Decoding buzzwords: What actually is fascism? How can we identify it in practice?

There has been a lot of discussion about fascism lately, particularly when looking at the US election and how the fervent proponents of each party view the others. Many words, like "Marxist," "Radical," and "Fascist" have been thrown around, but they don't contribute to a productive conversation.

One of the biggest problems here is that most people don't actually know what those words mean. In the United States, things like Socialism, Communism, and Marxism (which are all distinct concepts) have all been lumped into "a focus on social issues that will turn us into Cold War-era China and Russia." Fascism largely just means "person in power I don't like."

Rhetorically speaking, politicians using these words know that they are emotional trigger points that will upset one side or the other. They are given significance by history, but the terminology is generally so vaguely invoked that it doesn't actually mean what it used to. According to George Orwell in 1944, "the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless." If he saw that disintegration of the term's definition back then, how much weaker must it be now?

But just because a word has lost a universally understood connotative meaning, doesn't mean it has no meaning at all. Godwin's Law states that, "As a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a person/s being compared to Hitler or another Nazi, increases." This is now just as true in political discussions, and thus some people may be inclined to ignore any comparison between a current regime and the Nazis. But we can surely accept that there are some people who truly are Nazis and that recognizing them early can only be to our benefit.

So how do we make these conversations more worthwhile? Just calling someone or something fascist is now unlikely to sway anybody toward your side. In fact, it's more likely to make the other person sympathize with your target, since they feel they are being unfairly persecuted. The only way to make a word like fascism viable again is to make sure as many people as possible know what it actually means, and make sure that arguments around fascism know what characteristics they are referring to.

With that interest in mind, this article will be looking at where the word "fascism" comes from and what common traits have been assigned to it. Whether you feel that the current political state is deserving of that label is then up to you.

Where does the word "fascism" come from?

As with many things in modern language, the original meaning of fascism requires a brief trip back to Ancient Rome. The word comes from the Latin word "fasces," a bundle of sticks that often held an axe head. The fasces was a symbol of the Roman leader's power to punish people, generally for crimes they have been found guilty of.

This symbol was present through the royal, republican, and imperial phases of Roman culture, and while the fasces could be viewed in a negative light, they were generally neutral (for the Roman citizens, at least). In times of rebellion, protesters might break a particular magistrate's fasces to show their anger, but it was not usually a matter of hating the symbol itself so much as the person wielding it.

Over time, the fasces shifted from specifically denoting the power to decide how and when punishment should be inflicted to just symbolizing power in general. The fasces reappeared off and on for the next thousand years or so after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, only gaining a supremely negative connotation in the last century.

This shift in perspective came because European dictators used the fasces as symbols of their power in the 20th century. Just like the swastika had previous meanings that have been largely forgotten since Hitler co-opted it, the fasces became associated with totalitarian regimes after Mussolini invoked them for his National Fascist Party. This gave rise to the term "fascism" as a power-focused governing system or ideology connected with the fasces symbology.

As a brief aside, the word "dictator" also comes from Ancient Rome. It also held a far less vile meaning in that culture. The Roman Republic was at least theoretically balanced, with power spread across multiple sources. But when the country was at a crisis point, they would appoint a dictator to have total power, eliminating the bureaucratic delays and bickering so that the problem could be handled. However, they were not intended to hold that power for more than six months at a time, and historical dictators were praised for eagerly releasing the power when they were done.

People have been trying to call themselves the new Rome since it fell, so it's hardly surprising to see these neutral Roman terms find new life in the modern day. In fact, the fasces was used in Italy before Mussolini's rise to power. The Italian words "fascio" and "fasci" just meant group or union, and they were used as such on a regular basis. Mussolini borrowed that meaning (because his movement was a populist one), doubled down on the historical significance of the symbol, and created what we know today as fascism.