Question

How did fascists in Germany, Italy, and Japan come to power in the Interwar Era? Does fascism still exist today?

Answer 1

• Fascism is a political system in which the state has all the power. All citizens must work for the country and the government. A dictator or another powerful person is the head of such a state. He uses a strong army and a police force to keep law and order. He is often a strong, authoritarian leader who is, at the beginning, admired by many people.
• Fascism first appeared after World War I when Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy. In Germany of the 1930s Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism rose to power. Fascism also appeared in Japan, Spain and Argentina.
• After World War I many people were disappointed and angry because the war destroyed a lot of their country or because some of their land was taken away from them.
• Italians were not satisfied with the way other countries treated them after World War I. Benito Mussolini emerged as a powerful leader who promised the people that he would bring back pride and make Italy a well-respected state again.
• He created his own private army with their own uniforms. Mussolini’s followers were aggressive and started fights with other citizens and regular soldiers in the streets. Finally, in 1922 Mussolini became dictator of Italy.
• Germany was one of the big losers of World War I. It lost a lot of its land. The winners of the war made Germany give up most of its weapons and the government had pay for the destruction that occurred during the war. The country was poor, its economy was ruined.
• In the 1920s and 30s a new party emerged: the National Socialist Workers’ Party became powerful. By 1933 the Nazis were the strongest party in Germany. Their leader, Adolf Hitler, dissolved parliament, took over power and made Germany a fascist state. In the following years he built up a strong police force and the largest army in Europe.
• Hitler was called the Fuehrer. He claimed that the German people were better, stronger and more intelligent than any other people. Other groups, especially Jews and Romanies were considered to be inferior. Hitler believed that Germany could survive only if it got rid of these weak people.
• The situation in Japan was similar. The economy was in bad condition and people had little to eat. Many Japanese wanted the military to take over the government and Japan to be a strong country again. In the 1930s Japan started expanding its power. It hated other Asian countries and wanted all of Asia under Japanese control.
• Although fascism does not officially exist in today's world, many modern dictators like Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi have been/are deeply influenced by this ideology and developed their political ideology based on this theory of Mussolini.
• Given that fascism was so clearly a response to the conditions of the Twenties and Thirties, it’s surprising that it has any purchase today. But bona fide fascism still exist in two forms. First, what you might call cultists.
• These people are unafraid to be labelled fascist and might even use the Nazi swastika: they were among the people who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, a march that ended in the death of a counter-protestor.
• They might join violent organisations, such as the Ku Klux Klan – an anti-black group in the United States – or join fringe parties, such as the British National Party. Many of them have a criminal history. Some have found a home within the so-called alt-Right, a largely online movement that routinely abuses racial minorities and women, and which has been known to appropriate fascist symbols.
  
• Second aspect,could be neo-fascism.Neo-fascist groups have emerged throughout the world. Their members have different views of the values of society.
• They want strict anti-immigration laws. Foreigners should leave the country.
• The police should have more rights. There should be more law and order in a country.
• Neo-fascists do not want relations with other countries.
• Neo-fascist movements perform acts of violence and are sometimes involved in terrorist attacks but they are too small to start a wide -scale rebellion in a state.