The word “Fascism,” as it’s too often abused in political discourse, has come to mean nothing more precise than “bad.” There are clearer words for governments that exercise improper power, such as “authoritarian” and “totalitarian.” Fascism is supposed to denote a certain kind of authoritarian system. Writers need to exercise precision when using the word, rather than tossing it around as a general insult.

In its original sense, the word comes from the Fascist Party of Italy and refers to Italy’s government under Benito Mussolini before and during World War II. It’s used more broadly to indicate governments that follow policies similar to Fascist Italy or people who (allegedly) support those policies. Just what are those policies?

The best place to start is with Mussolini’s own words. The History Guide provides some key writings by Mussolini. The page is in English; my Italian isn’t up to any serious reading. Near the beginning we find the most important point:

The man of Fascism is an individual who is nation and fatherland, which is a moral law, binding together individuals and the generations into a tradition and a mission, suppressing the instinct for a life enclosed within the brief round of pleasure in order to restore within duty a higher life free from the limits of time and space; a life in which the individual, through the denial of himself, through the sacrifice of his own private interests, through death itself, realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies.

The heart of Fascism is the annihilation of the private individual. The individual is “nation and fatherland.” Under Fascist rule, you must sacrifice your interests and die. What’s left is a “spiritual existence.”

The Hegelian idea of a world will, a Weltgeist, informed Fascism and its northern cousin.

Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his immanent relationship with a superior law and with an objective Will that transcends the particular individual and raises him to conscious membership in a spiritual society. …

Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man in his historical existence.

This is the “spiritual existence” Fascism compelled people to attain.

Fascism’s relationship with socialism was ambivalent. Mussolini started out as a socialist, and “Nazi” is short for “National Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany,” but Mussolini writes that “Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State.”

The Fascist policy of assimilating businesses into the nation and fatherland rather than expropriating everything reflects this view. However, at this point I should mention a common misconception. The word “corporati” figured heavily into Fascist rhetoric, making modern people think corporations played a more central role than they did. A discussion on Snopes helps to clarify the point:

… a common misunderstanding of what “corporatism” was in Mussolini’s fascism and a conflation with the modern capitalist “corporation,” most likely borne out of the similarity between the words.

Corporatism (“corporativismo” in Italian) was one of the cornerstone principles of Mussolini’s Fascism, and it had to do with the way society and the economy would be organized, with state power at the head of a system of guilds or corporations (“corporazione”) representing each major industry.

The corporazione weren’t businesses that investors independently started up and ran, but quasi-private extensions of the state into all the branches of the economy. Getting back to Mussolini’s summary, we find the same idea:

Individuals form classes according to the similarity of their interests, they form syndicates according to differentiated economic activities within these interests; but they form first, and above all, the State, which is not to be thought of numerically as the sum-total of individuals forming the majority of the nation.

Indoctrination is an important element:

Fascism, in short, is not only the giver of laws and the founder of institutions, but the educator and promoter of spiritual life. It wants to remake, not the forms of human life, but its content, man, character, faith. And to this end it requires discipline and authority that can enter into the spirits of men and there govern unopposed.

Personal and political freedom have no place in a Fascist society. “It is opposed to classical Liberalism.” “Fascism is opposed to Democracy.” Dissent is unacceptable. Item 8 of the 1934 Fascist Decalogue is “Mussolini is always right.”

The essence of Fascism is the treatment of society as a Borg collective, with one mind, one spirit. Notice one thing which is missing from this mix: racism. Originally Mussolini’s government wasn’t any more racist than people generally were at the time. He made antisemitic and anti-Slavic statements, but they weren’t initially important to national policy. This changed under Nazi influence, and in 1938 Italy adopted racial laws. Italians were nonsensically declared “Aryan,” showing that Italy had become a puppet state of Germany.

Nor is Fascism atheistic. The Italian government required religious teaching in schools, and Pope Pius XI looked favorably on the government. Mussolini writes:

Fascism respects the God of the ascetics, of the saints, of the heroes, and also God as seen and prayed to by the simple and primitive heart of the people.

Let’s consider some present-day governments. A WSFS resolution said that Ukraine was invaded by “fascists,” referring to Russia. How fascistic is it? I don’t claim to know a lot about life under Putin, but it seems more like an ordinary gangster state than a Fascist one. The country covers a huge geographic area and many ethnicities, and I’ve never had the impression its post-Soviet government has tried to hammer them all into one united, loyal Volk. It just wants power over them. China comes closer to the Fascist model, with its “re-education” camps, pervasive control of information, and close control over people’s daily lives. It’s communist in name, but the large amount of nominally private business is more characteristic of a Fascist state.

I won’t try here to get into whether Meloni represents a return of Fascism to Italy. That’s not my purpose here. I just hope this post will help people, especially writers, to be more precise when using the term. If you write about whether Meloni is a modern-day Fascist, please apply these criteria, whatever conclusion you reach.