What is the meaning of Fascism? Concept and Definition of Fascism

Definition of fascism

1. Concept of fascism

Fascism is an ideology and a political movement that arose in Europe between the wars (1918-1939). The term comes from the Italian fascio ('beam, fasces'), and this in turn from the latin fasces (plural of fascis).
The political project of fascism is to establish a totalitarian State corporatism and a dirigiste economy, while his intellectual base raises the submission of reason to the will and action, applying a nationalism strongly identity with components victimhood or revanchists which lead to violence either indoctrinated masses or corporations of security of the regime against which the State defines as enemies by means of an effective propaganda apparatuscoupled with an interclass social component, and a denial to be located in the political spectrum (left or right), which does not usually different ideological approaches to provide different views of the fascism. The most common examples occur in historiography, the political science and other social sciences of Marxist, placing fascism on the extreme right, linking it with the plutocracy, and identifying it sometimes as a variant of capitalism of State or liberal orientation, identifying it as a chauvinistic variant of State socialism
It presents itself as a "third way" or "third position" that opposes radically both ideologies of the traditional labor movement emerging (anarchism or Marxism, the latter split in turn between social democracy and communism and liberal democracy in crisis (the form of Government representing the values of the victors in World War II, such as England, France and United States, which it considered "decadent")having as a reference to the project of Socialist state that was developing in the Soviet Union since 1917); Although the number of ideologies against which it is claimed is broader:
Fascism has its enemies grouped on these three fronts: the social-comunista, the demoliberal-Masonic and Catholic populism.
Magazine f. e. 1933
The concept of "fascist regime" can apply to some totalitarian or authoritarian political regimes of interwar Europe and virtually all those who were imposed by the axis powers during their occupation of the continent during the second world war.
In a prominent way first and foremost to the Fascist Italy of Benito Mussolini (1922), which opens the model and coined the term; followed by the Germany of the III Reich of Adolf Hitler (1933) that leads to its last consequences; and, closing the cycle, the national Spain's Francisco Franco which lasts much longer and evolves out of the period (from 1936 until 1975). The differences in approaches to ideological and historical paths between each of these regimes are notable. For example, fascism in Germany nazi or national-socialism adds an important racist component, which is only adopted in a second time and with much less Foundation by Italian fascism and other fascist movements or fascistizantes. For many of these religious (Catholic or Orthodox according to the case) component was much more essential, so that Trevor-Roper has been able to define the term clerical fascism (which would be the Spanish nacionalcatolicismo).
It can be considered that Italian fascism is a totalitarianism focused in the State:
People is the body of the State, and the State is the spirit of the people. The fascist doctrine, the town is State and State is the people.
Everything in the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State.

Mussolini

While German Nazism is focused on the race identified with the people (Volk) or Volksgemeinschaft (interpretable as the village community or community of race, or even as an expression of popular support the party and the State):
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer! «A town, an empire, a guide!»
Also you can find elements of fascism out of the interwar period, both before and after. A clear precedent of fascism was the Action Française (French action, 1898) Organization, whose main leader was Charles Maurras; He was a violent youth wing called the Camelots du Roi and was based on an ideology of nationalist, reactionary, fundamentalist Catholic (although Maurras was agnostic) and anti-Semitic. After the second world war reappeared minority political movements, in the most marginal cases (known as neo-fascist or neo-Nazi), which reproduce identical or similar approaches, or that mimic its aesthetics and rhetoric; Despite (or precisely as a reaction to) intense demonization that is subjected to ideology and Fascist regimes, considered responsible for the war that led to some of the biggest disasters humans in history. In many countries there are laws that prohibit or limit its existence, performances (especially the so-called crime of hate), propaganda (especially the denial of the Holocaust) or the display of their symbols.

