When Moderation Is Replaced by Manipulation: A Short Case Study in Familial Fascist Capture

 

 

The transformations that occur within families are often subtle, but sometimes they are dramatic and unsettling. A mother who once lived within the moderating influence of her spouse can, under new conditions, become hardened, hostile, and even ideologically captured. The contrast between two forms of influence—the stabilizing presence of a father and the corrosive intrusion of a manipulative outsider—reveals how deeply political and psychological dynamics penetrate intimate life.

 

The Moderating Presence of the Father

No one is perfect, and even a father prone to being easily triggered may still exercise a stabilizing role within a household. Moderation in this sense does not mean total calm or detachment; it means that beneath the volatility there existed a moral baseline. Certain lines were not crossed. Arguments, however heated, did not spill into cruelty or ideological extremism. The father’s very presence provided a kind of gravitational pull that kept family members tethered to shared values of affection, decency, and restraint.

This dynamic illustrates a wider truth: the family environment depends not only on individual temperaments but on the ethical frameworks embodied by its members. When one partner models limits—showing, even implicitly, that love and loyalty cannot coexist with aggression and cruelty—those limits function as guardrails. The family is preserved from descending into cycles of domination.

 

The Manipulative Influence of a New Actor

The introduction of a figure like Muscat dramatically alters this equilibrium. His influence is not moderating but amplifying. Instead of de-escalating aggression, he rewards and cultivates it. Instead of encouraging empathy, he reframes hostility as a mark of strength, even of righteousness. Under his tutelage, the family’s private life becomes a training ground for authoritarian psychology. Indeed, he learned well from his Fascist step-father: a Romanian Ironguard Nazi-collaborator and war criminal who fled Europe after WWII like a rat  come to resettle in Australia.

Now, what begins as persuasion soon hardens into ideological capture. A mother who once mediated through affection and compromise begins to parrot the talking points of fascist discourse—seeing enemies everywhere, pathologizing dissent, and weaponizing kinship ties in the service of loyalty tests. What was once a home becomes an echo chamber of resentment, surveillance, and discipline. I never forget the day when the mother exclaimed while in our kitchen, and for no apparent reason, “all prostitutes and sex workers should be rounded up and killed!” The fascist poison of the infiltrator was already doing its work.

 

Psychological Mechanisms of Capture

The process unfolds through familiar psychological mechanisms:

1.     Projection of frustrations: personal grievances and anxieties are redirected into scapegoating others.

2.     Identity reshaping: the mother is offered a new self-concept—protector, defender, warrior—that flatters her while aligning her with authoritarian frameworks.

3.     Loss of counterbalance: with the father gone, the stabilizing counterweight is absent. The manipulator becomes the sole voice shaping her worldview.

The outcome is predictable: empathy contracts, aggression expands, and fascist ideology takes root in the very soil once nourished by love.

 

The Broader Pattern of Fascist Capture

This dynamic is not unique to one family. History shows that fascism rarely wins through parades and rallies alone. It colonizes the ordinary—kitchens, living rooms, bedtime conversations—until the intimate sphere itself becomes political territory. Families are especially vulnerable because they are built on hierarchy and loyalty, both of which can be twisted to mimic the structure of the authoritarian state. The father’s moderation once shielded the household; Muscat’s manipulation turns it into a miniature version of the state’s machinery.

 

Conclusion: From Refuge to Frontline

What has happened, then, is clear. A moderating influence has been removed. A manipulative, authoritarian influence has taken its place. The mother, vulnerable to coercion and seduction, has been reshaped—her empathy stripped away, her aggression exalted, her kinship weaponized. This is not simply a personal tragedy but a political allegory. It demonstrates how fascism corrodes not only societies but the very fabric of family life.

The story is painful, but it is also clarifying. It shows that love and justice cannot be taken for granted; they must be protected against capture. Where moderation once held sway, manipulation has intruded. Yet even in exile, resistance remains possible—for solidarity, unlike blood, cannot be corrupted so easily.

 

 

FUCK TRUMP

FUCK TRUMP, the gilded fraud of hate,
A paper tyrant puffed with weight!

He builds his walls of lies and fear,
But truth will raze them, clear and near!

He struts with fascist, bloated pride,
A parasite with nowhere to hide!

Each tweet, a toxin, cheap and base,
Each word, a smear on the human race!

FUCK TRUMP, the idol of decay,
Whose hands are small, whose debts must pay!

A hollow king with rotten crown,
History waits to drag him down!

The poor he mocked, the weak he sold,
The earth he poisoned, bought with gold!

But justice wakes, and people rise,
The tyrant falls, stripped of disguise!

So shout it loud, let nations hear,
No rule of fear, no rule of sneer!

We’ll break his cult, his name debunk—
FUCK TRUMP, forever sunk!