Fascism

For the Italian political movement of "Fascism", see Italian Fascism.

For the book published by Oxford University Press, see Fascism (book).

Fascism, Template:PronEng, is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives, values, and systems such as the political system and the economy. Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right of the conventional left-right political spectrum, although some scholars claim that fascism has been influenced by both the left and the right.

Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. They claim that culture is created by collective national society and its state, that cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus rejects individualism. In viewing the nation as an integrated collective community, they claim that pluralism is a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety. They advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascist governments forbid and suppress openness and opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement. They identify violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality.

Fascists reject and resist autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered part of the fascists' nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be assimilated. They consider attempts to create such autonomy as an affront and threat to the nation.

Fascism is strongly opposed to core aspects of the Enlightenment and is an opponent of liberalism, Marxism, and mainstream socialism for being associated with failures that fascists claim are inherent in the Enlightenment. Fascists view egalitarianism, materialism, and rationalism as failed elements of the Enlightenment. They oppose liberalism — as a bourgeois movement — and Marxism — as a proletarian movement — for being exclusive economic class-based movements. They present their ideology as that of an economically trans-class movement that promotes ending economic class conflict to secure national solidarity. They believe that economic classes are not capable of properly governing a nation, and that a merit-based aristocracy of experienced military persons must rule through regimenting a nation's forces of production and securing the nation's independence.

Fascists support a "Third Position" in economic policy, which they believe superior to both the rampant individualism of laissez-faire capitalism and the severe control of state socialism.

Following the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II and the publicity surrounding the atrocities committed during the period of fascist governments, the term fascist has been used as a pejorative word, often referring to widely varying movements across the political spectrum.

Etymology

The term fascismo is derived from the Italian word fascio, which means "bundle" or group, and from the Latin word fasces. The fasces, which consisted of a bundle of rods that were tied around an axe, was an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate. They were carried by his lictors and could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command. The word fascismo also relates to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates.

The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break. Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements. For example the Falange symbol is a bunch of arrows joined together by a yoke.

Definitions

Main article: Definitions of fascism

Historians, political scientists, and other scholars have engaged in long debates concerning the exact nature of fascism. Since the 1990s, scholars like Stanley Payne, Roger Eatwell, Roger Griffin and Robert O. Paxton have begun to gather a rough consensus on the system's core tenets. Each form of fascism is distinct, leaving many definitions as too wide or too narrow.

Griffin wrote:

[Fascism is] a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism. As such it is an ideology deeply bound up with modernization and modernity, one which has assumed a considerable variety of external forms to adapt itself to the particular historical and national context in which it appears, and has drawn a wide range of cultural and intellectual currents, both left and right, anti-modern and pro-modern, to articulate itself as a body of ideas, slogans, and doctrine. In the inter-war period it manifested itself primarily in the form of an elite-led "armed party" which attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to generate a populist mass movement through a liturgical style of politics and a programme of radical policies which promised to overcome a threat posed by international socialism, to end the degeneration affecting the nation under liberalism, and to bring about a radical renewal of its social, political and cultural life as part of what was widely imagined to be the new era being inaugurated in Western civilization. The core mobilizing myth of fascism which conditions its ideology, propaganda, style of politics and actions is the vision of the nation's imminent rebirth from decadence.

Paxton wrote that fascism is:

a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Position in the political spectrum

Fascism is normally described as "extreme right", although some writers have found placing fascism on a conventional left-right political spectrum difficult. There is a scholarly consensus that fascism was influenced by both the left and the right. A number of historians have regarded fascism either as a revolutionary centrist doctrine, as a doctrine which mixes philosophies of the left and the right, or as both of those things.

The historians Eugen Weber, David Renton, and Robert Soucy view fascism as on the ideological right. Rod Stackelberg argues that fascism opposes egalitarianism (particularly racial) and democracy, which according to him are characteristics that make it an extreme right-wing movement. Stanley Payne states that pre-war fascism found a coherent identity through alliances with right-wing movements Roger Griffin argues that since the end of World War II, fascist movements have become intertwined with the radical right, describing certain groups as part of a "fascist radical right".

Walter Laqueur says that historical fascism "did not belong to the extreme Left, yet defining it as part of the extreme Right is not very illuminating either", but that it "was always a coalition between radical, populist ('fascist') elements and others gravitating toward the extreme Right". Payne says "fascists were unique in their hostility to all the main established currents, left right and center", noting that they allied with both left and right, but more often the right. However, he contends that German Nazism was closer to Russian communism than to any other non-communist system.

The position that fascism is neither right nor left is supported by a number of contemporary historians and sociologists, including Seymour Martin Lipset and Roger Griffin. Griffin argued, "Not only does the location of fascism within the right pose taxonomic problems, there are good ground for cutting this particular Gordian knot altogether by placing it in a category of its own "beyond left and right."

On economic issues, fascists reject ideas of class conflict and internationalism, which are commonly held by Marxists and international socialists, in favour of class collaboration and statist nationalism. However, Italian fascism also declared its objection to excessive capitalism, which it called supercapitalism. Zeev Sternhell sees fascism as an anti-Marxist form of socialism.

A number of fascist movements described themselves as a "third force" that was outside the traditional political spectrum altogether. Mussolini promoted ambiguity about fascism's positions in order to rally as many people to it as possible, saying fascists can be "aristocrats or democrats, revolutionaries and reactionaries, proletarians and anti-proletarians, pacifists and anti-pacifists". Mussolini claimed that Italian Fascism's economic system of corporatism could be identified as either state capitalism or state socialism, which in either case involved "the bureaucratisation of the economic activities of the nation." Mussolini described fascism in any language he found useful. Spanish Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera was critical of both left-wing and right-wing politics, once saying that "basically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile".

Roger Eatwell sees terminology associated with the traditional “left-right” political spectrum as failing to fully capture the complex nature of the ideology and many other political scientists have posited multi-dimensional alternatives to the traditional linear left-right spectrum. In some two dimensional political models, such as the Political Compass (where left and right are described in purely economic terms), fascism is ascribed to the economic centre, with its extremism expressing itself on the authoritarianism axis instead.

Fascist as epithet

Main article: Fascist (epithet)

In political discourse, the term "fascist" is commonly used to denote authoritarian tendencies, but is often used as a pejorative epithet by adherents to both left-wing and right-wing politics to denigrate those with opposing viewpoints. George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’". Richard Griffiths argued in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times". "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-war organisations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term "neo-fascist".

Historical causes of the rise of fascism

There are a variety of views on what led to the rise of fascism. One view is that fascism in Italy was a response to the perceived failings of democracy, liberalism and Marxism, which were seen as either favouring individualism or internationalism at the expense of the nation. Fascism presented itself as a radical nationalist alternative to Bolshevism. It nevertheless incorporated aspects of Bolshevism, such as the single-party state, elite rule over the masses, and appeals to the proletariat. At a time when war veterans were facing unemployment and other economic problems, fascists promoted a form of collectivism, calling for the end of bourgeois individualism, as well as opposing Marxism for its anti-nationalism and perceived anti-patriotism.

The creation of the League of Nations after World War I aggravated nationalists, who saw the organization as imposing an internationalist political order upon nations. Fascists saw the league as only benefiting wealthy capitalist democracies. Disillusionment with liberalism deepened with the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression. Alfredo Rocco, Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile justified fascism as answering a need for purpose in an absurd world. Mussolini wrote:

...it is a spiritualized conception, itself the result of the general reaction of modern times against the flabby materialistic positivism of the nineteenth century. Anti-positivistic, but positive: not skeptical, nor agnostic, nor pessimistic, nor passively optimistic, as are, in general, the doctrines (all negative) that put the center of life outside man, who with his free will can and must create his own world. Fascism desires an active man, one engaged in activity with all his energies: it desires a man virilely conscious of the difficulties that exist in action and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle, considering that it behooves man to conquer for himself that life truly worthy of him, creating first of all in himself the instrument (physical, moral, intellectual) in order to construct it.

Ideological origins of Fascism

Fascism is based upon a number of ideological origins from across the political spectrum. Benito Mussolini had a strong attachment to the works of Plato. In The Republic (c. 380 BCE), Plato advocated a system of elite minority rule by highly educated, intellectual rulers called philosopher kings who were within a class of elite warriors named "guardians" that were allowed to exercise total control over the politics and security of a society. This argument has been considered an inspiration for fascism's promotion of elite rule by a supreme leader and a single-party state. Similarly, Vilfredo Pareto's endorsement of an elite minority-led oligarchical government was an influence on fascists. Mussolini and Margherita Sarfatti identified both Plato and Pareto as the source of fascism's constantly changing character. They claim that movement and correction of flaws in ideas renews an ideology and keeps it from becoming corrupt or outdated.

Mussolini modeled his dictatorship and totalitarian aims on Julius Caesar. Mussolini described his personal admiration of Caesar, claiming that Caesar had "the resolve of a warrior and the resourcefulness of a wise man". The Fascists' March on Rome in 1922 was based on the crossing of the Rubicon river by Caesar and his forces when they seized power in Rome in 49 BCE. Shortly after seizing power with the March on Rome, Mussolini went to the Roman Forum and stood before the ruins to pay homage to Caesar. The Italian Fascist government presented Caesar as a national hero and had multiple statues of Caesar constructed across Italy.

