Fascism
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
Fascism is a kind of government. In fascism, the country is considered more important than any one person. A country under this kind of government is usually run by a person called a dictator, who has the right of total control over the government and people. Even though most fascists would agree in theory that the country is the most important thing, fascists in real life act like the wants of the dictator are more important than anything else in the country or even human life.
Fascist governments are different than communist ones in that fascists do not want to take over land and factories to own them. Instead, they usually work closely with people who already own these things but use the resources to build up the army or other parts of the fascist state. It is very important to fascists that all schools in the country teach children that the dictator is the most important person in the world. All adults are expected to either join the fascist party or support it as the government. It is always a big crime in fascist countries to speak against the leader or ruling party. Fascist leaders almost always give themselves a high military rank (even if they have not earned it), or appear in public in an army or navy uniform, because fascist countries consider the army the most important part of the government.
The first fascist government was run by Benito Mussolini in Italy from 1922 until 1943. The governments of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and Adolf Hitler in Germany were also fascist. Some other examples are Imperial Japan under Hideki Tojo, Greece under Joannis Metaxas, and Spain under the rule of Francisco Franco.
Fascism is named after the fasces, which is an old Roman Empire name for a group of sticks tied together. It is easy to break one stick in half. It is very hard to break many sticks tied together in half. Fascists think that everyone following the same leader makes the country strong the same way the sticks are. In real life, most fascist governments do not last for a long time, either because people get tired of being oppressed and have a revolution or the fascist party provokes a war with other countries that they then lose. Both things happened at the same time in Italy in 1943.
In countries led by fascist governments, the government tries to control all areas of life, including work, school, and family life. Fascist ideas were most common around the time of World War II. Many people were killed by fascist governments because the government did not like them or because they opposed fascism. Even more were killed in wars started by fascist governments.
