Trending claims

Social Darwinism challenged positivism's claim of deliberate and rational choice focusing on heredity race and environment

Social Darwinism made no distinction between physical and social life and viewed the human condition as an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival of the fittest

C L R James wrote all the things that Hitler was to do so well later Marcus Garvey was doing in 1920 and 1921

Gaetano Mosca developed the theory that in all societies an organized minority would dominate and rule over an disorganized majority stating there are only two classes in society the governing and the governed

Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time

They regarded civilization as being in crisis and as requiring a massive and total solution

Nietzsche's argument that God is dead coinciding with his attack on the herd mentality of Christianity on democracy and on modern collectivism his concept of the Übermensch and his advocacy of the will to power as a primordial instinct were major influences upon many of the fin-de-siècle generation

Georges Valois claimed the roots of fascism stemmed from the late 18th century Jacobin movement seeing in its totalitarian nature a foreshadowing of the fascist state

The fin-de-siècle outlook was influenced by various intellectual developments including Darwinian biology Gesamtkunstwerk Arthur de Gobineau's racialism Gustave Le Bon's psychology and the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henri Bergson

Bergson's claim of the existence of an élan vital centred upon free choice and rejected the processes of materialism and determinism this challenged Marxism

New theories of social and political psychology rejected the notion of human behaviour being governed by rational choice and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in political issues than reason

George Mosse analyzed fascism as an inheritor of the mass ideology and civil religion of the French Revolution as well as a result of the brutalization of societies in 1914–1918

William L Shirer sees a continuity from the views of Fichte and Hegel through Bismarck to Hitler Robert Gerwarth speaks of a direct line from Bismarck to Hitler

The theme was based on a revolt against materialism rationalism positivism bourgeois society and democracy

Monarchist fascists sought to use fascism to create an absolute monarchy under King Victor Emmanuel III.

Orwell said the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless and signifies something not desirable.

Major Italian groups on the right feared an uprising by groups on the left.

Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet split Soviets used the term to denounce Chinese Marxists in addition to social democracy coining a new term in social fascism

The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was sometimes called fascist

Italian fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.