Welcome to the Fascism page ring

Fascism is, in simple words, a nationalistic and oftentimes militaristic ideology which usually hope to rebuild a lost empire or expand territorially through military conquest. It often goes hand in hand with racism and racial or ethnic superiority as well as ideological superiority, where facist regimes (particularly Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini) rounded up and neutralized enemies of the state to maintain purity. Same goes for ethnicities, most famously the Holocaust where Nazi Germany attempted to completely exterminate the Jewish ethnicity.

Why this definition is broad

I use words like often because Fascism by itself doesn't have a clear cut definition. Fascism differed depending on the context of the country you're talking about. Italian Fascism talked of the revival of the Roman Empire and corporatism, where groups from various economic sectors come together to make political decisions.

On the other hand, you have Fascism under Hitler which was hell-bent on ethnic purity and Lebensraum (living space for Germans). Though later Mussolini started to engage in racial policies as Hitler influenced Mussolini more and more.

Development

Mussolini started out as a major socialist writing for a popular newspaper though later distanced himself after the start of the First World War, while many socialists believed that workers should not die for the bourgeois state he saw Italy's intervention into the war as an opportunity to take back Italian-populated lands which agitated the officially neutral Socialist Party of Italy and kicked him out in late 1914. He created his own newspaper called the Il Popolo d’Italia where he could spread his views to others.

Birth

Already gaining momentum with the populace, he founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in 1919, a nationalist, anti-communism, anti-democracy paramilitary which eventually turned into the National Facist Party. After WW1, Italy won but the leading government was generally weak and its economy was broken. Many saw the National Facist Party as a way out and in 1922 he marched onto Rome with his paramilitary where he demanded to be appointed Prime Minister by approval of the King. It succeeded and by 1925 he abolished democracy as a whole and banned opposition, creating the first official facist state.