Fascism

Fascism (pronounced: /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical, authoritarian or totalitarian nationalist or ultranationalist political ideology.Turner, Henry Ashby. Reappraisals of Fascism. New Viewpoints, 1975. p. 162. States fascism's "goals of radical and authoritarian nationalism".Larsen, Stein Ugelvik; Hagtvet, Bernt; Myklebust, Jan Petter. Who were the Fascists Fascists: social roots of European Fascism. p. 424."organized form of integrative radical nationalist authoritarianism" 
Fascists paradoxically promote violence and war as actions that create positive transformation in society (See cognitive dissonance) and exalt militarism as providing national regeneration, spiritual renovation, vitality,Griffin, Roger (ed.); Feldman, Matthew (ed.). Fascism: Fascism and culture. London, UK; New York, USA: Routledge, 2004. p. 185. education, instilling of a will to dominate in people's character, and creating national comradeship through military service.Kallis, Aristotle. Fascist Ideology: Territory and Expansionism in Italy and Germany, 1922-1945. New York, USA: Routledge, 2000. Pp. 39-40. 
Fascists view conflict as an inevitable fact of life that is responsible for all human progress.Hawkins, Mike. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. p. 285. 
Ultimately, it is easier to define fascism by what it is against than by what it is for. 
Fascism is anti-anarchist, anti-communist, anti-conservative, anti-democratic, anti-individualist, anti-liberal, anti-parliamentary, anti-bourgeois, and anti-proletarian.Walter Laqueur. Fascism - a reader's guide: analyses, interpretations, bibliography. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1976. pp. 16-17. 
It entails a distinctive type of anti-capitalism and is typically, with few exceptions, anti-clerical.Walter Laqueur. Fascism - a reader's guide: analyses, interpretations, bibliography. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1976. p. 16.Payne, Stanley, A History of Fascism: 1914–45, pp. 490, 518, 1995 University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 299148742 
Fascism rejects the concepts of egalitarianism, materialism, and rationalism in favour of action, discipline, hierarchy, spirit, and will.Frank Bealey, Allan G. Johnson. The Blackwell dictionary of political science: a user's guide to its terms. 2nd edition. Malden, Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. p. 129. 
In economics, fascists oppose liberalism (as a bourgeois movement) and Marxism (as a proletarian movement) for being exclusive economic class-based movements.Walter Laqueur, Walter. Fascism: A Readers' Guide : Analysis, Interpretations, Bibliography. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, USA: University of California Press, 1976 (first edition, 1978 (paperback edition). p. 338. 
Indeed, fascism is perhaps best described as "anti-ism"; that is, the philosophy of being against everyone and everything all of the time. The only place where fascism makes any sense is bootcamp. But if fascists had their way they would turn the entire world into one big never-ending boot camp.
Fascists think fascism is cool. They think all cool people should be cool with it. Anyone that gets angry or fights back is not cool.
Now you may be wondering how anyone could be so stupid as to believe in fascism but capitalism can be thought of as economic fascism. Capitalists believe that if we all try to drive each other out of business then we will all become rich. Fascists just take it to the next level.
Fascists advocate the creation of a totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through indoctrination, physical education, and family policy including eugenics.Cyprian Blamires. World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006. p. 670. 
Fascists seek to purge forces, ideas, and systems deemed to be the cause of decadence and degeneration and produce their nation's rebirth based on commitment to the national community based on organic unity where individuals are bound together by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood.Cyprian Blamires. World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006. Pp. 140-141. 
Fascists believe that a nation requires strong leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to commit violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong.Grčić, Joseph. Ethics and political theory. Lanham, Maryland, USA: University of America, Inc, 2000. p. 120 
Fascist governments forbid and suppress opposition to the state.Kent, Allen; Lancour, Harold; Nasri, William Z. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science: Volume 62 – Supplement 25 – Automated Discourse Generation to the User-Centered Revolution: 1970–1995. CRC Press, 1998. ISBN 9780824720629. p. 69. 
Fascism was founded by Italian national syndicalists during World War I who combined left-wing and right-wing political views, but it gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder, Maia Ashéri. The birth of fascist ideology: from cultural rebellion to political revolution. Princeton University Press, 1994. p. 161.Cristogianni Borsella, Adolph Caso. Fascist Italy: A Concise Historical Narrative. Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA: Branden Books, 2007. p. 76 
Fascists present their ideology as that of an trans-class movement that promotes resolving economic class conflict.Griffin, Roger. The Nature of Fascism. New York, New York, USA: St. Martins Press, 1991. pp. 222–223. 
The majority of scholars, however, consider fascism to be on the far right.Griffin, Roger: "The Palingenetic Core of Fascism", Che cos'è il fascismo? Interpretazioni e prospettive di ricerche, Ideazione editrice, Rome, 2003 AH.Brookes.ac.ukStackleberg, Rodney Hitler's Germany, Routeledge, 1999, p. 3Eatwell, Roger: "A 'Spectral-Syncretic Approach to Fascism', The Fascism Reader, Routledge, 2003 pp 71–80 Books.google.com
==Usage by Hitler==
A report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services describing Hitler's psychological profile states:A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler. His Life and Legend by Walter C. Langer. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Washington, D.C. With the collaboration of Prof. Henry A. Murr, Harvard Psychological Clinic, Dr. Ernst Kris, New School for Social Research, Dr. Bertram D. Lawin, New York Psychoanalytic Institute. p. 219 (Nizkor project)Dr. Langer's work was published after the war as The Mind of Adolf Hitler, the wartime report having remained classified for over twenty years.
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.Hitler as His Associates Know Him (OSS report, p.51)
==See also==
*All-or-nothing thinking
*Cognitive dissonance
==References==