The stated ideology of the Italian fascists and the German Nazis oftendid not marry up completely with the political policies they pursued.
“Fascist” and “fascism” are terms that one might suppose to besimple badges, but dig beneath the surface and there are myriadcomplexities and a morass of academic debate.
It is more thansix decades since the end of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany,but those events are the prism through which the word “fascism” isstill viewed.
The first “fascist” movement to gain power wasMussolini’s Blackshirts in Italy in 1922. Their movement couldcertainly be said to be nationalist and authoritarian, as well asaccepting of violence in the struggle for political power, but much ofthe rest of its characteristics have been subject to academic dispute.
[snip]
But the clearest problem in the definition of the word “fascist” isthe very wideness of its application over the years. There is aplethora of uses from Rick in the Young Ones deploying it as an insult,to the Oxford English Dictionary’s differing definitions “(loosely) aperson of right-wing authoritarian views” and “a person who advocates aparticular viewpoint or practice in a manner perceived as intolerant orauthoritarian”. So you have “body fascism”.
Broadly speaking,in political discourse, it is a “boo word”, a term used more forpurposes of condemnation than precise categorisation. The Nazis werebad, and in this view their ideology was fundamentally linked tofascism, meaning that fascism is fundamentally bad.
“It is a useful political weapon to say a modern political movement is like fascism,” says Mr Passmore.