Friday, November 13, 2009

Fascist?

This word is thrown around a lot. You need to know what it means.

Fascism, pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/, is a political ideology that seeks to combine radical and authoritarian nationalism[1][2][3][4] with a corporatisteconomic system,[5] and which is usually considered to be on the far right of the traditional left-right political spectrum.[dubious ][6][7][8][9][10]Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in conflict against the weak.[11]

Fascists advocate the creation of a single-party state.[12] Fascist governments forbid and suppress openness and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.[13] Fascism opposes class conflict, blames capitalist liberal democracies for its creation and communists for exploiting the concept.[14]

In the economic sphere, many fascist leaders have claimed to support a "Third Way" in economic policy, which they believed superior to both the rampant individualism of unrestrained capitalism and the severe control of state communism.[15][16] This was to be achieved by establishing significant government control over business and labour (Mussolini called his nation's system "the corporate state").[17][18] No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition.[19]

Following the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II and the publicity surrounding the atrocities committed during the period of fascist governments, the term fascist has been used as a pejorative word.[20]

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