Mussolini studied The Prince (1532) by Niccolo Machiavelli, and produced a thesis on it for the University of Bologna in 1924. Mussolini admired Machiavelli as a capable statesman and a thinker. Mussolini identified Machiavelli's conception of "the prince" as the personification of the state, and sympathized with Machiavelli's negative conception of most people having the tendency to be self-centred and unethical. Mussolini, like Machiavelli, claimed that populations were unfit to govern themselves, and that they needed leadership to direct their lives.

Fascism is believed to have been significantly influenced by the political concept of absolute monarchy as conceived by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan (1651)..

Fascism is connected to the theories of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. This connection to Hegelianism is also shared by Marxism, but fascism focuses on the elements of Hegelianism that Karl Marx detracted from. While Marxism focuses on rationalism and empiricism elements of Hegelianism, fascism focuses on the spiritualist elements of Hegelianism. Fascism's link to Hegelianism is linked to the nationalistic Italian neo-idealist movement that adhered to Hegel's positive perception of the state and his advocacy of a corporative organic state. One of fascism's major philosophers, Giovanni Gentile was a Hegelian. Gentile faced opposition from some Italian Fascists who attacked him for being too attached to Hegelianism and for being too dominant to be considered loyal to fascism and to Mussolini. After the Second Italo-Abyssinian War Gentile's influence in the National Fascist Party (PNF) collapsed, with philosophical influence being centralized to Mussolini's will.

Mussolini was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of übermensch ("overman" or "superman") and his themes of living dangerously which were adopted and put into political practice by Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio whom Mussolini also admired. D'Annunzio played an important role in bringing Nietzsche's themes into Italy. Like Nietzsche, d'Annunzio idealized the Renaissance as a period of time during which übermensch ruled and the power of decadent nobility was disintigrating. Nietzsche, d'Annunzio, and Mussolini all held contempt for Christianity, the bourgeoisie, democracy, and reformist politics. D'Annunzio supported the creation of a new state based on an aristocracy of intellectuals, a cult of strength and opposition to democracy. He believed that the best ideology to exemplify Nietzsche's übermensch and living dangerously was aggressive nationalism. During World War I, d'Annunzio evoked Italian nationalist themes of irredentism, claiming that Italy was the heir to the Roman Empire.

Prior to becoming a fascist, Mussolini as a socialist was influenced by Nietszche's anti-Christian ideas and negation of God's existence. Mussolini saw Nietzsche as similar to Jean-Marie Guyau, who advocated a philosophy of action. Mussolini's use of Nietzsche made him a highly unorthodox socialist, due to Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and anti-egalitarian views. Mussolini felt that socialism had faltered due to the failures of Marxist determinism and social democratic reformism, and believed that Nietzsche's ideas would strengthen socialism. By the 1900s, Mussolini's writings indicated that he had abandoned Marxism and egalitarianism in favour of Nietzsche's übermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism. Unlike fascists, however, Nietzsche did not admire the state; in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he referred to the state as "the coldest of all monsters".

Mussolini's early political views were heavily influenced by his father, Alessandro Mussolini, a revolutionary socialist who idolized 19th century Italian nationalist figures with humanist tendencies such as Carlo Pisacane, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Alessandro Mussolini's political outlook combined the views of anarchist figures like Carlo Cafiero and Mikhail Bakunin, the military authoritarianism of Garibaldi, and the nationalism of Mazzini. In 1902, at the anniversary of Garibaldi's death, Benito Mussolini made a public speech in praise of the republican nationalist.

Syndicalist philosopher Georges Sorel is considered a major inspiration for both Bolshevism and fascism, both of which Sorel supported because they challenged bourgeois democracy. Sorel's work Reflections on Violence (1908) claimed that violence could be moral, especially revolutionary violence that brings substantive positive change in society. Sorel rebuked Marxism, accusing it of becoming decadent, and arguing that it should not resist the free market and free competition, because they would quicken the demise of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat.

Sorel argued that socialists should reject the materialism and rationalism of Marx and instead adopt moral and emotional appeals of ideals and myths to promote their cause. Sorel argued that excessive rationalism is a trait of the bourgeoisie, and that the proletariat's mind is more "primitive", being more able to accept myths. Sorel believed that this was beneficial, because the proletariat would be more willing to accept moral renewal. Reflections on Violence was highly popular amongst Italian revolutionary syndicalists, one of whom was Mussolini, who later as a fascist acknowledged Sorel's influence on him, saying "What I am, I owe to Sorel".

Fascism initially had close connections to futurism; the Futurist Manifesto (1909) by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti "glorified action, technology, and war" and promoted irrationalism over rationalism; the revolutionary entrenchment of modernist and violent art and aesthetics; the destruction of all past aesthetic traditions to liberate modern aesthetics; the promotion of patriotism and militarism; and contempt of women and feminism. Futurism, like fascism, identified the state in a corporatist manner as an organic body connected to the nation. However, unlike fascism, the futurist conception of the state proscribed the continuation of democracy, with Marinetti arguing: "Italian democracy is for us a body which must be liberated", this liberation would be achieved through technological development. Marinetti was initially drawn to fascism, but rejected it as it adopted more moderate conservative aesthetics once it attained power in Italy.

Conservative influences became a strong factor in Fascism in Italy in spite of differences with other more revolutionary factions of the Italian Fascists. Conservatism in Italy was less of an organized political movement like other ideologies, but involved common social traditions such as the emphasis of family, landownership, and faith in religion. The influence of conservatives in Italian Fascism rose in prominence in 1921, when the National Fascist Party made major alterations to its political agenda, abandoning its previous populism, republicanism, and anticlericalism resulting in the Italian Fascists adopting policies in support of free enterprise, and acceptance of the Roman Catholic Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy. Fascism adopted policies to appeal to Italian conservatives such promoting family values, including promotion of a woman's role as a mother; Roman Catholicism; and opposition to populism. Conservative nationalism in particular was an important ideological influence upon fascism. Italian Fascism was influenced by conservative nationalist Enrico Corradini, writer of the prominent nationalist newspaper Il Regno and one of the founders and key members of the Italian Nationalist Association.

Corradini combined nationalism with social Darwinism and spoke of the need for Italy to overcome its weaknesses by Italy accepting the "iron laws of race", including eliminating foreign influences, pursuing imperialism, incorporating workers into the nation, regenerating the bourgeoisie, while opposing "feminine humanitarianism", liberalism, democracy, and socialism. Two prominent concepts promoted by Corradini inspired fascism , one was Corradini's theory of "war as revolution" and his theory of "proletarian nationalism". Though Corradini opposed the revolutionary socialism in Italy for its anti-patriotism, anti-militarism, internationalism, and its advocacy of class conflict, he and other nationalists admired its revolutionary and conquering spirit, and in a 1910 of the Italian Nationalist Association declared support for proletarian nationalism, saying:

“We are the proletarian people in respect to the rest of the world. Nationalism is our socialism. This established, nationalism must be founded on the truth that Italy is morally and materially a proletarian nation.” Manifesto of the Italian Nationalist Association, December 1910.

Corradini also studied Sorel's Reflections on Violence, and claimed that in spite of some ideological differences between syndicalism and nationalism, that he desired "a syndicalism which stops at the nation's shores and does not proceed farther".

Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini immediately sought support from the leader of Italy's conservative faction in Parliament, Luigi Federzoni, a conservative monarchist and nationalist who was a member of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI) political party, to appease the King of Italy, resulting in close political alliance between the Italian Fascists and Italian conservatives. The ANI along with Federzoni and other members joined the National Fascist Party in 1923.

Another conservative nationalist from the ANI to become a Fascist, was the prominent economic theorist Alfredo Rocco. Rocco was a proponent of economic corporatism and was a key figure in designing fascist economic policy in Italy that mandated employers and workers to negotiate under the supervision and arbitration of the state, the enhancement of state power over the economy, and forbidding trade union strikes. Rocco's economic policies were deemed conservative due to their repression of dissent by organized labour and the limited rights accorded to workers that resulted in animosity to the policies by a number fascists associated with organized labour.

Rocco as Minister of Justice of Italy during the Fascist era, spoke of fascism constituting a "conservative revolution" that supported orderly and controlled political change to be carried out by elites that would create policy while resisting pluralism, independent initiative, and attempts at political change by the masses. These Italian Fascist factions that favoured conciliation with traditional institutions like the monarchy were met with resistance by "Intransigent" Fascists, hardliners commonly associated with the militant Blackshirts, who wanted the total entrenchment Fascism as the basis of Italy's government.

Core tenets

Nationalism

Fascists saw the struggle of nation and race as fundamental in society, in opposition to communism's perception of class struggle. The fascist view of nation is as a single organic entity which binds people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of people. Fascism seeks to solve economic, political, and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity. Benito Mussolini stated in 1922, "For us the nation is not just territory but something spiritual... A nation is great when it translates into reality the force of its spirit."

According to Eoin O'Duffy, an Irish national corporatist: "before everything we must give a national lead to our people...The first essential is national unity. We can only have that when the Corporative system is accepted".

Joseph Goebbels described the Nazis as being affiliated with authoritarian nationalism:

It enables us to see at once why democracy and Bolshevism, which in the eyes of the world are irrevocably opposed to one another, meet again and again on common ground in their joint hatred of and attacks on authoritarian nationalist concepts of State and State systems. For the authoritarian nationalist conception of the State represents something essentially new. In it the French Revolution is superseded.

Plínio Salgado, leader of the Brazilian Integralist Action party emphasized the role of the nation:

The best governments in the world cannot succeed in pulling a country out of the quagmire, out of apathy, if they do not express themselves as national energies...Strong governments cannot result either from conspiracies or from military coups, just as they cannot come out of the machinations of parties or the Machiavellian game of political lobbying. They can only be born from the actual roots of the Nation.

