@Briza
Since I'm the one who initially brought it up, I'm going to paraphrase from "eastern Europe in the 20th Century" by RJ Crampton, which contains one of the best single chapter analyses of fascism.
"Fascism is not easily defined. It has no corpus of ideology similar to the canons of marxism-leninism. It is a phenomenon of action rather than ideas: A hungargian who interviewed peasants involved in fascism reported "We fight for the Idea", but were unable to tell what the 'Idea' actually was. All that the fascists could really say was that they were for an authoritarian state whose function in most cases was to protect and foster the interests of its dominant nation: the state was usually corporate in nature. Fascist movements demand control and discipline of society and of themselves. Fascism is also at least as strong in its antipathies as in its sympathies; feeding on hatred and fear more readily than on benevolence and magnanimity. Fascists in general are anti-socialist, anti-communist, anti-semite, anti-rational rather than pro-anything, though there are always corollaries and the national concept and its lineage form the heart of fascist ideology. The Rome congress of Fascists declared:
The nation is not merely the sum total of living individuals, nor the instrument of parties for their own ends, but an organism comprising the unlimited series of generations of which individuals are merely transient elements; it is the supreme synthesis of all the material and non-material values of the race.
As a result of all of this, Fascism most commonly manifests as an authoritarian corporatist state, almost always dictatorial de jure or de facto, with an emphasis first on race and nation, and then in opposition to those factions and ideas which appear to oppose the ideas of race and nation, whether they actually do or not. It forms an ideology of action, most commonly birthed from stagnancy and appeals in giving simple answers to complex problems while fostering a feeling of belonging and purpose to those dispossessed by previous formations of nationhood."
Since I'm the one who initially brought it up, I'm going to paraphrase from "eastern Europe in the 20th Century" by RJ Crampton, which contains one of the best single chapter analyses of fascism.
"Fascism is not easily defined. It has no corpus of ideology similar to the canons of marxism-leninism. It is a phenomenon of action rather than ideas: A hungargian who interviewed peasants involved in fascism reported "We fight for the Idea", but were unable to tell what the 'Idea' actually was. All that the fascists could really say was that they were for an authoritarian state whose function in most cases was to protect and foster the interests of its dominant nation: the state was usually corporate in nature. Fascist movements demand control and discipline of society and of themselves. Fascism is also at least as strong in its antipathies as in its sympathies; feeding on hatred and fear more readily than on benevolence and magnanimity. Fascists in general are anti-socialist, anti-communist, anti-semite, anti-rational rather than pro-anything, though there are always corollaries and the national concept and its lineage form the heart of fascist ideology. The Rome congress of Fascists declared:
The nation is not merely the sum total of living individuals, nor the instrument of parties for their own ends, but an organism comprising the unlimited series of generations of which individuals are merely transient elements; it is the supreme synthesis of all the material and non-material values of the race.
As a result of all of this, Fascism most commonly manifests as an authoritarian corporatist state, almost always dictatorial de jure or de facto, with an emphasis first on race and nation, and then in opposition to those factions and ideas which appear to oppose the ideas of race and nation, whether they actually do or not. It forms an ideology of action, most commonly birthed from stagnancy and appeals in giving simple answers to complex problems while fostering a feeling of belonging and purpose to those dispossessed by previous formations of nationhood."
