fascism / fascist

By strict definition, Fascism is an autocratic and ultranationalist political ideology, characterized by centralized authority focused on a dictatorial leader and militarism, use of force to suppress opposition, national or racial supremacy, and regimentation of society and the economy that subordinates the individual to the collective. It is most closely associated with Mussolini’s Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party) in Italy and Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Worker’s (Nazi) Party). But Vladimir Putin’s Russia also fits this strict definition, as do Donald Trump’s aspirations in the United States. Beyond this strict definition, fascism and fascist are often used more broadly to refer to authoritarianism in general.

The term arose in Italy following World War I as a label for various ultranationalist groups vying for power, and Mussolini formed his Partito Nazionale Fascista in 1921. It comes from the Latin fasces, a symbol of power and authority in the Roman Empire consisting of a sheaf of rods bound around an ax. Fasces appears in the 1538 Latin-English Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght:

Fascis, is a burdeyn or knytche of wodde, or any other thyng. Also Fascis sagittarum is taken for a sheffe of arrowes.

Fasces, roddes bounden togyther, and an axe in the myddell, whiche were borne before the chiefe offycers of Rome, in declarynge their authoritie, whereof some had syxe, and some mo.

And it appears in English prose by 1591, but in italics, marking it as foreign word. In Henry Savile’s translation of Tacitus fasces is used in the English translation of a marginal note in Greek elaborating on <i>Consulare autority</i> (<i>Consulare imperium</i>)

To haue 12. fasces alwaies and in euery place borne before him, and to sit betweene the present Consuls in a chaire of estate.

And in Philemon Holland’s 1609 translation of Ammianus Marcellinus fasces appears to be fully anglicized:

Severo: who being Legatus Proconsulis in Africke, when one of his old acquaintance met with him going in state with his Fasces and Lictors before, and embraced him familiarly, without due respect of his high place, caused him to be scourged, sub elogio [praeconis] LEGATƲM P. R. homo plebeius temerè amplecti noli, i. Take heed another time how you, a commoner, seeme rudely to embrace a Lieutenant of the people of Rome.

Fasces continue to be used in iconography to this day to symbolize power and authority. For instance, fasces decorate the walls on either side of the rostrum in the US House of Representatives.

But modern use of fasces to represent power were taken to another level in twentieth-century Italy. The term Fascist, usually capitalized, appeared shortly after the end of World War I as a label for various ultranationalist political groups. By 1919, this label was appearing in English-language newspapers in articles about Italian politics. From London’s the Observer of 19 October 1919:

Among the parties we have the Moderates, the Clericals, the Liberals-Radicals, the Republicans, the Socialists, the Nationalists, and the “Fascists”—a group, this, of political opportunists which, beyond expressing ultra-patriotic doctrines, seems to have no more definite policy than that of attaining to power.

And we see Fascism in a book review for Sisley Huddleston’s Europe in Zigzags in the 8 December 1920 Providence Journal:

In his characteristically successful fashion he has so blended his material as to answer many questions about reparations, security, dictatorship and democracy, about Fascism and the youth movement.

[…]

With his memories of Italy are recalled interesting facts connected with the most noted authors and poets. Fascism, Mussolini and his relations with the church, the policy of Pope Pius CI, and the relations between France and Italy.

Mussolini would formally create his political party the following year.

But fascist and fascism, usually lower case, would soon come to be used more generally to refer to authoritarianism writ large. Poet Dylan Thomas used fascism in this general sense, not in direct reference to Italian Fascists or German Nazis, in a July 1939 letter:

But the result of a consciously-made intelligentsia may be to narrow, not to widen, the, if you’ll excuse me, individual outlook, and instead of a lonely man—and writing, again, is the result, as somebody said, of certain favourable bad conditions—working in face of an invisible opposition, (the crude opposition, of family, finance, etc. that says “writing is a waste of time” & “why don’t you do something worth-while” has always, surely, had to be disregarded) there may be just a group of condoling, sympathy-patting, “I was always bullied at school,” “So was I,” “Down with the philistines,” “They don’t understand a poet,” mutually acknowledging, ism and isting, uniformed grumblers making a communal opposition to a society in which, individually, they feel alone and unimportant. I’m selfish enough not to feel worried very much about the writer in his miserable artistic loneliness, whether it’s in Wales or Paris or London; I don’t see why it should be miserable anyway. I think that to fight, for instance, the fascism of bad ideas by uniforming & regimenting good ones will be found, eventually, to be bad tactics.

This general use would become much more common once Germany and Italy were defeated in World War II, but with the passing of the generation that fought that war, the stricter, more narrow sense is unfortunately becoming more relevant to present-day politics once again.

Sources:

Elyot, Thomas. The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1538, sig. H.3. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

“The Italian Elections” (11 October 1919). Observer (London), 19 October 1919, 14/2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Marcellinus, Ammianus. “Annotations and Conjectures Upon the 14. Booke of Ammianus Marcellinus.” The Roman Historie. Philemon Holland, trans. London: Adam Islip, 1609, sig.a.ii.v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. fasces, n.; third edition, June 2014, s.v. fascism, n., fascist, n. & adj.

“Sisley Huddleston Looks at Europe” (book review). Providence Journal (Rhode Island), 8 December 1920, 28/1–2. Readex America’s Historical Newspapers.

Tacitus. The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba. Fower Bookes of the Histories of Cornelius Tacitus. Henry Savile, trans. Oxford: Joseph Barnes and R. Robinson for Richard Wright, 1591, 171, Annotations 79. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Thomas, Dylan. Letter to W. T. Davies, July, 1939. Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters. Paul Ferris, ed. London: Paladin, 1987, 388–89. Archive.org.

Photo credit: Unknown photographer, 1940. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.