Foreign policy

Italian fascists described expansionist imperialism as a necessity. The 1932 Italian Encyclopedia stated: "For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence." Similarly, the Nazis promoted territorial expansionism to provide "living space" to the German nation. Fascists opposed pacifism and believed that a nation must have a warrior mentality. Benito Mussolini spoke of war idealistically as a source of masculine pride, and spoke negatively of pacifism:

War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. Fascism carries this anti-pacifist struggle into the lives of individuals. It is education for combat...war is to man what maternity is to the woman. I do not believe in perpetual peace; not only do I not believe in it but I find it depressing and a negation of all the fundamental virtues of a man.

Authoritarianism

Many fascist movements support the creation of a totalitarian state. Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism states: "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people."

Some have argued that in spite of Italian fascism's attempt at totalitarianism, fascism in Italy became an authoritarian cult of personality around Mussolini.

In The Legal Basis of the Total State, Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt described the Nazi intention to form a "strong state which guarantees a totality of political unity transcending all diversity" in order to avoid a "disasterous pluralism tearing the German people apart"

Japanese fascist Nakano Seigo advocated that Japan follow the Italian and German models, which were "a form of more democratic government going beyond democracy" which itself had "lost its spirit and decayed into a mechanism which insists only on numerical superiority without considering the essence of human beings."

A key authoritarian element of fascism is its endorsement of a prime national leader, who is often known simply as the "Leader" or a similar title, such as: Duce in Italian, Führer in German, Caudillo in Spanish, Poglavnik in Croatia, or Conducător in Romanian. Fascist leaders who ruled countries were not always heads of state, but heads of government, such as Benito Mussolini, who held power under the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.

Social Darwinism

Fascist movements have commonly held social Darwinist views of nations, races, and societies. They argue that in order for nations and races to survive in a world defined by perpetual national and racial conflict, nations and races must purge themselves of socially and biologically weak or degenerate people while simultaneously promoting the creation of strong people.

Italian Fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile in The Origins and Doctrine of Fascism promoted the concept of conflict being an act of progress by stating that "mankind only progresses through division, and progress is achieved through the clash and victory of one side over another". Italian Fascist Alfredo Rocco claimed that conflict was inevitable:

Conflict is in fact the basic law of life in all social organisms, as it is of all biological ones; societies are formed, gain strength, and move forwards through conflict; the healthiest and most vital of them assert themselves against the weakest and less well adapted through conflict; the natural evolution of nations and races takes place through conflict. Alfredo Rocco

In Germany, the Nazis utilized social Darwinism to promote their racialist concept of the German nation as being part of the Aryan race and the need for the Aryan race to be strong in order to be victorious in what the Nazis believed was ongoing competition and conflict between races. They attempted to strengthen the Aryan race in Germany by killing those they regarded as weaker. To this end, the Action T4 was introduced in the late 1930s and organized the killing of around roughly 275,000 handicapped and elderly German and non-German civilians using carbon monoxide gas.

Social interventionism

Generally, fascist movements endorsed social interventionism dedicated to influencing society to promote the state's interests. According to G.V. Rimlinger, one cannot speak of “fascist social policy” as a single concept with logical and internally consistent ideas and common identifiable goals.

Fascists spoke of creating a "new man" and a "new civilization" as part of their intention to transform society. Mussolini promised a “social revolution” for “remaking” the Italian people. Adolf Hitler promised to purge Germany of non-Aryan influences on society and create a pure Aryan race through eugenics.

Indoctrination

Fascist states pursued policies of social indoctrination, through propaganda in education and the media, and through regulation of the production of education and media material. Education was designed to glorify the fascist movement and inform students of its historical and political importance to the nation. It attempted to purge ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the fascist movement, and taught students to be obedient to the state.

Thus fascism tends to be anti-intellectual. The Nazis, in particular, despised intellectuals and university professors. Hitler declared them unreliable, useless and even dangerous. He said: "When I take a look at the intellectual classes we have - unfortunately, I suppose, they are necessary; otherwise one could one day, I don't know, exterminate them or something - but unfortunately they're necessary."

Abortion, eugenics and euthanasia

The Fascist government in Italy banned literature on birth control and increased penalties on abortion in 1926, declaring them both crimes against the state. The Nazis decriminalized abortion in cases where fetuses had hereditary defects or were of a race the government disapproved of, while the abortion of healthy "pure" German, "Aryan" fetuses remained strictly forbidden. For non-Aryans, abortion was often compelled. Their eugenics program stemmed also from the "progressive biomedical model" of Weimar Germany.

In 1935 Nazi Germany expanded the legality of abortion by amending its eugenics law, to promote abortion for women with hereditary disorders. The law allowed abortion if a woman gave her permission, and if the fetus was not yet viable, and for purposes of so-called racial hygiene.

Culture, gender and sexuality

Fascism promoted principles of masculine heroism, militarism, and discipline; and rejected cultural pluralism and multiculturalism.

Initially, Italian Fascism officially stood in favour of expanding voting rights to women. In 1920, Benito Mussolini declared that "Fascists do not belong to the crowd of the vain and skeptical who undervalue women's social and political importance. Who cares about voting? You will vote!". Women were briefly given the right to vote until 1925 when the Italian Fascist government abolished elections. In the 1920s, the Italian Fascist government's Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) allowed working women to attend various entertainment and recreation events, including sports that in the past had traditionally been played by men. The regime was criticized by the Roman Catholic Church, which claimed that these activities were causing "masculinization" of women. The Fascists responded to such criticism by restricting women to only being allowed to take part in "feminine" sports, forbidding them to be part of sports that were played mostly by men.

Mussolini perceived women's primary role as childbearers while men should be warriors, once saying "war is to man what maternity is to the woman". The Italian Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised large families and initiated policies designed to reduce the number of women employed, in an effort to increase birthrates. Italian Fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation" and the Italian Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian nation. In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment", which Italy was facing at the time and said that women working was "incompatible with childbearing". Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force".

Nazi policies toward women strongly encouraged them to stay at home to bear children and keep house. This policy was reinforced by bestowing the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more babies. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Nazi propaganda sometimes promoted premarital and extramarital sexual relations, unwed motherhood and divorce, but at other times the Nazis opposed such behaviour. The growth of Nazi power, however, was accompanied by a breakdown of traditional sexual morals with regard to extramarital sex and licentiousness.

Fascist movements and governments opposed homosexuality. The Italian Fascist government declared it illegal in Italy in 1931. The Nazis thought homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate, perverted and undermined the masculinity which they promoted, because it did not produce children. They considered homosexuality curable through therapy, citing modern scientism and the study of sexology, which said that homosexuality could be felt by "normal" people and not just an abnormal minority. Critics have claimed that the Nazis' claim of scientific reasons for their promotion of racism, and hostility to homosexuals is pseudoscience,. Open homosexuals were among those interned in Nazi concentration camps. The British Union of Fascists opposed homosexuality and pejoratively questioned their opponents' heterosexuality. The Romanian Iron Guard opposed homosexuality as undermining society.

Economic policies

Further information: Economics of fascism

Fascists promoted their ideology as a "Third Position" between capitalism and communism. Italian Fascism involved corporatism, a political system in which the economy is collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at national level. Fascists advocated a new national class-based economic system, variously termed "national corporatism", "national socialism" or "national syndicalism". The common aim of all fascist movements was elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, the existence of large-scale capitalism.

Fascist governments exercised control over private property but did not nationalize it. They pursued economic policies to strengthen state power and spread ideology, such as consolidating trade unions to be state or party-controlled. Attempts were made by both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to establish "autarky" (self-sufficiency) through significant economic planning, but neither achieved economic self-sufficiency.

National corporatism, national socialism and national syndicalism

Fascists supported the unifying of proletarian workers to their cause along corporatistic, socialistic, or syndicalistic lines, promoting the creation of a strong proletarian nation, but not a proletarian class. Italian Fascism's economy was based on corporatism and a number of other fascist movements similarly promoted corporatism. Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists described fascist corporatism, saying that "it means a nation organized as the human body, with each organ performing its individual function but working in harmony with the whole". Fascists were not hostile to the petite bourgeoisie or to small businesses, and promised these groups protection alongside the proletariat from the upper-class bourgeoisie, big business, and Marxism. The promotion of these groups is the source of the term 'extremism of the centre' to describe fascism.

Fascism blamed capitalist liberal democracies for creating class conflict and communists for exploiting it. In Italy, the Fascist period presided over the creation of the largest number of state-owned enterprises in Western Europe such as the nationalisation of petroleum companies into a single state enterprise called the Italian General Agency for Petroleum (Azienda Generale Italiani Petroli, AGIP). Fascists made populist appeals to the middle class (especially the lower middle class) by promising to protect small business and small property owners from communism, and by promising an economy based on competition and profit while pledging to oppose big business.

In 1933, Benito Mussolini declared Italian Fascism's opposition to "decadent capitalism" that he claimed prevailed in the world at the time, but did not denounce capitalism entirely. Mussolini claimed that capitalism had degenerated in three stages, starting with dynamic or heroic capitalism (1830–1870) followed by static capitalism (1870–1914) and then reaching its final form of decadent capitalism, also known as supercapitalism beginning in 1914. Mussolini argued that Italian Fascism was in favour of dynamic and heroic capitalism for its contribution to industrialism and technical developments but claimed that it did not favour supercapitalism, which he claimed was incompatible with Italy's agricultural sector.

