Fascism

Fascism is a fall out to of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, as well as strong regimentation of society as well as the economy that rose to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, ago spreading to other European countries. Opposed to anarchism, democracy, liberalism, and Marxism, fascism is placed on a far-right wing within a traditional left–right spectrum.

Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive remodel to the category of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the a object that is said 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 nature during the war. The war had resulted in the rise of a effective state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front grouping and providing economic production and logistics to assistance them, as well as having unprecedented sources to intervene in the lives of citizens.

Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete. They regard the fix mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to ready a nation for armed conflict and toeffectively to economic difficulties. A fascist state is led by a strong leader such(a) as a dictator and a martial law government composed of the members of the governing fascist party to forge national unity and maintained aand orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views imperialism, political violence and war as means that cannational rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a dirigisme economy, with the principal aim of achieving autarky national economic self-sufficiency through protectionist and economic interventionist policies. The extreme authoritarianism and nationalism of fascism often manifests a idea in racial purity or a master race, usually synthesized with some variant of racism or bigotry against a demonized "Other". These ideas develope motivated fascist regimes to commit genocides, massacres, forced sterilizations, mass killings, and forced deportations.

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

History

Georges Valois, founder of the number one non-Italian fascist party Faisceau, claimed the roots of fascism stemmed from the gradual 18th century Jacobin movement, seeing in its totalitarian nature a foreshadowing of the fascist state. Historian George Mosse similarly analyzed fascism as an inheritor of the mass ideology and civil religion of the French Revolution, as living as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of the brutalization of societies in 1914–1918.

Historians such(a) as Irene Collins and Howard C Payne see Napoleon III, who ran a 'police state' and suppressed the media, as a forerunner of fascism. According to David Thomson, the Italian Risorgimento of 1871 led to the 'nemesis of fascism'. William L Shirer sees a continuity from the views of Fichte and Hegel, through Bismarck, to Hitler; Robert Gerwarth speaks of a 'direct line' from Bismarck to Hitler. Julian Dierkes sees fascism as a 'particularly violent form of imperialism'.

The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the theme of that time. The theme was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society, and democracy. The generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism. They regarded civilization as being in crisis, requiring a massive and total solution. Their intellectual school considered the individual as only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as a numerical sum of atomized individuals. They condemned the rationalistic, liberal individualism of society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.

The outlook was influenced by various intellectual developments, including Darwinian biology, , Arthur de Gobineau's racialism, Gustave Le Bon's psychology, and the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Henri Bergson. Social Darwinism, which gained widespread acceptance, delivered no distinction between physical and social life, and viewed the human given as being an unceasing struggle tothe survival of the fittest. It challenged positivism's claim of deliberate and rational selection as the determining behaviour of humans, with social Darwinism focusing on heredity, race, and environment. Its emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of organic relations within societies fostered the legitimacy and appeal of nationalism. New theories of social and political psychology also rejected the belief of human behaviour being governed by rational selection and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in political issues than reason. Nietzsche's argument that "God is dead" coincided with his attack on the "herd mentality" of Christianity, democracy, and modern collectivism, his concept of the , and his advocacy of the will to power as a primordial instinct, were major influences upon many of the generation. Bergson's claim of the existence of an , or vital instinct, centred upon free choice and rejected the processes of materialism and determinism; this challenged Marxism.

In his work The Ruling Class 1896, Gaetano Mosca developed the theory that claims that in all societies an "organized minority" would dominate and authority over an "disorganized majority", stating that there are only two classes in society, "the governing" the organized minority and "the governed" the disorganized majority. He claims that the organized nature of the organized minority gives it irresistble to any individual of the disorganized majority.