Fascism

An ideology that includes historical, cultural, and political facets or secondary references. As a political ideology, it represents an extreme right-wing ideology that stresses the subordination of individuals' interests to the interests of the state and the nation. It includes ideologies troubled with fears of cultural decline and social disorder. From this perspective, a fascist regime often stresses notions of racial superiority (often white supremacy), and it seeks to exorcise society's “internal enemies” menacing the unity of the nation. One of the prime examples of a fascist regime has been in Italy under Benito Mussolini (1883–1945).

Contemporary theorists find fascism difficult to define, partly because fascist ideology has varied widely. Among fascist states of the 1920s and 1930s, there were, however, certain common features, organizational strategies, and similar enemies. A common feature of fascism is that they hold simplistic ideologies because they subordinate complex societal problems to single causes and single remedies. They are also fundamentalist because they rely on notions of the world as being “good” or “bad” and therefore there is no such thing as neutrality. In their political regimes, they created police states, one-party systems led by a charismatic dictator. On the other hand, their economic systems are aimed to develop some form of national socialism. Unlike Marxian socialism, the state was not to take over the means of production. Fascist socialism was directed at the interests of the nation, not a particular class. In foreign policy, fascist regimes are, for the most part, expansionist: Mussolini revived Italy's vision of an African colonial empire, Adolf Hitler's Third Reich aspired to a great empire in Europe, and the Spanish Falangists longed for African territories and natural resources.

So complex has the term become that these days fascism applies to anything from right-wing terrorist groups in Italy to military dictatorships, from the police to criminal gangs. Following the events of 1989 and the end of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, fascist-inspired movements and popular uprisings have surfaced in a number of these regions. Scholars have noted that there is a strong likelihood that additional fascist-style regimes might arise in this region of the world. They would feed on the conflicting nationa lisms in the area, and they might be spearheaded by the military. Even if such regimes were to emerge, however, it appears unlikely that they would pose a threat to the international order in the way Nazi Germany preci pitated the crisis of World War II. Nevertheless, the rise of fascist regimes might be an expression of fascism's appeal to the masses.