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Fascism, modern political ideology that seeks to regenerate the social, economic, and cultural life of a country by basing it on a heightened sense of national belonging or ethnic identity. Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy. Despite the idealistic goals of fascism, attempts to build fascist societies have led to wars and persecutions that caused millions of deaths. As a result, fascism is strongly associated with right-wing fanaticism, racism, totalitarianism, and violence.




ORIGINS AND RISE OF NAZISM
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National Socialism was similar in many respects to Italian fascism (see Fascism). The roots of National Socialism, however, were peculiarly German, grounded, for example, in the Prussian tradition of military authoritarianism and expansion; in the German romantic tradition of hostility to rationalism, liberalism, and democracy; in various racist doctrines according to which the Nordic peoples, as so-called pure Aryans, were not only physically superior to other races, but were the carriers of a superior morality and culture; and in certain philosophical traditions that idealized the state or exalted the superior individual and exempted such a person from conventional restraints.
The theorists and planners of National Socialism included General Karl Ernst Haushofer, a German geographer who exercised much influence in German foreign affairs. The German editor and party leader Alfred Rosenberg formulated Nazi racial theories on the basis of the work of the Anglo-German writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain. To the German financier Hjalmar Schacht fell the task of formulating and carrying out much economic and banking policy, and the German architect and party leader Albert Speer was a major figure in overseeing the economy just before the end of World War II (1939-1945).





Liberalism, attitude, philosophy, or movement that has as its basic concern the development of personal freedom and social progress. Liberalism and democracy are now usually thought to have common aims, but in the past many liberals considered democracy unhealthy because it encouraged mass participation in politics. Nevertheless, liberalism eventually became identified with movements to change the social order through the further extension of democracy. A distinction must therefore be made between liberalism, in which social change is conceived of as gradual, flexible, and adaptive; and radicalism, in which social change is seen as fundamental and based on new principles of authority.

The course of liberalism in a given country is usually conditioned by the character of the prevailing form of government. For example, in countries in which the political and religious authorities are separate, liberalism mainly connotes political, economic, and social reform; in countries in which a state church exists or a church is politically influential, liberalism mainly connotes anticlericalism. In domestic politics, liberals have opposed feudal restraints that prevent the individual from rising out of a low social status; barriers such as censorship that limit free expression of opinion; and arbitrary power exercised over the individual by the state.

In international politics, liberals have opposed the domination of foreign policy by militarists and military considerations and the exploitation of native colonial people, and they have sought to substitute a cosmopolitan policy of international cooperation. In economics, liberals have attacked monopolies and mercantilist state policies that subject the economy to state control. In religion, liberals have fought against church interference in the affairs of the state and attempts by religious pressure groups to influence public opinion.

A distinction is sometimes made between so-called negative liberalism and positive liberalism. Between the mid-17th and the mid-19th centuries, liberals fought chiefly against oppression, arbitrariness, and misuses of power and emphasized the needs of the free individual. About the middle of the 19th century many liberals developed a more positive program stressing the constructive social activity of the state and advocating state action in the interests of the individual. The present-day defenders of the older liberal policies deplore this departure and argue that positive liberalism is merely authoritarianism in disguise. The defenders of positive liberalism argue that state and church are not the only obstructors of freedom, but that poverty may deprive the individual of the possibility of making significant choices and must therefore be controlled by constituted authority.