Fascism  

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"The governments most often considered to have been fascist include the Mussolini government in Italy, which invented the word; Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, but other similar movements existed across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s and have existed in Greece (Greek junta), Portugal (Salazar) and Spain (Franco) until the 1970s."--Sholem Stein


"Le Sec et l'Humide (2008) is a book-length essay by Jonathan Littell, a corpus analysis of the prose of Léon Degrelle in Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front (1949) which makes a clear distinction between the dry (the fascists) and the humid (the Bolsheviks)."--Sholem Stein

This page Fascism is part of the fascism portal.Illustration: A Child at Gunpoint (1943) from the Stroop Report
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This page Fascism is part of the fascism portal.
Illustration: A Child at Gunpoint (1943) from the Stroop Report

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Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism, which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I before it spread to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism, Marxism and anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.

Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state and technology. The advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war. The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.

Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.

Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist and the term is instead now usually used pejoratively by political opponents. The descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far-right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th century fascist movements.

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