We explain what the fascists are, their positions and what movements they adhere to. Also, characteristics and causes of fascism.
What is a fascist?
The term fascist, or its abbreviations popular in Spanish "facho" and "facha", is a word of pejorative use in the politics and the society. Its strict meaning is more or less indeterminate. It encompasses a set of characteristics such as intolerance, authoritarianism, the racism, the xenophobia, militarism, hatred and other forms of undemocratic thinking.
In a strict sense, fascists are those who joined or militarized the regimes dictatorial, militarists and racists of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Adolfo Hitler (1889-1945), Francisco Franco (1892-1975), among many others in Europe or America. They were the so-called third ways of the interwar period of the twentieth century.
They were revolutionary movements under the command of leaders charismatic and populist rhetoric. This is how they took control of the Condition and they transformed it under the promise of returning to lost times of glory.
They established authoritarian, militaristic, profoundly anti-communist regimes. In them, the persecution of minorities and the interference of the State in economic, social and personal affairs was continuous. The presence of these governments detonated the WWII in Europe in 1939.
However, today the term fascist is used as a political insult. To accuse the adversary of being a fascist implies that behind his allegations, his intentions or his message, the fascism. In other words, it is a way of accusing reactionary authoritarianism and feelings of hatred and superiority towards those who are ethnically, politically or culturally different.
There are, however, those who warn that the term has been used too much, and that basically everyone calls their opponents fascists, thus depriving this term of any real meaning.
Characteristics of fascism
Fascism is characterized by giving a lot of power to a charismatic leader.Fascism is not an easy movement to define, since its emergence has to do largely with the context cultural and socio-political of the time. Its ideological foundations were uneven, rather hybrid and fluid, which would make it necessary to think about each case of a fascist movement more or less separately.
However, when we talk about fascism, we usually think of:
- Authoritarianism. The tendency to bestow large amounts of power on a charismatic, infallible, or enlightened leader.
- Militarism. That is, devotion to the military world and to the idea of war as a continuation of the dilemmas of politics.
- Populism. In other words, the exaltation of popular sentiments and the promotion of divisive thinking, of us-against-them, through massive spectacles and to the detriment of the use of the logic and the reason to think the problems nationals.
- Nationalism, racism Y xenophobia. That is, the negative and prejudicial evaluation of those who come from different racial, ethnic, cultural or national contexts. There is at the same time an excessive valuation of one's own, under standards of purity and perfection.
- Fanaticism and intolerance. Which are translated into distrust of the democratic system, and rejection of the plurality of opinions and the expression of minorities, as well as the tendency to form vigilante, paramilitary or intimidation groups for political opponents.
Causes of fascism
Fascism, like many other political and social phenomena, is usually a consequence of its historical context and the emergence of the right leaders to encourage, orchestrate and then take advantage of popular unrest at their convenience. In the case of 20th century European fascism, the causes are as follows:
- The state of impoverishment of Europe, as a result of the First World War and the Depression of 1929, which increased social unrest and distrust of the political system.
- The imperial aspirations of both Germany and Italy, countries whose share in the division of the African colonies had been comparatively less than that of others nations, added to the fact that the territory and the economy Germans were cruelly affected by the World War I surrender treaty (The Treaty of Versailles).
- The advance of communism in the East, after the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew Russian Tsarism in 1918, encouraged reactionary and xenophobic sentiments within Europe, whose democracies weakened seemed the perfect setting for similar socialist experiments.
- The emergence of charismatic leaders, both Adolfo Hitler and Benito Mussolini and their peers in other countries, who knew how to take advantage of the historical moment to boost their political careers and set themselves up as representatives and spokespersons of popular sentiment.
Fascism and Nazism
Today the terms fascism and Nazism, or fascist and Nazi, are used as synonyms in all its sense. This despite the fact that, technically, the Nazis were the German fascists, so not all the fascists were Nazis.
The term "fascist" comes from Latin fascio ("Haz"), which was a symbol of the authority of the Roman magistrates, borrowed from the first fascist movements in Italy, at the head of which Mussolini was soon placed.
Instead, the term "Nazi" comes from the common use of the initials of the Hitler party, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeits Partei (NSDAP) or National Socialist German Workers Party, colloquially called the Nazi Party.