If this doesn't describe the modern left in America, torbee will eat your hat.
fascism,
political ideology and mass movement that dominated many parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and that also had adherents in western Europe, the
United States,
South Africa,
Japan, Latin America, and the
Middle East. Europe’s first fascist leader,
Benito Mussolini, took the name of his party from the Latin word
fasces, which referred to a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an ax) used as a symbol of penal authority in
ancient Rome. Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic
nationalism,
contempt for electoral
democracy and political and cultural
liberalism, a belief in natural social
hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a
Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. At the end of
World War II, the major European fascist parties were broken up, and in some countries (such as
Italy and
West Germany) they were officially banned. Beginning in the late 1940s, however, many fascist-oriented parties and movements were founded in Europe as well as in Latin America and South Africa. Although some European “neofascist” groups attracted large followings, especially in Italy and
France, none were as influential as the major fascist parties of the interwar period.
