Fascism

Benito Mussolini (left) and Adolf Hitler (right), two fascist leaders (pictured in 1937).

Fascism is a far-right form of government where most of the country's power is held by one ruler or a small group, under one political party.

Fascist states are usually totalitarian one-party states. They prey on masses of angry, lonely and desperate individuals to make them unite behind a strong leader. This leader promises them a utopia and revenge on those who may have harmed them.

Under fascism, the government heavily controls a country's economy and other parts of society, usually by using a form of authoritarian corporatism. Under this system, companies and workers are supposed to work together under national unity. A fascist regime uses violence to kill or persecute anyone it does not consider useful.

The power of such totalitarianism comes from mass mobilization via the mechanism as mentioned, while voluntary collaboration at every level of society by those agreeing with the same goal is necessary for maintaining the totalitarian state.

Overview

Six large fascist countries in history were Italy under Benito Mussolini, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler's Nazism, the Empire of Japan under Hideki Tojo, Spain under Francisco Franco, Portugal under António Salazar and Leopoldo Galtieri of Argentina.

Mussolini invented fascism in Italy in the late 1910s and developed it fully in the 1930s. He came to power in late 1922 and introduced a complete dictatorship in the mid-1920s. He accomplished this by eliminating all other political parties and changing the electoral law to make sure his Fascist party got the most seats.

Mussolini wrote a paper called The Doctrine of Fascism in English. He started writing it in 1927, but it was only published in 1932. Most of it was probably written by Giovanni Gentile, an Italian philosopher who joined fascism and became an important influence.

When Hitler came to power in Germany in the 1930s, he copied Mussolini.

Name

A fasces image.

The name "fascism" comes from the Italian word fascio for bundle. That word comes originally from the Latin word fasces, which was an axe surrounded by a bundle of sticks. In Ancient Rome, leaders carried the fasces as a symbol of their power.

History

Invention

Benito Mussolini invented fascism. He was originally a journalist. Then in 1919, he started Italy's fascist party.

He became Italy's prime minister in 1922. He was not elected. His supporters walked into Rome in large numbers, and the king of Italy made him prime minister. Officially, the fascist party in Italy was ruled by a "grand council" from 1922 until the end of World War II. In truth, Benito Mussolini had almost all the power in the country.

According to scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Mussolini believed democracy had failed. He had been a Socialist, but left the movement because he thought it was not strong enough, and it had refused to join the First World War. He believed democracy failed because of social class, and that it was too weak to stand against communism. Under fascism, he believed, people would focus on the nation, and they would cooperate for the good of the country without thinking about social class.

However, Mussolini also believed that to make fascism work, he and his followers had to remove anything that could distract people from the nation. He also believed he should get to decide who in Italy counted as part of the Italian nation. He thought he should have the power to exile or arrest anyone he did not consider a real Italian. He believed it was right to use violence to remove those distractions and those people.

Following these beliefs, groups of people with weapons regularly went out into the streets and beat up or even killed people Mussolini did not like. Mussolini did not allow journalists to write what they wanted. He believed that Italy should be made of white people, so he encouraged white women to have more babies and persecuted people who were not white.

After World War II

The fascist governments in Italy, Germany, and Japan were removed after they lost World War II. Still, fascism continued in military dictatorships under Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain, in some parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

21st century

In the 21st century, fascist political movements exist in many countries.

Academic views

Jason Stanley

Scholars hold different views on the definition of fascism. Philosopher Jason Stanley of Yale University called fascism

[a] cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed communists, Marxists, minorities and immigrants who are supposedly posing a threat to the character and the history of a nation.

That is, fascism focuses on one person as the leader. It views communism as threatening and claims that at least one group of people is responsible for the nation's problems. Some fascist governments have blamed people from other countries for their problems; others have blamed groups of people within the country.

Under Hitler's fascist Germany, the government blamed "Jewish communists", homosexuals, the disabled, Roma, and other groups for Germany's problems. Hitler's tyranny sent them to death camps to be killed.

Robert Paxton

American historian Robert Paxton summarized fascism's characteristics as follows:

1. Desire to end democracy
2. Purges and ethnic cleansing
3. Aggressive foreign expansion
4. Collaboration with established elites
5. Compensatory cultures of unity, energy and purity
6. Obsession with victimhood and community decline
7. Mass-based party of committed nationalist militants
8. Redemptive violence without legal or moral restraints

Roger Griffin

In 1991, British historian Roger Griffin proposed an alternative definition of fascism. He said fascism is a form of revolutionary nationalism hinged on the unity of a group to achieve a national rebirth (or palingenesis, Koine Greek: παλιγγενεσία), often by mistreating ethnic minorities. In 2003, Laurence W. Britt wrote the 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism:

1. Fake elections
2. Serious sexism
3. Controlled mass media
4. Power of corporations protected
5. Obsession with national security
6. Rampant cronyism and corruption
7. Religion and ruling elites tied together
8. Obsession with crime and punishment
9. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
10. Disdain for the importance of human rights
11. The supremacy of the military or avid militarism
12. Powerful and continuous expressions of nationalism
13. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
14. Identification of enemies or scapegoats to unite the population behind the ruler

Critique

Comparison to other forms of totalitarianism

One of the reasons fascism spread in the early 20th century was because the Russian Revolution had just happened and people were afraid of communism. Many landowners and business owners supported fascists because they were afraid of what would happen if the country became communist instead.

In her work, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Hannah Arendt compared National Socialism, Stalinism and Maoism. She wrote that these regimes were totalitarian, not fascist.

In 1967, German philosopher Jürgen Habermas warned about a "left-wing fascism" of a protest movement in Germany of the 1960s, commonly known as Ausserparlametarische ("Extra-parliamentary") Opposition (APO).

Opposition to fascism

There is more than one reason why people living in democratic states oppose fascism. The main reason is that in a Fascist government, the individual citizen doesn't always have the option to vote, nor do they have the option to be someone or to live a lifestyle which the fascists see as immoral, useless, or unproductive towards society. For example, LGBT people (like homosexual, cross-dressing, and transgender people) can be arrested and put on trial.

Related pages

• Antisemitism in Europe
• Authoritarianism
• Extremism
• Islam and fascism
• Islamophobia
• Neo-Nazism
• Antiziganism