Thus Mussolini claimed that Italy under Fascist rule was not capitalist in the modern use of the term, which referred to supercapitalism. Mussolini denounced supercapitalism for causing the "standardization of humankind" and for causing excessive consumption. Mussolini claimed that at the stage of supercapitalism "[it] is then that a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention begins and becomes more necessary. It is then that those who once ignored the state now seek it out anxiously." He saw Fascism as the next logical step to solve the problems of supercapitalism and claimed that this step could be seen either as a form of capitalism which involved state intervention, saying "our path would lead inexorably into state capitalism, which is nothing more nor less than state socialism turned on its head. In either event, the result is the bureaucratization of the economic activities of the nation."

Some fascists were indifferent or hostile to corporatism. The Nazis initially attempted to form a corporatist economic system like that in Fascist Italy, creating the National Socialist Institute for Corporatism in May 1933, which included many major economists who argued that corporatism was consistent with National Socialism.. In Mein Kampf, Hitler spoke enthusiastically about the "National Socialist corporative idea" as one which would eventually "take the place of ruinous class warfare" However, the Nazis later viewed corporatism as detrimental to Germany and that it institutionalized and legitimized social differences within the German nation. Instead, the Nazis promoted economic organisation that emphasized the biological unity of the German national community.

Hitler continued to refer to corporatism in propaganda, but it was not put into place, even though a number of Nazi officials such as Walther Darré, Gottfried Feder, Alfred Rosenburg, and Gregor Strasser were in favour of a neo-medievalist form of corporatism, as corporations had been influential in German people's history in the medieval era.

Spanish Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera did not believe that corporatism was effective and denounced it as a propaganda ploy, saying "this stuff about the corporative state is another piece of windbaggery".

Economic planning

Fascism is capitalism in decay.

— Vladimir Lenin

Fascists opposed laissez-faire economic policies dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression. After the Great Depression began, many people from across the political spectrum blamed laissez-faire capitalism for the Great Depression, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and communism.

Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering. Nazis and other anti-Semitic fascists considered finance capitalism a "parasitic" "Jewish conspiracy". Fascist governments nationalized some key industries, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments. They introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic interventionist measures.

Private property rights were supported, but were contingent upon service to the state. For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labour than he would find profitable." According to historian Tibor Ivan Berend, dirigisme was an inherent aspect of fascist economies. The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7: "The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation", then goes on to say in article 9: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."

Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual." They also introduced price controls and other types of economic planning measures.

Fascism had a social Darwinist view of human relations. They promoted the interests of successful businesses while banning trade unions and other workers' organizations. Mussolini wrote approvingly of the notion that profits should not, for any purpose, be taken away from those who produce them from their own labour, saying "I do not respect — I even hate — those men that leech a tenth of the riches produced by others".

Social welfare

Benito Mussolini promised a "social revolution" that would "remake" the Italian people. According to Patricia Knight, this was only achieved in part. The people who primarily benefited from Italian fascist social policies were members of the middle and lower-middle classes, who filled jobs in the vastly expanding government workforce, which grew to about a million in 1930. Health and welfare spending grew dramatically under Italian fascism, with welfare rising from seven percent of the budget in 1930 to 20% in 1940.

A major social welfare initiative in Fascist Italy was the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) or "National After-work Program". Created in 1925, it was the state's largest recreational organisation for adults. The Dopolavoro was responsible for establishing and maintaining 11,000 sports grounds, over 6,400 libraries, 800 movie houses, 1,200 theatres, and over 2,000 orchestras. Membership of the Dopolavoro was voluntary, but it had high participation because of its nonpolitical nature. It is estimated that, by 1936, the OND had organised 80 percent of salaried workers and, by 1939, 40 percent of the industrial workforce. The sports activities proved popular with large numbers of workers. The OND had the largest membership of any of the mass Fascist organisations in Italy.

The enormous success of the Dopolavoro in Fascist Italy was the key factor in Nazi Germany creating its own version of the Dopolavoro, the Kraft durch Freude (KdF) or "Strength through Joy" program of the Nazi government's German Labour Front, which was even more successful than the Dopolavoro. KdF provided government-subsidized holidays for German workers. KdF was also responsible for the creation of the original Volkswagen ("People's Car"), a state-manufactured automobile that was meant to be cheap enough to allow all German citizens to be able to own one.

While fascists promoted social welfare to ameliorate economic conditions affecting their nation or race as whole, they did not support social welfare for egalitarian reasons. Fascists criticised egalitarianism as preserving the weak. They promoted instead social Darwinist views, claiming that nations and races must preserve and promote their strengths to ensure survival in a world that is in a perpetual state of national and/or racial conflict and competition. Adolf Hitler was opposed to egalitarian and universal social welfare because, in his view, it encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and feeble. While in power, the Nazis created social welfare programs to deal with the large numbers of unemployed. However, those programs were neither egalitarian nor universal, but instead residual, excluding multiple minority groups and certain other people whom they felt were incapable of helping themselves, and who would pose a threat to the future health of the German people.

Racism and racialism

Fascists are not unified on the issues of racism and racialism. Mussolini, in a 1919 speech to denounce Soviet Russia, claimed that Jewish bankers in London and New York City were bound by the chains of race to Moscow, and claimed that 80 percent of the Soviet leaders were Jews. In his 1920 autobiography, he said: "Race and soil are strong influences upon us all", and said of World War I: "There were seers who saw in the European conflict not only national advantages but the possibility of a supremacy of race". In a 1921 speech in Bologna, Mussolini stated that "Fascism was born... out of a profound, perennial need of this our Aryan and Mediterranean race". Mussolini was concerned with the low birth rates of the white race in contrast with African and Asian races, and in 1928 noted the high birth-rate and presence of blacks in the United States that had surpassed the population of whites in certain areas, such as Harlem in New York City and noted their racial consciousness in comparison with American whites as contributing to their growing strength. On the issue of the low birth rate of whites, Mussolini said in 1928:

[When the] city dies, the nation — deprived of the young life — blood of new generations — is now made up of people who are old and degenerate and cannot defend itself against a younger people which launches an attack on the now unguarded frontiers[...] This will happen, and not just to cities and nations, but on an infinitely greater scale: the whole White race, the Western race can be submerged by other coloured races which are multiplying at a rate unknown in our race.

During the Great Depression Mussolini again addressed his alarm at the low birth rate among whites, claiming with dismay that the situation was not optimistic, saying "The singular, enormous problem is the destiny of the white race. Europe is truly towards the end of its destiny as the leader of civilization." He went on to say that under the circumstances faced "the white race is sickly", "morally and physically in ruin", and stated that with this in combination with the "progress in numbers and in expansion of yellow and black races, the civilization of the white man is destined to perish." To Mussolini, only through promoting natality and eugenics could this be reversed.

Many Italian fascists held anti-Slavist views, especially against neighbouring Yugoslav nations, whom the Italian fascists saw as being in competition with Italy, which had claims on territories of Yugoslavia, particularly Dalmatia. Mussolini claimed that Yugoslavs posed a threat after Italy did not receive the territory along the Adriatic coast at the end of World War I, as promised by the 1915 Treaty of London. He said: "The danger of seeing the Jugo-Slavians settle along the whole Adriatic shore had caused a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions. Students, professors, workmen, citizens—representative men—were entreating the ministers and the professional politicians. Italian fascists accused Serbs of having "atavistic impulses", and of being part of a "social democratic, masonic Jewish internationalist plot". The fascists accused Yugoslavs of conspiring together on behalf of "Grand Orient masonry and its funds".

In 1933, Mussolini contradicted his earlier statements on race, saying: "Race! It is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today. ... National pride has no need of the delirium of race."

At the 1934 Fascist International Congress, the issue of anti-Semitism was debated amongst various fascist parties, with some more favourable to it, and others less favourable. Two final compromises were adopted, creating the official stance of the Fascist International:

[T]he Jewish question cannot be converted into a universal campaign of hatred against the Jews[...] Considering that in many places certain groups of Jews are installed in conquered countries, exercising in an open and occult manner an influence injurious to the material and moral interests of the country which harbors them, constituting a sort of state within a state, profiting by all benefits and refusing all duties, considering that they have furnished and are inclined to furnish, elements conducive to international revolution which would be destructive to the idea of patriotism and Christian civilization, the Conference denounces the nefarious action of these elements and is ready to combat them.

Relation to religion

The attitude of fascism toward religion has run the gamut from persecution, to denunciation, to cooperation, to embrace. Stanley Payne notes that fundamental to fascism was the foundation of a purely materialistic "civic religion" that would "displace preceding structures of belief and relegate supernatural religion to a secondary role, or to none at all", and that "though there were specific examples of religious or would-be 'Christian fascists,' fascism presupposed a post-Christian, post-religious, secular, and immanent frame of reference."

According to Payne, such "would be" religious fascists only gain hold where traditional belief is weakened or absent, as fascism seeks to create new non-rationalist myth structures for those who no longer hold a traditional view. The rise of modern secularism in Europe and Latin America, and the incursion and large-scale adoption of western secular culture in the mid-east leave a void where this modern secular ideology, sometimes under a religious veneer, can take hold.

