fascism
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Italian fascismo, from fascio (“fasces, bundle, group”) + -ismo (“-ism”) with direct reference to Benito Mussolini's fasci di combattimento ("fight clubs"), from Latin fasces, bundles of axes and rods carried before the magistrates of the ancient Roman Republic as representative of their power of life and death. Originally with exclusive reference to Fascist Italy which used the fasces as an emblem, later broadened to describe all of the Axis Powers of World War II, and subsequently used as a general term of opprobrium in English and international political discourse.
Etymology tree
Latin fascis
Italian fascio
Proto-Indo-European *-id-
Proto-Indo-European *-yéti
Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti
Proto-Hellenic *-íďďō
Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō)
Proto-Indo-European *-mos
Proto-Indo-European *-mós
Ancient Greek -μός (-mós)
Ancient Greek -ῐσμός (-ĭsmós)der.
Latin -ismus
Italian -ismo
Italian fascismolbor.
English fascism
Inflected forms:
form: fascisms
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: Fascism
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Any right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist ideology characterized by centralized, totalitarian governance, strong regimentation of the economy and society, and repression of criticism or opposition.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes... Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and—this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism—generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything... The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.
Despite the three decades that have passed since the end of the second world war, fascism remains a subject of much heated argument. […] It also continues to be a subject of controversy, partly because it collides with so many preconceived ideological notions, partly because generalizations are made difficult by the fact that there was not one fascism but several fascisms.
Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes.
His criticism of what he calls “Kurdish fascism” prompted this interview, which is part of my current doctoral research[...]
gloss: Any right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist ideology characterized by centralized, totalitarian governance, strong regimentation of the economy and society, and repression of criticism or opposition.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: Today "Fascism" like Russian "Bolshevism" does not know what freedom means and cares less about the principles of liberty and the rights of man. It knows only one law and that is the will of Mussolini and his band of "Black Shirts."
Fascism, with all its forcefulness in the prosecution of its violent deeds, is indeed nothing else but the expression of the disintegration and decay of capitalist economy, and the symptom of the dissolution of the bourgeois State.
gloss: Any system of strong autocracy or oligarchy usually to the extent of bending and breaking the law, race-baiting, and/or violence against largely unarmed populations.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
derogatory
uncountable
usually
examples: ...even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
For Argentine fascists and nacionalistas, fascism was not a theory but a mold for Catholic thinking. For instance, one of the most significant nacionalista intellectuals, César Pico, argued that fascism was a "reaction against the calamities ascribed to liberal democracy, socialism, and capitalism. It's a reaction that, although instinctive in its origins, is searching for a doctrine that could justify it."
gloss: Any extreme reliance on or enforcement of rules and regulations.
pos: noun
tags: derogatory
figuratively
uncountable
usually
Antonyms: antifascism
anti-fascism
Related words: fascist
fascistic
fascistical
fascistically
authoritarianism
blackshirt
Brownshirt
collectivism
communism
Communism
capitalism
globalism
internationalism
international socialism
nationalism
national socialism
National Socialism
Naziism
Nazism
socialism
statism
feudalism
totalitarianism
Derived words: anarcho-fascism
antifascism
anti-fascism
Austro-fascism
Austrofascism
bio-fascism
biofascism
body fascism
Christofascism
clerofascism
crypto-fascism
cryptofascism
eco-fascism
ecofascism
Euro-fascism
Eurofascism
fascism lite
fascturbate
Faucism
femi-fascism
femifascism
hetero-fascism
heterofascism
homofascism
homo-fascism
Islamic fascism
Islamo-fascism
Islamofascism
Judeofascism
Judeo-fascism
monarcho-fascism
monarchofascism
neofascism
neo-fascism
palaeo-fascism
palaeofascism
paleo-fascism
paleofascism
para-fascism
post-fascism
postfascism
prefascism
pro-fascism
profascism
proto-fascism
protofascism
pseudo-fascism
pseudofascism
red fascism
semi-fascism
social fascism
superfascism
techno-fascism
technofascism
ziofascism
Translations: