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By Robert Soucy Article History Table of Contents Benito Mussolini See all media Key People:Benito Mussolini Giovanni Gentile Engelbert Dollfuss Oswald Mosley Vidkun Quisling...(Show more)Related Topics:white supremacy Volksgemeinschaft family-system principle Vap integral nationalism...(Show more) See all related content → Top Questions Where does the word fascism come from?The word fascism comes from the Latin fasces, which denotes a bundle of wooden rods that typically included a protruding axe blade. In ancient Rome, lictors (attendants to magistrates) would hold the fasces as a symbol of the penal power of their magistrate. The first European fascist, Benito Mussolini, adopted this symbol both to recall the greatness of the Roman Empire and to reinforce his authority as the eventual dictator of Italy. Fascist regimes like his required their citizens to be as unified as the tightly bound fasces. Fasces as symbols of power and authority were also present throughout the United States and republican France in the 18th and 19th centuries. Similar to Mussolini’s government, the U.S. and France aimed to align themselves with the legacy of Rome. However, the fasces came to be almost exclusively associated with fascism by the middle of the 20th century. How the Symbolism of the Swastika Was Ruined Learn how the meaning of another symbol was transformed during the 20th century.What are some common characteristics of fascism?Although fascism is a notoriously difficult ideology to define, many 20th-century fascist movements shared several characteristics. First, these movements sourced their political strength from populations experiencing economic woes, real or imagined. Fascists tended to capitalize on these economic anxieties by shifting the blame away from government or market forces. Jews, immigrants, leftists, and other groups became useful scapegoats. Redirecting popular anger toward these people would, in theory, rid a country of its ailments. To unify a country, fascist movements propagated extreme nationalism that often went hand in hand with militarism and racial purity. The prosperity of a nation depended on a unified polity that put the group’s welfare above the individual’s. A strong, vigilant military was considered necessary to defend these group interests. And for some fascists “the group” was defined not by territorial boundaries but by racial identity. Nazism constituted the most insidious form of racial-purist fascist nationalism. Fascist movements of the 20th century also frequently lambasted liberalism for its alleged role in sowing political disunity and moral degeneracy. Although many fascist movements initially organized themselves around democratic institutions for political legitimacy, they resorted to totalitarianism in practice. A component of this process became the reorganization of society around a strict moral code that often sought to reverse the “decadence” of pre-fascist culture. In which countries did fascism achieve prominence?The most prominent 20th-century fascist regimes were those in Germany and Italy. German fascism took the form of Nazism, which rose out of the ashes of the post-World War I Weimar Republic. Inflation, soaring unemployment rates, and deep political divisions paralyzed the republic during the Great Depression and helped create the conditions that allowed Nazism to prosper. The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, promised stability and a return to prewar German pride. It espoused militaristic nationalism, derided cultural decadence, and blamed various marginalized groups—chiefly Jews—for Germany’s social ills. The Nazis governed Germany beginning in 1933 and attempted to spread their ideology through conquest and genocide until their defeat in 1945. Italy’s fascist movement also began after World War I, although it achieved power in the mid-1920s. Under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, the movement—fasci di combattimento (”fighting bands”)—made heavy use of black-clad paramilitary troops to intimidate leftist politicians and ultimately seize control of Italy during the postwar economic crisis. As the world’s first fascist dictator, Mussolini targeted democratic institutions, dismantled free speech, attacked political opponents, and engaged in heavy surveillance. His regime was virulently xenophobic, and although it initially disavowed anti-Semitism, it passed several anti-Semitic laws in 1938 that would pave the way for Italy and Germany’s cooperation during World War II. How has fascism evolved since World War II?In the latter half of the 20th century, a resurgent fascism—termed neofascism—gained traction across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Africa. Like the pre-World War II fascist movements, they were frequently xenophobic, ultranationalist, militaristic, and illiberal. But important differences emerged from these postwar fascist iterations. Many neofascists placed enormous importance on slowing or stemming immigration, particularly in dense urban areas. They also rebranded themselves as democratic to appeal to a world that had grown rapidly disillusioned with totalitarian regimes. Furthermore, some neofascists sought to align themselves with various economic systems depending on regional politics. The late 20th century saw the growth of European neofascist parties such as the National Front in France, headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen. His anti-immigrant, identitarian platform played on fears of French cultural dilution, particularly at the hands of Muslims. In the 2010s, European neofascism surged again following a wave of Muslim migrants after the Arab Spring revolts. The National Front in particular enjoyed such popularity that Marine Le Pen, Le Pen’s daughter and the party’s leader, advanced in 2017 to the second round of presidential elections. (She lost to Emmanuel Macron.) And in Germany, the anti-Islamic far-right Alternative for Germany became the second most popular party in the Bundestag by 2018. Summary Read a brief summary of this topicfascism, political ideology and mass movement that dominated many parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and that also had adherents in western Europe, the United States, South Africa, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East. Europe’s first fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, took the name of his party from the Latin word fasces, which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome. Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. At the end of World War II, the major European fascist parties were broken up, and in some countries (such as Italy and West Germany) they were officially banned. Beginning in the late 1940s, however, many fascist-oriented parties and movements were founded in Europe as well as in Latin America and South Africa. Although some European “neofascist” groups attracted large followings, especially in Italy and France, none were as influential as the major fascist parties of the interwar period. National fascismsFascist parties and movements came to power in several countries between 1922 and 1945: the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista) in Italy, led by Mussolini; the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), or Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler and representing his National Socialism movement; the Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front) in Austria, led by Engelbert Dollfuss and supported by the Heimwehr (Home Defense Force), a major right-wing paramilitary organization; the National Union (União Nacional) in Portugal, led by António de Oliveira Salazar (which became fascist after 1936); the Party of Free Believers (Elefterofronoi) in Greece, led by Ioannis Metaxas; the Ustaša (“Insurgence”) in Croatia, led by Ante Pavelić; the National Union (Nasjonal Samling) in Norway, which was in power for only a week—though its leader, Vidkun Quisling, was later made minister president under the German occupation; and the military dictatorship of Admiral Tojo Hideki in Japan. Spain’s fascist movement, the Falange (“Phalanx”), founded in 1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, never came to power, but many of its members were absorbed into the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which itself displayed many fascist characteristics. In Poland the anti-Semitic Falanga, led by Boleslaw Piasecki, was influential but was unable to overthrow the conservative regime of Józef Piłsudski. Vihtori Kosola’s Lapua Movement in Finland nearly staged a coup in 1932 but was checked by conservatives backed by the army. The Arrow Cross Party (Nyilaskeresztes Párt) in Hungary, led by Ferenc Szálasi, was suppressed by the conservative regime of Miklós Horthy until 1944, when Szálasi was made a puppet ruler under the German occupation. In Romania the Iron Guard (Garda de Fier)—also called the League of Christian Defense, the Legion of the Archangel Michael, and All for the Fatherland—led by Corneliu Codreanu, was dissolved by the dictatorial regime of King Carol II in 1938. In 1939 Codreanu and several of his legionaries were arrested and “shot while trying to escape.” In 1940 remnants of the Iron Guard reemerged to share power but were finally crushed by Romanian conservatives in February 1941. In France the Cross of Fire (Croix de Feu), later renamed the French Social Party (Parti Social Français), led by Colonel François de La Rocque, was the largest and fastest-growing party on the French right between 1936 and 1938. In 1937 it was larger than the French communist and socialist parties combined (one scholar estimated its membership between 700,000 and 1.2 million), and by 1939 it included some 3,000 mayors, about 1,000 municipal councilmen, and 12 parliamentary deputies. Other fascist movements in France included the short-lived Faisceau (1925–28), led by Georges Valois; the Young Patriots (Jeunesses Patriotes), led by Pierre Taittinger; French Solidarity (Solidarité Française), founded and financed by François Coty and led by Jean Renaud; the Franks (Francistes), led by Marcel Bucard; the French Popular Party (Parti Populaire Français), led