Many fascists were anti-clerical in both private and public life. Although both Hitler and Mussolini were anti-clerical, they both understood that it would be rash to begin their Kulturkampfs prematurely, such a clash, possibly inevitable in the future, being put off while they dealt with other enemies. Hitler had a general plan, even before the Nazis' rise to power, to destroy Christianity within the Reich. Many Italian Fascists were disgusted by Mussolini's decision to abandon Fascism's anti-clericalism in favour of reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church.

The leader of the Hitler Youth stated "the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement" from the start, but "considerations of expedience made it impossible" publicly to express this extreme position. In Mexico, the Red Shirts were vehemently atheist, renounced religion, killed priests, and on one occasion gunned down Catholics as they left Mass.

According to a biographer of Mussolini, "Initially, fascism was fiercely anti-Catholic" — the Church being a competitor for dominion of the people's hearts. Mussolini, originally an atheist, published anti-Catholic writings and planned for the confiscation of Church property, but eventually moved to accommodation. Mussolini endorsed the Roman Catholic Church for political legitimacy, as during the Lateran Treaty talks, Fascist Party officials engaged in bitter arguments with Vatican officials and put pressure on them to accept the terms that the regime deemed acceptable. Protestantism in Italy was not as significant as Catholicism, and the Protestant minority was persecuted. Mussolini's sub-secretary of Interior, Bufferini-Guidi issued a memo closing all houses of worship of the Italian Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses, and imprisoned their leaders. In some instances, people were killed because of their faith.

A number of Italian Fascists were disgusted by Mussolini's decision to seek reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Ustaše in Croatia had strong Catholic overtones, with some clerics in positions of power. The fascist movement in Romania, known as the Iron Guard or the Legion of Archangel Michael, preceded its meetings with a church service, and their demonstrations were usually led by priests carrying icons and religious flags. The Romanian fascist movement promoted a cult of "suffering, sacrifice and martyrdom."

In Latin America, the most notable fascist movement was Plinio Salgado's Brazilian Integralism. Built on a network of lay religious associations, its vision was of an integral state that "comes from Christ, is inspired in Christ, acts for Christ, and goes toward Christ." Salgado, however, criticised the "dangerous pagan tendencies of Hitlerism".

Hitler and the Nazi regime attempted to found their own version of Christianity called Positive Christianity which made major changes in its interpretation of the Bible which said that Jesus Christ was the son of God, but was not a Jew; they further claimed that Christ despised Jews, and that the Jews were the ones solely responsible for his death. By 1940, however, it was public knowledge that Hitler had abandoned even the syncretist idea of a positive Christianty.

The Catholic Church was particularly suppressed by Nazis in Poland. In addition to the deaths of some 3 million Polish Jews, 2 million Polish Catholics were killed. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 3,000 polish clergy (18 percent) were murdered; of these, 1,992 died in concentration camps. In the annexed territory of Reichsgau Wartheland it was even harsher than elsewhere. Churches were systematically closed, and most priests were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government.

The Germans also closed seminaries and convents persecuting monks and nuns throughout Poland. Eighty percent of the Catholic clergy and five of the bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration camps in 1939; in Chełmno, 48 percent. Of those murdered by the Nazi regime, 108 are regarded as blessed martyrs. Among them, Maximilian Kolbe was canonized as a saint. Not only in Poland were Christians persecuted by the Nazis. In the Dachau concentration camp alone, 2,600 Catholic priests from 24 different countries were killed.

One theory is that religion and fascism could never have a lasting connection because both are a "holistic weltanschauung" claiming the whole of the person. Along these lines, Yale political scientist, Juan Linz and others have noted that secularization had created a void which could be filled by a total ideology, making totalitarianism possible, and Roger Griffin has characterized fascism as a type of anti-religious political religion. Such political religions vie with existing religions, and try, if possible, to replace or eradicate them.

Variations and subforms

See also: European fascist ideologies

Movements identified by scholars as fascist hold a variety of views, and what qualifies as fascism is often a hotly contested subject. The original movement which self-identified as Fascist was that of Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party. Intellectuals such as Giovanni Gentile produced The Doctrine of Fascism and founded the ideology.

The majority of strains which emerged after the original fascism, but are sometimes placed under the wider usage of the term, self-identified their parties with different names. Major examples include; Falangism, Integralism, Iron Guard and Nazism as well as various other designations.

Europe

See also: European fascist ideologies

Italian Fascism

Main article: Italian Fascism

See also: The Doctrine of Fascism, Actual Idealism, and March on Rome

Benito Mussolini

Fascism was born during a period of social and political unrest following World War I. The war had seen Italy begin to feel a sense of nationalism, rather than its historic regionalism. Despite being an Allied Power, Italy was given what nationalists considered an unfair deal at the Treaty of Versailles.

When the other allies told Italy to hand over the city of Fiume at the Paris Peace Conference, war veteran Gabriele d'Annunzio declared the independent state there, the Italian Regency of Carnaro. He named himself Duce of the nation and declared a constitution, the Charter of Carnaro, which was highly influential to early Fascism, though he himself never became a fascist.

Flag of the National Fascist Party.

Benito Mussolini founded Italian fascism as the Fasci italiani di combattimento after he returned from World War I, and published a Fascist manifesto. The birth of the Fascist movement can be traced to a meeting he held in the Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan on March 23, 1919, which declared the original principles of the Fascists through a series of declarations.

These included a dedication to Italian war veterans, a declaration of the fascists' loyalty to Italy and its opposition to foreign aggressors, a pronouncment that the fascists would fight against other political factions and a declaration of opposition to bolshevism and socialism, particularly the socialism of the Italian Socialist Party. They also declared their intention to seize power and their opposition to the multiparty representative democracy in Italy.

The fascists took a moderate stance on the economy, effectively declaring that they favoured class collaboration while opposing excessive state intervention into the economy, and calling for pressure on industrialists and workers to be cooperative and constructive, saying: "As for economic democracy, we favour national syndicalism and reject State intervention whenever it aims at throttling the creation of wealth."

Mussolini and the fascists were simultaneously revolutionary and traditionalist. because this was vastly different from anything else in the political climate of the time, it is sometimes described as "The Third Way". The Fascisti, led by one of Mussolini's close confidants, Dino Grandi, formed armed squads of war veterans called Blackshirts (or squadristi) with the goal of restoring order. The blackshirts clashed with communists, socialists and anarchists at parades and demonstrations. The government rarely interfered with the blackshirts' actions, due in part to a widespread fear of a Communist revolution.

The Fascisti grew so rapidly that within two years, it transformed itself into the National Fascist Party at a congress in Rome. Also in 1921, Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time and was later appointed as Prime Minister by the King in 1922. He then went on to install a dictatorship after 10 June 1924 assassination of anti-fascist writer Giacomo Matteotti by agents of the Mussolini's Ceka secret police.

Mussolini's colonialism reached further into Africa in an attempt to compete with British and French colonial empires. Mussolini spoke of making Italy a nation that was "great, respected and feared" throughout Europe, and indeed the world. An early example was his bombardment of Corfu in 1923. Soon after he succeeded in setting up a puppet regime in Albania and forcibly ended a rebellion in Libya, which had been a colony (loosely) since 1912. It was his dream to make the Mediterranean mare nostrum ("our sea" in Latin).

Nazism (National Socialism, Germany)

Main articles: Nazism and National Socialism

Flag of the German Nazi Party

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) ruled Germany from 1933 until 1945. The party was originally formed as the German Workers' Party under the leadership of Anton Drexler, and espoused a combination of racialist völkisch nationalism and socialism that rejected the conditions imposed on Germany after World War I. The party accused international capitalism of being Jewish-dominated, and denounced capitalists for war profiteering in World War I. To ease concerns among potential middle-class nationalist supporters, Drexler made clear that unlike Marxists, the party supported middle-class citizens, and that the party's socialist policy was meant to give social welfare to all German citizens who were deemed part of the Aryan race.

Drexler's insistence on the inclusion of the term "socialist" in the party's name had caused tension amongst members of the party including then-member Adolf Hitler, who preferred that the party be named the "Social Revolutionary Party", until Rudolf Jung persuaded him to support the name "National Socialist German Workers' Party". Drexler was ousted from the leadership in 1921 by Hitler, who secured himself the position of undisputed and permanent leader of the party.

Hitler admired Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascists, and after Mussolini's successful March on Rome in 1922, presented the Nazis as a German version of Italian Fascism. Hitler endorsed Italian Fascism, saying that "with the victory of fascism in Italy the Italian people has triumphed [over] Jewry" and appraised Mussolini as "the brilliant statesman". Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's chief propagandist, credited Italian Fascism with starting a conflict against liberal democracy, saying:

The march on Rome was a signal, a sign of storm for liberal-democracy. It is the first attempt to destroy the world of the liberal-democratic spirit[...] which started in 1789 with the storm on the Bastille and conquered one country after another in violent revolutionary upheavals, to let... the nations go under in Marxism, democracy, anarchy and class warfare...

Following the Italians' example, the Nazis attempted a "March on Berlin" to topple the Weimar Republic, which they characterised as "Marxist".

Days after Mussolini rose to power in October 1922, the major British national newspaper The Times referred to Hitler as Mussolini's promising pupil in Germany. A month after Mussolini had risen to power, amid claims by the Nazis that they were equivalent to the Italian fascists, Hitler's popularity in Germany began to grow, and large crowds began to attend Nazi rallies. The newspaper Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger featured a front page article about Hitler, saying "There are a lot of people who believe him to be the German Mussolini".

