▲

The worrying spike in recent right-wing activity, notably the emergence in the United States of the Proud Boys, harks back to an era during the 1920s and '30s and the rise of fascism in Europe. Italy's Benito Mussolini is credited with inventing fascism, a ultranationalist political ideology and movement underpinned by violent and oppressive authoritarianism. In fact, to identify with fascism is to embrace dictatorship, a centralized autocracy, and extreme nationalism. But why exactly is fascism so brutal in nature, and who were its most dangerous adherents?

Click through and learn more about this abhorrent political movement.

▲

Fascism has its roots in antiquity. The word fascism comes from the Latin fascis, meaning "bundle." This in turn corresponds to the word fasces, which was a bundle of wood with an ax head that was carried by ancient Roman magistrates as a symbol of power and authority.

▲

The Italian word for bundle is fascio, and it's from this word that Benito Mussolini drew on to name the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Fasces of Combat), a fascist organization he founded in 1919. Mussolini is pictured attending the first fascist meeting in Milan that year. The party's co-founder, Michele Bianchi, is on the right.

▲

The Italian Fasces of Combat was created out of fear of Bolshevism, the political system and ideas that Vladimir Lenin and his supporters introduced in Russia after the events of 1917. The Russian Revolution sparked fears across Europe of a communist takeover, a prospect not lost on Mussolini.

▲

In 1921, Benito Mussolini formed the National Fascist Party. The following year, he became prime minister of Italy. He then slowly turned that position into one of dictatorial power. The world's first fascist state had been created.

▲

Mussolini believed democracy was a failed system. Soon identified by fascists as Il Duce ("The Leader"), he inspired and supported the international spread of fascist movements during the inter-war period. He's seen here addressing a huge crowd in Milan in 1930.

▲

In 1935, Mussolini ordered the invasion of Ethiopia, a poor African country that had once humiliated Italy in battle. Seen as an act of revenge, this was the first military invasion by a fascist state over a foreign nation. Mussolini later declared that the Roman Empire was back.

▲

Germany, a nation still reeling from the fallout created by the Great War and now crippled by hyperinflation as a result of the Great Depression, was turning its head towards Adolf Hitler, who in turn was looking at Italy and its leader. Hitler was a great admirer of Il Duce, and was eventually to model National Socialism on Italy's fascist manifesto.

▲

Hitler came to power in 1933. Six years later in 1939, Nazi Germany forged an alliance with Italy known as the "Pact of Steel." On September 1, 1939, the Second World War broke out. Hitler is pictured returning to Berlin in 1940 after signing the armistice with France, with cheering crowds welcoming the Führer.

▲

Several countries in Europe embraced fascism during the 1930s. Engelbert Dollfuss, who served as Chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934, was the de facto leader of the right-wing Fatherland Front.

▲

The Fatherland Front was the political organization of the Federal State of Austria. While aligning itself with fascist Italy, the Fatherland Front was opposed to racial discrimination, and advocated independence from Germany. Dollfuss was assassinated by the Nazis in 1934, and the Fatherland Front was eventually banned with the annexation of Austria in 1938.

▲

In Portugal, the rise to power by António de Oliveira Salazar saw the country fall under an authoritarian rule of a Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship), a regime later reframed as the Estado Novo (New State).

▲

Salazar presided over a corporatist dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1933 until 1974. Opposed to communism, socialism, syndicalism, and liberalism, Salazar's rule was conservative, corporatist, and nationalist in nature. But he distanced himself from fascism and Nazism.

▲

It was in Portugal's neighbor, Spain, where fascism enjoyed a greater toehold. The Falange (Phalanx) was founded in 1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The organization generated a membership much of which was later absorbed into the military dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

▲

Franco received military assistance from Italy and Germany during the Spanish Civil War, and he forged a particularly strong bond with Hitler. Franco's nationalist forces eventually claimed victory in Spain, and he remained head of the regime until his death in 1975.

▲

In France, the Croix-de-Feu (Cross of Fire) was a nationalist French league of the interwar period, led by Colonel François de La Rocque.

▲

The Croix-de-Feu was one of the right-wing groups that encouraged anti-Semitic politics in 1935. After the fall of France in 1940, a number of French fascists served in the Vichy regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain.

▲

Fascism reared its ugly head in Great Britain under the leadership of Sir Oswald Mosly. A former politician, Mosely founded and led the British Union of Fascists (BUF).

▲

Mosley's reputation and that of his organization suffered a fatal blow in October 1936, after a violent clash between BUF members and anti-fascist demonstrators, in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street. Reviled by most of the British public, Mosley was eventually imprisoned in May 1940 and the BUF later banned.

▲

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the Black Legion, a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, sought to establish fascism in the United States by launching a revolution. Implicated in numerous murders, the Black Legion was disbanded in 1945. The photograph shows Detroit police officers posing with weapons and regalia seized from Black Legion terrorists.

▲

Established in 1936, the German American Bund recruited into its ranks only American citizens of German descent. Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany. Pictured is a parade by German American Bund members in New York City in October 1937.

▲

Elements of fascism took hold in various countries in South America, most notably in Argentina during what became known as the Infamous Decade. The four presidents of the country during this period, José Félix Uriburu (pictured), Agustín Pedro Justo, Roberto María Ortiz, and Ramón Castillo, were all embroiled in the persecution of political opponents, electoral fraud, and other political and economic scandals.

▲

Common characteristics of fascism include the absolute power of the state. A fascist state seeks total control over all major parts of society.

▲

A single dictator wields supreme power over a fascist state. Typically, this leader will use their charisma and a magnetic personality to win over the people. And they are very often skilled orators.

▲

Corporatism is one of the basic tenets of fascism. A fascist state advocates the collective management of the economy by controlling labor. Strikes and other employment disputes are outlawed.

▲

Fascist dictators adopt a policy of extreme nationalism to amplify national glory and draw on the fear of outside threats.

▲

The new society dictators create is based on the 'common will' of the people, a falsehood magnified by warped patriotic reference to historical myth rather than steered by fair, intellectual judgment. In a similar illustration, Mussolini is seen urging his private militia, the "Blackshirts," to follow him.

▲

The fascist creed is further demonstrated by the brutal suppression of dissent and the systematic persecution of minority groups.

▲

Fascists believe the state can survive only if it successfully proves its military superiority in war. Its "greatness" is achieved by conquering and ruling weak nations.

▲

Fascism emphasizes youth both in a physical sense of age and in a spiritual sense as related to virility and commitment to action. A strong sense of community or brotherhood is achieved at an early age: from 1936 to 1945 the Hitler Youth was the sole official boys' youth organization in Nazi Germany, and it was partially a paramilitary organization. The Italian Fascists' political anthem was called Giovinezza ("The Youth").

▲

In Italy, Mussolini perceived women's primary role as essentially child bearers. They were "reproducers of the nation." The Piccole Italiane (pictured) was an organization for girls within the National Fascist Party.

▲

Similarly, women in the Third Reich did not have a career outside the home. Their principal role was as a mother and wife. This doctrine was imbued at an early age through the League of German Girls, the girls' wing of the Nazi Party. Membership was compulsory.

▲

Fascism was largely discredited in Europe after the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 (although it endured in Franco's Spain for several decades). But although the original fascist regimes were no more, the ideas Mussolini put a name on linger.

▲

Today, far-right ideology includes significant elements of fascism. However, most modern fascist movements are without official political party representation or state power. Notable neo-fascist movements include the British National Party, established in 1982, and the Proud Boys, an exclusively male North American far-right neo-fascist organization founded in 2016.