by Jacques Doriot; and French Action (Action Française), led by Charles Maurras. After the German invasion in 1940, a number of French fascists served in the Vichy regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain. The British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, had some 50,000 members. In Belgium the Rexist Party, led by Léon Degrelle, won about 10 percent of the seats in the parliament in 1936. Russian fascist organizations were founded by exiles in Manchuria, the United States, and elsewhere; the largest of these groups were the Russian Fascist Party (VFP), led by Konstantin Rodzaevsky, and the All Russian Fascist Organization (VFO), led by Anastasy Vonsiatsky. Outside Europe, popular support for fascism was greatest in South Africa and the Middle East. Several fascist groups were founded in South Africa after 1932, including the Gentile National Socialist Movement and its splinter group, the South African Fascists; the South African National Democratic Party, known as the Blackshirts; and the pro-German Ox-Wagon Sentinel (Ossewabrandwag). By 1939 there were at least seven Arab “shirt” movements, including the Syrian People’s Party, also called the Syrian National Socialist Party; the Iraqi Futuwa movement; and the Young Egypt movement, also called the Green Shirts. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Several rival protofascist and fascist movements operated in Japan after 1918, and their activities helped to increase the influence of the military on the Japanese government. Among the most important of these groups were the Taisho Sincerity League (Taisho Nesshin’kai), the Imperial Way Faction (Kodo-ha), the Greater Japan National Essence Association (Dai Nippon Kokusui-kai), the Anti-Red Corps (Bokyo Gokoku-Dan), the Great Japan Political Justice Corps (Dai Nippon Seigi-Dan), the Blood Brotherhood League (Ketsumei-Dan), the Jimmu Association (Jimmu-Kai), the New Japan League (Shin-Nihon Domei), the Eastern Way Society (Towo Seishin-Kai), and the Great Japan Youth Party (Da-nihon Seinen-dan). Following the Mukden Incident and the wider invasion of Manchuria by Japanese troops in 1931, several fascist-oriented patriotic societies were formed in China; the largest of these groups, the Blue Shirts, formed an alliance with the Kuomintang (National People’s Party) under Chiang Kai-shek. At Chiang’s order in 1934, the Blue Shirts were temporarily put in charge of political indoctrination in the army and given limited control of its educational system. European fascism had a number of imitators in Latin America, including the Nacis, founded in Chile by Jorge González von Mareés; the Gold Shirts, founded in Mexico by Nicolás Rodríguez; and the Revolutionary Union (Unión Revolucionaria) of Peruvian dictator Luis Sánchez Cerro. The Brazilian Integralist Action party (Ação Integralista Brasileira), which had some 200,000 members in the mid-1930s, was suppressed by the Brazilian government in 1938 after a failed coup attempt. In the United States the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization founded at the end of the Civil War and revived in 1915, displayed some fascist characteristics. One of its offshoots, the Black Legion, had some 60,000 members in the early 1930s and committed numerous acts of arson and bombing. In 1930 Catholic priest Charles E. Coughlin began national radio broadcasts of sermons on political and economic subjects; his talks became increasingly antidemocratic and anti-Semitic, as did the journal he founded, Social Justice. After running unsuccessfully for the U.S. presidency in 1936, Coughlin became an apologist for Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. In 1942 Social Justice was banned from the U.S. mails for violating the Espionage Act, and in the same year the American Catholic church ordered Coughlin to stop his broadcasts. The pro-Nazi German-American Bund, founded in 1933, staged military drills and mass rallies until it disintegrated with the U.S. entry into the war in 1941. Which of the following best describes the difference between fascism and communism?The main difference between fascism and communism is that fascism is characterized by a radical and authoritarian rule by a powerful dictator to establish national unity whereas communism is characterized by a totalitarian ruling to eradicate social class divisions through social ownership of production.
What fascism mean?noun. Britannica Dictionary definition of FASCISM. [noncount] 1. or Fascism : a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.
What are the differences between fascism and democracy?Key difference: Fascism is living under a dictatorship; living oppressed and under someone else's beliefs without having your own freedom and limited rights. Democracy is a form of government that is made for the people and ran by the people.
What is fascism definition quizlet?Fascism. A system of government characterized by strict social and economic control and a strong, centralized government usually headed by a dictator. First found in Italy by Mussolini.
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