Political

Ideology
POS223

FASCISM
 INTRODUCTIONS & ETYMOLOGY
• The Italian term fascismo derives
from fascio meaning a bundle of hay, ultimately
from the Latin word fasces] This was the name
given to political organizations in Italy known
as fasci groups similar to guilds or syndicates and
at first applied mainly to organizations on the Left.
• The Fascists came to associate the name with the
ancient Roman fasces or fascio littorio, which
consisted of a bundle of rods that were tied around
an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of
the civic magistrate carried by his lictors which
could be used for corporal and capital
punishment at his command.
• The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength
through unity: a single rod is easily broken,
while the bundle is difficult to break.
 GENERAL FASCISTS DEFINITIONS
• Historians, political scientists and other scholars have long
debated the exact nature of fascism.[ Each form of fascism is
distinct, leaving many definitions too wide or narrow.
• Amides the array of definitions. Three major features
constitute what consists of the fascist ideology.
• 1. anti-liberalism 
• 2. anti-communism
• 3. anti-conservatism;
• Fascist’s generally pursue nationalist authoritarian goals of
creating a regulated economic structure to transform social
relations within a modern, self-determined culture; and a
political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization,
a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity,
youth and charismatic leadership
 FASCISTS DEFINITIONS
• For Roger Griffin, Fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary,
trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-
conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of
theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-
war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but
populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and
liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation
from decadence.
• Robert Paxton says 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
 SITUATING FASCISM IN TODAYS POLITICAL SPECTRUM
• Fascism is commonly described as far right on the political
spectrum, although some writers have found placing fascism
on a conventional left-right political spectrum difficult
• Fascism was influenced by both left and right, conservative
and anti-conservative, national and supranational, rational
and anti-rational. 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. Fascism was founded
during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who
combined left-wing and right-wing political views.
• Italian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s. A
major element of fascism that has been deemed as clearly
far right is its goal to promote the right of claimed superior
people to dominate while purging society of claimed inferior
elements.
 GENERAL NOTIONS OF FASCISM
• As an ideology, it was Mussolini who used it
to describe the parliamentary armed squad he
formed during and after the First World War.
• Fascism emerged as a revolt against
modernity. As a political ideology, it was a
factual rejection of democracy. it developed
from the First World War and the aftermath of
that war. It began in Italy and Germany. In Italy
a fascist party was formed in 1919 with its
leader, Benito Mussolini appointed prime
minister in 1922; Germany, 1933; and Spain
1939.
 FORMS OF FASCISM
• The military dominated-government of Japan
in 1930s and early 1940s has been seen as
fascist but it also did not survive World War II
like the fascist regimes of Italy and Germany.
• The fascist regime of Spain died along with
its founder Francisco Franco in 1976.
• Fascism also developed outside Europe, as
in the case of Japan we have just mentioned,
Argentina under Peron, 1945-55, and the Iraqi
regime under Saddam Hussein, 1979-2003.
 THE NATURE OF FASCISM
• Fascism is the totalitarian organization of
government and society by a single party
dictatorship, intensely nationalist, racist,
militarist and imperialist.
• Whereas communism is typically linked with
poor and underdeveloped nations (Russia in
Europe, China in Asia) fascism is the form of
totalitarianism associated with comparatively
wealthier and technologically more advanced
nations (Germany in Europe, Japan in Asia).
• Whereas communism is very largely the
product of pre-democratic and pre-industrial
societies, fascism is post-democratic and
post-industrial.
 TENETS OF FASCISM

• Nationalism
• Totalitarianism
• Economics of fascism
• Action.
• Age and gender roles
 CRITICISM OF FASCISM

• Fascism as anti-
democratic and as a
form of tyranny
• Unprincipled
opportunism
• Ideological dishonesty