy of modern liberal intellectual life: they can diagnose the disease but refuse to name the patient.
Because if Trump were truly a fascist, Evelyn wouldn’t have been free to publish that essay at all.
She wouldn’t have been cashing Substack checks, tweeting “resistance” slogans, or debating moral virtue from the safety of San Francisco.
Under real fascism, there are no open platforms, no opposition candidates, and no comedians mocking the regime on late-night TV. There are prison camps, censorship boards, and missing people.
What we were living under—during the Biden years—was something else entirely: a managed illusion of freedom.
That administration, cheered on by the same “pro-democracy” class Evelyn now critiques, quietly coordinated with Silicon Valley to suppress political speech, throttle disfavored stories, and brand dissent as “misinformation.”
That was the real authoritarian experiment — not goose-stepping soldiers, but government agencies whispering in tech executives’ ears.
It was the soft despotism of the polite class. Control sold as compassion. Censorship disguised as safety.
Trump didn’t create that. He exposed it.
He made the “free world” admit that its freedom had conditions.
Quartz is right to scold the professional fear-mongers. But she stops short of naming the wolf in her own camp — the ideology that punished speech, erased debate, and replaced inquiry with conformity.
She knows something’s wrong, but she can’t let herself say where it lives.
That’s the paralyzing effect of moral capture: the Left has become so busy pretending to save democracy that it’s forgotten how to practice it.
Trump isn’t dangerous because he silences Americans.
He’s dangerous to the people who used to control which Americans were allowed to speak.
He’s the ultimate stress test — a measure of whether the public still has the right to say what the ruling class doesn’t want to hear.
That’s why the word “fascist” gets tossed around so easily. It’s not meant to describe Trump — it’s meant to scare everyone else back into line.
The term has become the Left’s modern blasphemy law: say the wrong thing, and you’re marked forever.
The truth is, the real authoritarians weren’t wearing red hats.
They were the ones in lanyards and blue checks, sitting on panels about “disinformation” while they decided which citizens were allowed to have opinions.
They were the ones who turned “equity” into hierarchy, “diversity” into uniformity, and “safety” into silence.
So yes, Evelyn, the wolf is real — but he’s not the one you think he is.
You were right about the shepherds crying wolf for profit.
You just missed the part where they built the fence to keep the rest of us quiet.
Grook: The Wolf They Invented
They shouted wolf
to stay in style,
and fed their fame
a little while.
But words wear thin,
and truth endures—
the only wolf
was never yours.
Read Evelyn Quartz’s original essay:
The Consultants Who Cried Democracy on Substack.