A nationalist philosophy that glorifies race above the individual and has a government headed by a dictator. Countries with a fascist government have a tendency to be more violent as a result of a fascist belief that a country can only be dominant through waging and winning wars. Also fascist governments organize their economies by having all interest groups be subordinate to the state, this is referred to as corporatism.
Core Principles
Survival of the fittest: The State is only as powerful as its ability to wage wars and win them. The State is thereby selected for survival due to its strength and dominance.
Strict social order: Clearly divided classes are necessary to avoid chaos. The State's power depends on a class system in which every person has a definite, unchangeable, role in glorifying the state.
Authoritarian leadership: It's necessary to have an all-powerful, heroic leader to maintain the unity and unquestioning submission required by the State.
A nation in crisis: The variety of racial or ethnic groups makes the State impure and weakens it; and a conspiracy by certain racial, ethnic or national groups keep the State down.
An idealized past: The State is currently damaged but was once supreme. Fascism aspires toward the renewal of the State and its primary ethnic group to some mythical past era of glory.
A need for social change: The people must submit to major changes, a new social structure and way of life, in order to achieve this revivalhttp://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/fascism-movement.htm
Fascist Leaders
Engelbert Dollfuss (1934-1938) Fatherland Front, Austria
Benito Mussolini (1924-1943) National Fascist Party, Italy
Adolf Hitler (1933-1945) National Socialist German Workers (NAZI) Party, Germany
Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1934-1968) National Union, Portugal
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1927-1938) Iron Guard, Romania
Francisco Franco (1937-1975) Traditionalist Spanish Falange and of the Unions of the National-Syndicalist Offensive (FET y de las JONS), Spain
Fumimaro Konoe (1940-1945) Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA), Japan
References
Fast Facts
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Fact:
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini coined the term and defined fascism
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Fact:
Prominent fascist regimes include Italian Fascism, Nazism (National Socialism, Germany), Iron Guard (Romania), and Early Falangism (Spain)
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Fact:
The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax.
