fascism
/ˈfaʃɪz(ə)m
/- His only objection to Italian fascism was that it wasn't fanatical enough.
- Italian fascism was very distinctive from National Socialism, and neither resembled Japanese totalitarianism.
Synonyms
- Welcome to the authoritarian world of health fascism.
- Getting drunk is mostly an exercise of choice, one of the few available in the current climate of health fascism.
- On top of that, I'm probably indulging fascism, anti-Semitism and snottiness.
The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43); the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.
Origin
1920s: from Italian fascismo, from fascio 'bundle, political group', from Latin fascis (see fasces).
The term fascism was first used of the right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43), the Partito Nazionale Fascista (‘National Fascist Party’), and later applied to the regimes of Franco in Spain and of the Nazis in Germany. It comes from Latin fascis ‘bundle’. In ancient Rome the fasces were the bundle of rods, with an axe through them, carried in front of a magistrate as a symbol of his power to punish people.