Nazism/Facism

9 Pages 2140 Words

Fascism

“Fascism, capitalized this term refers to the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922-1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini
(The American Fascism).” Fascism is a form of politics that first arose in the early part of the twentieth-century, in Europe. It was a response to the rapid social upheaval, the devastation of World War I, and the Bolshevik Revolution. Fascism is a system of government the advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of nationalism. Fascism approaches politics in two central areas, populist and elitist. Populist in that it seeks to activate "the people" as a whole against groups of people with different beliefs or enemies and to create a nation of unity. The elitist approach treats as putting the people’s will on one select group, or most often one supreme leader called El Duce, from whom all power proceeds downward. The two most recognized names that go along with Fascism are Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Germany’s Adolf Hitler. The philosophy of Fascism can be traced to the philosophers who argue that the will is prior to and superior to the intellect or reason. George Sorel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Georg Hegal are philosophers whose beliefs and ideas greatly influenced the shaping of Fascist theory. Sorel , a French social philosopher had a major influence on Mussolini. Sorel believed that societies usually became decayed and disorganized. This decay could only be slowed by the leadership of idealists who were willing to use violence to obtain power. Nietzsches’ (1844-1900) theory was that there were two moral codes: the ruling class ( master morality) and the oppressed class (slave morality). Nietzsche believed the ancient empires were developed from the master majority and the religious ideas and views grew out the slave majority. The idea of the "o...