Characteristics and definition

Fascism is a political ideology based on a monolithic unit project called corporatism, thus exalting the idea of nation against the individual or class; it suppresses the political disagreement in the interests of a single party and the localisms in favour of centralism; and it proposes as the ideal construction of a perfect utopian society, called the body social, consisting of intermediate bodies and their representatives unified by the central Government, and that this referred to represent the company.
For this reason fascism instilling obedience of the masses (idealized as protagonists of the regime) to form a single entity or body socioespiritual indivisible. Fascism uses skillfully the new media and the charisma of a dictatorial leader which concentrates all power in order to drive in the unit of the so-called social body of the nation.
Fascism is characterised by its method of analysis or dissemination strategy of systematically prosecute people not for their personal responsibility but by membership in a group. Demagogic leverages the feelings of fear and collective frustration to exacerbate them through violence, repression and propaganda, and displaces them against a common enemy (real or imaginary, inside or outside), which acts as a scapegoat front that dump all aggressiveness in thoughtless way, achieving unity and membership (voluntarily or forcibly) of the population. Misinformation, manipulation of the educational system and a large number of mechanisms of social framework, vitiate, and distort the general will to develop materially an oclocracia which is an essential source of the charism of leadership and consequently, a main source of the legitimacy of the caudillo. Fascism is expansionist and militaristic, using mechanisms mobilizers of territorial irredentism and imperialism that had already been experienced by the nationalism of the 19th century. In fact, fascism is first and foremost a nationalism that identifies land, town and State for the party and its leader.
Fascism is a political system that is to carry out a unitary framework of a society in crisis within a dynamic and tragic dimension promoting the mobilization of the masses through the identification of social demands with national demands.

2. Meaning of fascism

Fascism is a movement and political and social system of character opposite to liberalism and parliamentary democracy in Europe, nature, totalitarian violent and politically located on the right.
The origin of this doctrine was due to the social and economic post-war crisis and national resentments; the Italian people were disgusted and disappointed by the poor political and economic results achieved by Italy in the Treaty of Versailles. It was then that Benito Mussolini took advantage of this event, and at the head of a fascist Group decided to assault the power, getting it and managing to establish a dictatorship established by a nationalist, totalitarian regime and authoritarian.
Fascism is a generic name that also includes German national socialism and other doctrines related as the Spanish nacionalsindicalismo, Japanese hojinismo, etc. This ideology enjoyed greater success in the interwar period in the countries of Eastern and southern Europe, many people think that this phenomenon was from Italy and Germany; However, all major European Nations, including Britain and France, produced internal fascist movements of different types during the 1930s.
In addition to being anti-liberal and anti-democratic, fascist doctrine was also segregated (raised the existence of a superior race), and anti-Marxist. This doctrine subordinated the rights of the individual to the needs of the State, did so with the will of the people and not with the violent deployment, but in later years if it was necessary with opposition people.
The fascist state structure consists in a single match with military structure, which monopolizes all the civico-democratica activity. At the top of the party and the State was the Chief (El Duce in Italy and Hitler in Germany), the birth of another kind of party was almost impossible due to the repression and systematic propaganda of fascism.
This ideological doctrine is rejected by the people after the culmination of World War II. However, during the decades of 1980s and 1990s fascism reappeared in some democratic Western States, giving neo-fascism, based on xenophobic and racist qualities.

3. What is fascism

The etymology of the word fascism, comes from the latin "fascis" without political connotation, since it meant a group of logs, that the Romans used in ancient times as a way of flogging to those convicted of crimes, becoming the flagship of the lictors, public servants who wore the Group's branches (fasces) tied with strips of leather, around an axe, over his left shoulder, as a representation of his power of punishment.
In politics it was used to designate the group that founded in Italy Benito Mussolini, in 1919, who conceived the formation of a nationalist, totalitarian, corporatist and imperialist State. Its symbol was the "fasces" Roman.
The fascist State was implemented with the arrival on the Italian power of Mussolini, who won all of the powers of the State, and ruled between 1922 and 1945. This regime could be implemented due to the context of socio-economic presenting the historical moment.
After the victory of the allies in the first world war, Italy which had belonged to the Group winner, was however in a situation that is very bad, especially for territorial losses, and the economic and social crisis with large numbers of unemployed, that ' jostled for claims, obtained through strikes, supported by leftist parties, but at the expense of the middle classthat he saw in fascism a possibility of strengthened.
During the fascist regime there was no freedom of the press and the fascist became a single party.
He proclaimed himself as heir to the Roman Empire and therefore expanded militarily
It then spread to other European countries, and became extinct after World War II, although it continued in force in Spain and Portugal.