Watch fascism unfold in realtime

Realtime Fascism is a web based scanner that uses a language model to read US political reporting and match it against Laurence W. Britt's fourteen characteristics of fascism, taken from his 2003 essay for Free Inquiry. The site presents the results as a running count of matching news articles per day, with a score that moves through bands labeled Limited, Mild, Moderate, Severe and Critical. The pipeline has three stated stages. Fixed searches about US politics collect candidate articles from selected US and UK outlets every hour. A language model then checks concrete US government actions against the fourteen characteristics, and supporting excerpts must appear in the source text. A second review checks each proposed match. Articles that meet relevance and confidence thresholds, a relevance of at least 70 and an AI confidence of at least 75, are counted by publication day, and each unique article counts once even if it matches several characteristics. Visitors can browse the matched articles under each of the fourteen characteristics, read the AI explanations attached to them, and view peak coverage over time. The site notes that a blocked or reversed measure may still appear as reporting about that measure rather than as a completed action, and that the matching rules were revised for coverage from August 24, 2026. The home page also links to a separate report on a theory about Starlink and the 2024 election. The tool is aimed at readers, researchers and journalists who want a structured view of how coverage maps to a named framework. The site is open to read and shows no pricing, plans or sign up requirement.