Adolf Hitler, German Nazi leader

In private, Mussolini expressed dislike of Hitler and the Nazis, seeing them as mere imitators of Italian Fascism. When Mussolini met with the Italian Consul in Munich prior to the Nazis' failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, he stated that the Nazis were "buffoons". However by 1928, the Italian Fascist government recognized the utility of the Nazis and began to financially subsidize the Nazi party.

Hitler remained impressed by Mussolini and Fascist Italy for many years in spite of resentments towards Italy by other Nazis. During the period of positive outlook towards Fascist Italy, Hitler became an Italophile. Hitler like Mussolini profoundly admired Ancient Rome, and repeatedly mentioned it in Mein Kampf as being a model for Germany. In particular, Hitler admired ancient Rome's authoritarian culture, imperialism, town planning, and architecture, which were incorporated by the Nazis. Hitler considered the ancient Romans to have been a master race.

In an unpublished sequel to Mein Kampf, Hitler declared that he held no antagonism towards Italy for having waged war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I, saying that it was only in Italy became at war with Germany because of Germany's alliance with Austria Hungary which Italy had territorial claims on. Hitler declared his sympathy to the Italians for desiring to regain Italian-populated lands held by Austria-Hungary, claiming it was naturally in Italians' national interest to wage war to regain those lands.

Hitler made controversial concessions to gain Fascist Italy's approval and alliance, such as abandoning territorial claims on the Tyrol region of Italy that had a dense population of hundreds of thousands of Germans. In Mein Kampf Hitler declared that it was not in Germany's interest to have war with Italy over South Tyrol.

The Nazis gained political power in Germany's government through a democratic election in 1932. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany following the 1933 election, subsequently putting into place the Enabling Act of 1933, which effectively gave him the power of a dictator, except over the German Roman Catholic Church, which was under the Vatican. The Nazis announced a national rebirth, in the form of the Third Reich, nicknamed the Thousand Year Empire, promoted as a successor to the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire.

Although the modern consensus sees Nazism as a type of generic fascism, some scholars, including Gilbert Allardyce, Zeev Sternhell, Karl Dietrich Bracher and A.F.K. Organski, argue that Nazism is not fascism– either because it is different in character or because they believe fascism cannot be generically defined. Nazism differed from Italian fascism in that it had a stronger emphasis on race, religion, and ethnicity, especially exhibited as antisemitism. Roger Griffin, a leading exponent of the generic fascism theory, wrote:

It might well be claimed that Nazism and Italian fascism were separate species within the same genus, without any implicit assumption that the two species ought to be well-nigh identical. Ernst Nolte has stated that the differences could be easily reconciled by employing a term such as 'radical fascism' for Nazism. ... The establishment of fundamental generic characteristics linking Nazism to movements in other parts of Europe allows further consideration on a comparative basis of the reasons why such movements were able to become a real political danger and gain power in Italy and Germany, whereas in other European countries they remained an unpleasant, but transitory irritant...

Sternhell views Nazism as separate from fascism:

Fascism can in no way be identified with Nazism. Undoubtedly the two ideologies, the two movements, and the two regimes had common characteristics. They often ran parallel to one another or overlapped, but they differed on one fundamental point: the criterion of German national socialism was biological determination. The basis of Nazism was a racism in its most extreme sense, and the fight against Jews, against 'inferior' races, played a more preponderant role in it than the struggle against communism.

Iron Guard (Romania)

Main article: Iron Guard

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

Symbol of the Iron Guard .

The Iron Guard was a fascist movement and political party in Romania from 1927 to 1941. It was briefly in power from September 14, 1940 until January 21, 1941. It was founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu on 24 July 1927 as the "Legion of the Archangel Michael" (Legiunea Arhanghelului Mihail), and it was led by him until his death in 1938.

Adherents to the movement continued to be widely referred to as "legionnaires" (sometimes "legionaries"; Romanian: legionari) and the organization as the "Legion" or the "Legionary Movement" (Mişcarea Legionară), despite various changes of the (intermittently banned) organization's name.

It was strongly anti-Semitic, promoting the idea that "Rabbinical aggression against the Christian world" in "unexpected 'protean forms': Freemasonry, Freudianism, homosexuality, atheism, Marxism, Bolshevism, the civil war in Spain, and social democracy" were undermining society.

The Iron Guard "inserted strong elements of Orthodox Christianity into its political doctrine to the point of becoming one of the rare modern European political movements with a religious ideological structure."

Falangism (Spain)

Main article: Falangism

See also: Falangism in Latin America and Kataeb Party

Falangism was a form of fascism founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1934, emerging during the Second Spanish Republic. Primo de Rivera was the son of Spain's former dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera. Following the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic Spain went from a kingdom into a republic.

Primo de Rivera, inspired by Mussolini, founded the Falange Española party, which merged a year later with the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista party of Ramiro Ledesma and Onésimo Redondo. The party and Primo de Rivera presented the Falange Manifesto in November 1934; it promoted nationalism, unity, glorification of the Spanish Empire and dedication to the national syndicalism economic policy, inspired by integralism in which there is class collaboration. The manifesto supported agrarianism, to improve the standard of living for the peasants of the rural areas, anti-capitalism and anti-Marxism. The Falange participated in the Spanish general election, 1936 with low results compared to the leftist Popular Front, but soon after increased in membership rapidly.

Flag of the FET and JONS parties.

Primo de Rivera was captured by Republicans on 6 July 1936 and held in captivity at Alicante. The Spanish Civil War broke out on 17 July 1936 between the Republicans and the Nationalists, with the Falangistas fighting for Nationalist cause. Despite his incarceration Primo de Rivera was a strong symbol of the cause, referred to as El Ausente, meaning "the Absent One". He was summarily executed on 20 November after a trial by socialists.

General Francisco Franco, already the leader of the rebel Nationalists, took over the leadership of the Falangists. Franco's focus was on victory in the war, and ensuring important flows of material from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, so he was less ideological than his predecessor.

A merger between the Falange and the Carlists took place in 1937, creating the FET y de las JONS, a more traditionalist, conservative party than the original Falagnists, and one which is described by some "authentic" Falangists as a move away from the party's original fascist principles. Franco balanced several different interests of elements in his party, in an effort to keep them united, especially in regard to the question of monarchy.

Franco's traditionalist, conservative stance means the Francoist regime is not generally considered to be fascist, as it lacked any revolutionary, transformative aspect. Stanley G. Payne, author of "Falange: a history of Spanish fascism", and supporter of minority revisionist historians who see the Spanish civil war as a result of leftist influences, wrote: "scarcely any of the serious historians and analysts of Franco consider the generalissimo to be a core fascist." Those who fought in the civil war against Franco saw it as a fight against Fascism even if it meant as Roman Catholics going against the prevailing sentiments of their Church.

The ideas of Falangism were also exported, mainly to parts of the Hispanosphere, especially in South America. In some countries these movements were obscure, in others they had some impact. The Bolivian Socialist Falange under Óscar Únzaga provided significant competition to the ruling government during the 1950s until the 1970s.

In Peru, Catholic activist Luis Fernando Figari attempted to promote the ideals of Falangism, creating the youth Catholic association Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, in which, during the 70's, future members were educated in the official social doctrine of the Church as well in the Falangismo. Falangism was significant in Lebanon through the Kataeb Party and its founder Pierre Gemayel, fighting for national independence which was won in 1943.

Americas

Integralism (Brazil)

Main article: Brazilian Integralism

Integralist Flag

Brazilian Integralism (Ação Integralista Brasileira) was a form of fascism founded by Plinio Salgado in Brazil in October 1932. It is considered by many historians as the best, and maybe one of the only adaptations of fascist ideals in Latin America. From his magazine, Hierarquía directly inspired on “Gerarchia” from Italy, they persuade a great number of intellectuals to enter the group. 400,000 members were gained in the first two years alone, and by 1937 they were one of the most important parties in Latin America with around one million members.

They took many ideals from fascism instead of the “Italianità” and “Romanità”, in Italy they took the "Brasilianidade". Their principles included Corporativism, Catholicism, and like other fascist movements exhbitied forms of an anti-capitalist, and anti-communist agenda. They also took up and formed armed squads, nicknamed Greenshirts.

Asia

Kai-tsu p'ai faction of the Kuomintang (China)

Wang Jingwei receiving Nazi diplomats while head of state of China-Nanjing in 1941.

Wang Jingwei, a left-wing nationalist and anti-communist member of the Kai-tsu p'ai (Reorganization) faction of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China), was originally hostile to fascism in Europe, but gradually drifted to be in favour of fascism, especially because of Nazi Germany's economic policies of the late 1930s. Wang Jingwei visited Germany in 1936 and changed his views about fascism, speaking positively about European fascist states, saying, "Several advanced countries have already expanded their national vitality and augmented their people's strength, and are no longer afraid of foreign aggression." During World War II, Wang Jingwei became head of the Republic of China-Nanjing, a Japanese client state.

Flag of the Republic of China-Nanjing under the Kai-tsu p'ai.

T'iang Leang-Li of the People's Tribune newspaper, which was associated with the Kai-tsu p'ai, promoted the positive nature of fascism in Europe while attempting to distance Kai-tsu p'ai from the overtly negative aspects of fascism. He wrote in 1937: "Whatever we may think about fascist and Nazi methods and policies, we must recognize the fact that their leaders have secured the enthusiastic support of their respective nations". T'iang Leang-Li claimed that the "foolish, unwise, and even cruel things" done in the fascist states had been done in a positive manner to bring about "tremendous change in the political outlook of the German and Italian people".

