Fascism
Assumptions
- Strength through unity: Individuals is nothing, only community and social groups can gain success
- Support totalitarian state leadership
- Citizens must be dutiful, honor-bound, self-sacrificing
- Prepared to dedicate their lives for glory of nation or in support of supreme leader
Core Themes of Fascism
- Anti-Rationalism: opposed rational and enlightenment thinking, opting for humans motivated by emotions and faith
- Struggle: human progress can only be made through competition and struggle
- Only the strongest will survive (natural selection) → expansionism
- Led to Germany and Japan’s actions in WWI
- Leadership and Elitism: is natural and desirable. Society is composed of 3 types of people
- Supreme Leaders: monopoly of ideological wisdom
- Warrior Elite: brave and knowledgeable
- Mass: weak and ignorant
- Socialism Model for Society:
- lower-middle class revolution against capitalism & institutions
- collectivism > individualism
- Socialist-style economic policies
- Ultra-Nationalism: only one national culture and tradition is superior
- want expansionism to purify the world with its tradition
Attractive Benefits of Fascism over Democracy
- The weak ability and unstable of democracy government in dealing with economic and political crisis.
- The growing numbers of big business which threatened the market accessibility of small businessman, farmer and craftsmen.
- The financial and political supported from propertied classes and bourgeoisie using fascism to counter-revolution.
- The world economic crisis in 1930 produced more unemployment and economic failure. The unresolved of International conflict that leads to Nationalist movement
[!example|right] Cases of Fascism in History
- Nazi-Germany (1933-1945)
- Fascist Italy (1922–1943)