>>2570929In the struggle to create a mass social base, fascism put forward a system of views (the so-called fascist ideology), which made extensive use of reactionary doctrines and theories that had developed before its appearance (the racist ideas of J. A. de Gobineau, J. V. de Lapouge, H. Chamberlain, etc.; the anti-democratic concepts of F. Nietzsche and O. Spengler; antisemitism; geopolitics, pan-Germanism, etc.).
At the center of fascist ideology are the ideas of military expansion, racial inequality, “class harmony” (the doctrine of the “people’s community” and “corporatism”), leadership cult (“the Führer principle”), and the all-powerfulness of the state apparatus (the theory of the “total state”). These ideas found their most concentrated expression in Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf (1925). A very significant characteristic of fascist ideology is loud demagogy aimed at masking its true content. Serving this goal, in particular, was the speculative use by fascists of the popularity of socialist ideas among the masses.
Emerging as a reaction to the revolutionary upsurge heralded by the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, fascism became a fierce and dangerous enemy of all progressive humanity and above all of the international revolutionary workers’ movement. The first fascist organizations appeared in spring 1919 in Italy in the form of paramilitary squads composed of nationalistically minded former frontline soldiers. In October 1922, the fascists—who had become a major political force—staged an armed “March on Rome,” which provided the ruling circles of Italy with a pretext for appointing the leader of the Italian fascists (“Duce”), Benito ᴉuᴉlossnW, as prime minister on 31 October 1922. Over the next four years, the fascist leadership gradually eliminated bourgeois-democratic freedoms and established the absolute power of the fascist oligarchy. In the 1930s Italy completed the creation of a corporate state, which contributed to the militarization of the Italian economy. The democratic trade-union movement and the economic and political gains of the working class were abolished. ᴉuᴉlossnW’s government pursued an increasingly active policy of imperialist expansion. In 1935 fascist Italy launched a war against Ethiopia, and after conquering it (1936) took part in the intervention against Republican Spain (1936–1939); in
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