T'iang Leang-Li wrote articles that positively assessed the "socialist" character of Nazism. Similarly, Shih Shao-pei of the Kai-tsu p'ai rebuked Chinese critics of Nazism by saying "We in China [...] have heard too much about the 'national' and other flagwaving activities of the Nazis, and not enough about the 'socialist' work they are doing." Shih Shao-pei wrote about improved working conditions in German factories, the vacations given to employees by the Kraft durch Freude organization, improved employer-employee relations, and the provision of public service work camps for the unemployed. Another article by the People's Tribune said Nazism was bringing the "integration of the working classes ... into the National Socialist state and the abolition of ... the evil elements of modern capitalism".

Middle East

At least four Arab countries had developed fascist-type movements by 1939: Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq. among the pre WW2 Arab-Nazi organizations were: the Iron Shirts (led by Fakhri al-Barudi of the National Bloc, still a member of the Syrian parliament in 1946); the League for National Action (headed by Abdu al-Huda al-Yab, Dr. Zaki al-Jabi and others); the An-Nadi al-Arabi Club of Damascus (headed by Dr. Said Abd Al-Fattah al-Imam); the Councils for the Defense of Arab Palestine (head by well known pro-Nazi leaders, such as Nabi al-Azmah, Adil Arslan and others); the Syrian People's Party SSNP.

The three groups most directly influenced by European fascism were the Iraqi Futuwwa, the Young Egypt Association (green shirts) and the Syrian People's Party (Syrian Nationalist Socialist Party, SSNP, modeled on Hitler's Nazi Party, its symbol, a curved swastika on its flag, called the Zawbah, , it's founder Sa'ada was known as al-za'in (the Führer) and the party anthem was "Syria, Syria, über alles" sung to the same tune as German, ), they were territorially expansionist, with Sami Shawkat, the Futuwwa ideologue, envisioning the “Arab nation” as eventually covering half the globe (by conversion).

Despite Arabs showing support for fascism, the Nazis were clear in their minds that the Arabs were racially inferior, and there would, therefore, be no pleasure to be had from helping them in anything except for the extermination of Jews in their region. , most Arabs never realized that the Nazis would consider them racially inferior as well. Although he loathed Arabs, he once described them as "lacquered half-apes who ought to be whipped" , Hitler understood that he and the Mufti shared the same rivals - the British, the Jews and the Communists.

Al-Muthanna & al-Futuwwa

The al-Muthanna Club and its al-Futuwwa movement, were part of Pan-Arabists' proto-fascist organizations developed during the 1930s.

The al-Muthanna Club & its al-Futuwwa youth wing came about the same time, as Iraqi pan-Arab government supported forum for pan-Arab activists, consisting of both young officers and leading educators, in early 1935. The reformation conducted by the Ministry of Education in October 1935, together with the army's establishment of the Al-Futuwa youth movement in 1931, combined to create a full fledged paramilitary organization under the command of the Ministry's general director, Dr. Sami Shawkat, which imitated, modeled after the Hitler Jugend.

The fascist Pan-Arab al-Muthanna club delivered speeches supporting Nazism, and with its (Hitler Youth-type movement) al-Futuwwa have participated in the 1941 Farhud attack on Baghdad's Jewish community. , following agitation by Dr. Sāmī Shawkat, a high official in the Ministry of Education in the pre-war years and for a while its director general who was the head of "al-Futuwwa." In one of his addresses, "The Profession of Death," he called on Iraqi youth to adopt the way of life of Nazi Fascists. In another speech he branded the Jews as the enemy from within, who should be treated accordingly. In another, he praised Hitler and Mussolini for eradicating their internal enemies (the Jews). Syrian and Arab Palestinian teachers often supported Shawkat in his preaching. .

Besides espousing a fanatic Pan-Arabism, the Futuwwa adopted a frankly totalitarian ideology

Baathism

The Pan-Arab Baathist movement is believed to be influenced by European fascism, and is widely considered to be fascist.

Although Saddam Hussein never acknowledged the training of a youth brigade, he has, in several past speeches, spoken admiringly of the Hitler Youth. It is widely believed that he belonged to the Futuwa, a paramilitary youth organisation which was modelled on the Hitler Youth and was formed in Baghdad in the late 1950s.

From History channel's '"Saddam and the Third Reich"'

Few people realize that the Ba'ath party was actually formed upon the principles and organizational structure of the Nazi party. Iraq, because of its oil and hatred of Jews, was an important battleground between the Axis and Allied powers in World War II. Nazi propaganda was broadcast throughout Baghdad, and Iraqis often went on rampages against Jews throughout the war. One of the most ardent Nazi supporters during WWII was named Khairallah Talfah. Talfah (Tulfah) was Saddam's uncle. After the war, many of the key Iraqi Nazi supporters, all of whom evaded prosecution, wound up involved in Saddam's rise to power. This special examines the key individuals of the Iraqi-Nazi connection, the little-known battle for Iraq in WWII, and the strange link to Saddam Hussein.

Author Fred Halliday writes about 1958-1979: Arab Nationalism confronting Imperial Iran, Ba'thist ideology, where, under the influence of al-Husri, Iran was presented as the age-old enemy of the Arabs. Al-Husri's impact on the Iraqi education system was made during the period of the monarchy, but it was the Ba'thists, trained in that period and destined to take power later, who brought his ideas to their full, official and racist, culmination. For the Ba'thists their pan-Arab ideology was laced with anti-Persian racism, it rested on the pursuit of anti-Persian themes, over the decade and a half after coming to power, Baghdad organised the expulsion of Iraqis of Persian origin, beginning with 40,000 Fayli Kurds, but totalling up to 200,000 or more, by the early years of the war itself. Such racist policies were reinforced by ideology: in 1981, a year after the start of the Iran-Iraq war, Dar al-Hurriya, the government publishing house, issued "Three_Whom_God_Should_Not_Have_Created." by the author, Khairallah Talfah (Tulfah), the foster-father and father-in-law of Saddam Hussein. Halliday says that it was the Ba'thists too who, claiming to be the defenders of 'Arabism' on the eastern frontiers, brought to the fore the chauvinist myth of Persian migrants and communities in the Gulf.

Para-fascism

See also: Fascist (epithet)

Some states and movements have certain characteristics of fascism, but scholars generally agree they are not fascist. Such putatively fascist groups are generally anti-liberal, anti-communist and use similar political or paramilitary methods to fascists, but lack fascism's revolutionary goal to create a new national character. Para-fascism is a term used to describe authoritarian regimes with aspects that differentiate them from true fascist states or movements.

Para-fascists typically eschewed radical change and some viewed genuine fascists as a threat. Para-fascist states were often the home of genuine fascist movements, which were sometimes suppressed or co-opted, sometimes collaborated with.

Fatherland Front (Austria)

Main article: Austrofascism

File:Engelbert Dollfuß Briefmarke.jpg

Engelbert Dollfuß

Flag of the Fatherland Front of Austria.

"Austrofascism" is a controversial category encompassing various para-fascist and semi-fascist movements in Austria in the 1930s. In particular it refers to the Fatherland Front, which became Austria's sole legal political party in 1934.

The Fatherland Front like fascism promoted corporatism but unlike fascism it did not promote it along secular and totalitarian grounds. Dollfuß rejected the secular totalitarian state and instead promoted Christian corporatism based on Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931). The Fatherland Front's corporatism and Austrian corporatism in general was based on the state corporatist theory of Austrian conservative Othmar Spann.

They were similar in that both served to attack the idea of a class struggle, accusing the left of destroying individuality. The leader of the Fatherland Front, Engelbert Dollfuß, claimed he wanted to "out-Hitler" (überhitlern) Nazism.

Unlike the ethnic nationalism promoted by Italian Fascists and Nazis, the Fatherland Front focused entirely on cultural nationalism such as Austrian identity and distinction from Germany, extolling Austria's ties to the Roman Catholic Church. The notion of the Fatherland Front being fascist is usually based on the regime's support for and ideological similarities with of Fascist Italy, but its intensely conservative nationalism is often distinguished from revolutionary fascism.

Estado Novo (Portugal)

Main article: Estado Novo (Portugal)

File:Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.jpg

Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968.

The Estado Novo ("New State") regime in Portugal from 1933 to 1974 has been described as having close similarities to fascism as well as significant differences. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar rose to power in Portugal as Prime Minister in an army coup in 1932. Salazar created an authoritarian conservative nationalist regime that gave him complete control of government affairs and instituted a police state. Also, like fascism, Salazar instituted economic corporatism and substantial state control over the economy. Salazar like fascist leaders, denounced democracy as detrimental to nations. While Salazar promoted nationalism, he personally made distinction between his regime's nationalism and fascism's aggressive nationalism, saying in 1934, "Portugal has no need of wars, usurptions, or conquests". Salazar described his regime's nationalism as "sane and non-aggressive". In 1936, Salazar denounced the totalitarianism of fascism, Nazism, and communism. Salazar in particular criticized the "pagan" nature of Italian Fascism, claiming that it "recognizes no moral or legal order".

Metaxas' 4th of August Regime (Greece)

Labyris, the ancient Greek double-axe that was the symbol of Greece under Metaxas' rule

Main article: 4th of August Regime

File:Metaxas.jpg

Ioannis Metaxas, Prime Minister of Greece from 1936 to 1941.

