10 Forgotten Fascist Movements Of The 1930s

Nowadays, “fascism” is mostly a misused and little understood word. In particular, it has become a byword for anything in uniform or even remotely right-of-center. But no matter how many times it is howled from megaphones or splashed across banners and signs, fascism is a political ideology that hasn’t had any real power in Europe, its birthplace, since it was summarily defeated during World War II. Sure, neo-fascist political parties still have black-shirted adherents sprinkled throughout major urban centers and on the Internet, but the likelihood of a fascist takeover is slim to nonexistent.This was not the case in the 1930s. During the decade-long economic depression that affected most of the world, fascism, along with socialism, anarchism, and communism, became popular with two kinds of people—those who saw capitalism and democracy as alien systems forced upon them by the US and Great Britain and those who were disenfranchised with the status quo and sluggish economic recovery. Fascism, no matter what form it took, whether urbane and corporatist or volkisch, combined a hostility to both capitalism and communism with personality cults, grandiose displays of paramilitary (and later military) power and prowess, and a predilection for violence.While almost all fascist groups were ardent nationalists, fascism as a whole transcended national boundaries. In some places, fascism came to dominate the entire political landscape. Fascism flourished past the 1930s in places like Italy (where Benito Mussolini oversaw the creation of the first true fascist state in history), in Germany (where the model of Italian fascism blended with racialist science, militarism, and populism in order to form an idiosyncratic belief system called national socialism), and in South America (where authoritarian dictatorships became disarmingly common during the Cold War). Elsewhere, fascist movements threatened standing governments and elections but never managed to hold onto power for any real length of time.