What is Fascism?
Fascism arose in Europe after the First World War. It treats the nation as the highest value and demands that individuals serve it. It rejects liberal democracy, free speech and independent trade unions, and it sees communism as an enemy to be crushed. It glorifies violence, war and a single leader. Fascist movements built mass parties with uniforms and rallies. Where they took power they set up dictatorships that jailed, tortured and killed opponents. The record of fascist regimes includes war, colonial brutality and, in the German Nazi case, genocide.
Core beliefs
- The nation is a living whole, and its interests outrank individual rights.
- One party and one supreme leader should rule, with no real opposition.
- Violence and war are praised as proof of national strength and will.
- Liberalism, socialism and parliamentary politics are seen as weak and divisive.
- Class conflict should be replaced by state-run bodies that bind workers and employers to the nation.
- The nation should be renewed by discipline, myth and expansion, often by claiming land held by others.
History
Benito Mussolini founded the first fascist movement in Italy in 1919. His armed squads attacked socialists, unions and newspapers. In October 1922 the king invited him to form a government after the March on Rome. By the mid 1920s he had turned Italy into a one-party dictatorship, after the murder of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti in 1924. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, using poison gas, and passed racial laws in 1938. Mussolini allied with Hitler in the Second World War, his regime collapsed in 1943, and partisans killed him in 1945. The term fascism is also applied to other movements, such as Mosley's British Union of Fascists, and historians argue over how far to stretch it. Nazism is usually treated as a related but separate movement because of its central racial doctrine.
Variants
Italian Fascism stressed the state and the corporate organization of work. Nazism made race, antisemitism and living space its core. Spanish Falangism was close to the Catholic church. Other movements existed in Romania, Hungary, Croatia and elsewhere, with their own local traits. Some scholars speak of generic fascism, a shared core of ultranationalism, a cult of the leader and the aim of national rebirth. Others prefer to treat each movement separately. Neo-fascism refers to groups after 1945 that borrow its style or ideas.
Criticisms
Fascism is rejected across the mainstream political spectrum. Liberals condemn its end of civil rights and the rule of law. Socialists point to its violent suppression of workers' organizations. Conservatives and Christians have criticized its worship of the state and its violence. Its defenders in the 1920s and 1930s said it brought order, national pride and work, but those claims came at the cost of free speech, the courts and countless lives. Fascist rule led to wars of conquest, the persecution of minorities, political murder and the destruction of its own states.
In practice
Fascist and fascist-inspired regimes held power in Italy, Germany, and for a time in other European states. Italy's colonial wars in Libya and Ethiopia killed many civilians. Nazi Germany murdered about six million Jews and millions of others. After 1945 open fascism was discredited and banned in several countries. On the 12 axes it scores at the extreme toward Strong leader on Authority, Order on Security, National identity on Culture and Strength on Foreign policy. It leans Central on Structure, because it rejected local autonomy.