Greece from 1936 to 1941 was a constitutional monarchy with the government in control of general Ioannis Metaxas as a dictator who created an authoritarian state based on fascism, Francisco Franco's regime in Spain, and Salazar's regime in Portugal. Metaxas promoted Greek nationalism, promoting a restoration of Hellenic civilization. The Metaxas regime used a fasces-like symbol for the regime, the Labrys, an ancient Greek double-axe. Under Metaxas, Greek officials adopted the straight-armed salute. Unlike fascism, Metaxas' government did not have a political party in control of the state.

Metaxas' regime's relation with fascist states disintegrated in 1940 to 1941 with the invasion of Greece by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany which toppled the regime.

Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Japan)

Symbol of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association.

Main article: Taisei Yokusankai

Fumimaro Konoe founded the Imperial Rule Assistance Association in 1940.

The Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai) was a coalition of fascist and nationalist political movements of Japan such as the Imperial Way Faction (Kōdōha) and the Society of the East (Tōhōkai). It was formed under the guidance of Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe who was seeking to unify competing Japanese fascist and nationalist groups to reduce political friction and strengthen relations with the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy. Prior to creation of the IRAA, Konoe had already effectively nationalized strategic industries, the news media, and labour unions, in preparation for total war with China.

Konoe's successor, Hideki Tōjō entrenched the IRAA as the country's ruling political movement, and attempted to establish himself as the absolute leader, or Shogun, of Japan. In contrast to European fascism, though, the cult of personality for the movement focused not on the head of government, but on the Emperor of Japan.

The IRAA created Tonarigumi (Neighbourhood Association) and youth organisations, in which participation was mandatory. After the 1942 general election, all members of the Japanese parliament were forced to become members of the IRAA, making Japan a single-party state.

The IRAA government promoted Japanese expansionism and imperialism, declaring that Japan would form and lead a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

Criticism of fascism as an ideology

Fascism has been widely criticized and condemned since the end of World War II on a variety of reasons.

Fascism as inconsistent, incoherent, or opportunist politics

Aside from criticism on issues within fascism, there have been critiques and debate of its nature as to whether it is a coherent ideology. One view on this issue by critics is that fascism is not a real ideology at all. This view claims that fascism is a form of irrational and opportunist politics only committed to nihilistic violence that has no logical or rational definition and that its official ideological components are only tools of propaganda that are often contradictory.

This criticism of fascism as having no basis has been critiqued for viewing fascism as a whole rather than recognizing the basis of fascism as a national phenomenon associated with Italy that cannot be exactly replicated in a generic form. Furthermore, the criticism of fascism being mostly based on rhetorical propaganda has been challenged by others who note that fascism's intellectual background was highly influenced by its anti-positivism, Georg Sorel's mobilizing myth, and Gustave Le Bon's theories on crowd psychology. For fascists, World War I had been a turning point that for them demonstrated that nationalism had surpassed worker's revolution as the great mobilizing myth.

Fascism as a capitalist tyranny

Marxists accuse fascism of being a capitalist tyranny that attempts to make conservative reaction popular to the working class but in practice represses the working class. Marxist-Leninist interpretations condemn fascism as a "political offensive of the [entire] bourgeosie against the working class"; a servant of "big business", "large landowners", as well as agrarian and industrialist capitalism. Hungarian communist Djula Sas in 1923 made a more detailed critical description of fascism, in which he noted that six months after rising to power Italian Fascists had dismantled working-class organizations; significantly reduced wages in certain areas; abolished taxes on inheritance and war profits; and emphasized the need for "national production". To Sas, these actions to him clearly indicated that fascism was in the service of industrial capitalism.

Marxist interpretations of fascism are typically based on a developmental approach. The Marxian developmental perspective on fascism has been criticized for failing to explain why fascism has not appeared in developing countries. Furthermore Marxist interpretations of fascism have lumped multiple movements with significant differences to fascism as being "fascist". As a result, the components of developmental approach have resulted even some communist regimes as being declared "fascist" such as Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. The Marxian perspective of fascism has also been rebuked for focusing on fascism's accomodation to conservative groups when in power while ignoring the original Italian Fascism's initial radicalism that was briefly restored at the end of World War II. Furthermore fascists were not exclusively dominated by upper classes and some were overtly hostile to the upper classes, the Iron Guard of Romania held most support amongst peasants rather than the upper classes and the anti-Semitic fascist Arrow Cross Party of Hungary focused its attacks on Hungary's aristocracy that had many Jews within it.

Furthermore, the Marxian perspective has been rebuked for focusing on certain elements of fascism's economic policy. While fascists did violently suppress trade unions that were not loyal to the state, fascists supported and enacted social welfare policies to assist workers that was designed to end working class alienation from the state. Claims by Marxists that fascism is a representation of "decaying capitalism" that inevitably results in "pandemic unemployment" has been challenged by research. Since standardized figures for the Italian economy became available after World War II, it has been discovered that during the Fascist era the unemployment rate in Italy never exceeded 5.9 percent, while in 1932, the unemployment rate was at 14.8 percent in Germany, 11.7 in the United Kingdom, and 24.7 percent in the United States. Critics of the Marxist interpretation of fascism have noted that while agrarian and industrial interests did provide support to Mussolini to help neutralize revolutionary socialists, Mussolini himself always sought to maintain political independence from any particular interest group. In addition, critics of Marxist theory note that Mussolini and the Fascist regime sought to subordinate business to follow the agenda of the regime, and Mussolini even had business leaders whom he distrusted, exiled. In some cases, the Italian Fascist regime made decisions that were unfavourable to business and financial interests but politically favourable to the regime. Furthermore, unlike proponents of capitalism, fascism did not idealize materialism and economic growth for its own sake.

Fascism ephipet

For use in sensationalism, see: Fascist_(epithet)

References

Primary sources

• Gentile, Giovanni. 1932. The Doctrine of Fascism. Enciclopedia Italiana.
• de Oliveira Salazar, António. 1939. Doctrine and Action: Internal and Foreign Policy of the New Portugal, 1928-1939. Faber and Faber.
• Mosley, Sir Oswald. 1968. My Life. Nelson Publications.
• de Rivera, José Antonio Primo. 1971. Textos de Doctrina Politica. Madrid.
• Mussolini, Benito. 1998. My Rise And Fall . Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306808641
• Ciano, Galezzo. 2001. The Ciano Diaries, 1939—1943. Simon Publications. ISBN 1931313741
• Mussolini, Benito. 2006. My Autobiography: With "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism". Dover Publications. ISBN 0486447774

Secondary sources

• Evans, Richard J, The Third Reich in Power: 1933-1939, The Penguin Press HC, 2005
• De Felice, Renzo. 1976. Fascism: An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice. Transaction Books. ISBN 0878556192
• De Felice, Renzo. 1977. Interpretations of Fascism. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674459628.
• Kitsikis, Dimitri. 2005. Pour une étude scientifique du fascisme. Ars Magna Editions. ISBN 2-912164-11-7.
• Kitsikis, Dimitri. 2006. Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines françaises du fascisme. Ars Magna Editions. ISBN 2-912164-46-X.
• Ben-Am, Shlomo. 1983. Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain, 1923-1930. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198225962
• Payne, Stanley G. 1987. The Franco Regime, 1936-1975. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299110702
• Vatikiotis, Panayiotis J. 1988. Popular Autocracy in Greece, 1936-1941: A Political Biography of General Ioannis Metaxas. Routledge. ISBN 0714648698
• Payne, Stanley G. 1995. A History of Fascism, 1914-45. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299148742
• Costa Pinto, António. 1995. Salazar's Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation. Social Science Monographs. ISBN 0880339683
• Griffiths, Richard. 2001. An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism. Duckworth. ISBN 0715629182
• Lewis, Paul H. 2002. Latin Fascist Elites: The Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar Regimes. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 027597880X
• Payne, Stanley G. 2003. Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism. Textbook Publishers. ISBN 0758134452
• Paxton, Robert O. 2005. The Anatomy of Fascism. Vintage Books. ISBN 1400033918

• Eatwell, Roger. 1996. Fascism: A History. New York: Allen Lane.
• Nolte, Ernst The Three Faces Of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965.
• Reich, Wilhelm. 1970. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
• Seldes, George. 1935. Sawdust Caesar: The Untold History of Mussolini and Fascism. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.
• Alfred Sohn-Rethel Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism, London, CSE Bks, 1978 ISBN 0906336007
• Kallis, Aristotle A. ," To Expand or Not to Expand? Territory, Generic Fascism and the Quest for an 'Ideal Fatherland'" Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 2. (Apr., 2003), pp. 237–260.
• Fritzsche, Peter. 1990. Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505780-5
• Griffin, Roger. 2000. "Revolution from the Right: Fascism," chapter in David Parker (ed.) Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560-1991, Routledge, London.
• Laqueur, Walter. 1966. Fascism: Past, Present, Future, New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-511793-X
• Sauer, Wolfgang "National Socialism: totalitarianism or fascism?" pages 404–424 from The American Historical Review, Volume 73, Issue #2, December 1967.
• Sternhell, Zeev with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri. [1989] 1994. The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution., Trans. David Maisei. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Baker, David. "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006 , pages 227 – 250
• Griffin, Roger. 1991. The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• Weber, Eugen. [1964] 1985. Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth Century, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, (Contains chapters on fascist movements in different countries.)
• Gentile, Emilio. 2005. The Origins of Fascist Ideology, 1918-1925: The First Complete Study of the Origins of Italian Fascism, New York: Enigma Books, ISBN 978-1-929631-18-6

External links

• The Doctrine of Fascism
• Readings on Fascism and National Socialism by Various - Project Gutenberg