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Saturday 24 January 2015

Fascism

Fascism is named after the fasces, which is an old Roman Empire name for a group of sticks tied together - the idea being it is easy to break one stick in half, but very hard to break many sticks tied together in half. Fascists believe that everyone following the same leader makes the country strong the same way the sticks are.


Benito Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, Italy, on March 23, 1919. It became the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) on November 9, 1921.

Benito Mussolini with three of the four quadrumvirs during the March on Rome:

The first fascist government was run by Benito Mussolini in Italy from 1922 until 1943. The governments of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and Adolf Hitler in Germany are also referred to as fascist. Other examples are Greece under Ioannis Metaxas, Spain under the rule of Francisco Franco, and Portugal when António de Oliveira Salazar was the head of the government.

In 1940, the fascist Italians, with support from Nazi Germany, approached the Greeks to join their side in WWII. The Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas Metaxas declined. Historians believe that if the Greek's did not refuse, WWII could have lasted longer with dramatically different outcomes.

In the 20th century, fascism and the Nazi Party's application of racial theories led to organized persecution and the genocide of the Holocaust. Between 1933–45 about 6 million Jews died in concentration camps and in local extermination pogroms, such as the siege of the Warsaw ghetto. 

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