Fascism a Child of crisis

Mohd. Shahan Ullla Section A

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek rejuvenation of their nation based on commitment to an organic national community where its individuals are united together as one people in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood through a totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through discipline, indoctrination, physical education, and eugenics. Fascism seeks to purify the nation of foreign influences that are deemed to be causing degeneration of the nation or of not fitting into the national culture. Fascism promotes political violence and war, as forms of direct action that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality. Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations for violence against opponents or to overthrow a political system. Fascism opposes multiple ideologies: conservatism, liberalism, and two major forms of socialism communism and social democracy. Fascism claims to represent a synthesis of cohesive ideas previously divided between traditional political ideologies. To achieve its goals, the fascist state purges forces, ideas, people, and systems deemed to be the cause of decadence and degeneration. One common definition of fascism focuses on three groups of ideas:

The Fascist Negations of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anticonservatism. Nationalist, authoritarian goals for the creation of a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture. A political aesthetic using romantic symbolism, mass mobilisation, a positive view of violence, promotion of masculinity and youth and charismatic leadership

Fascists advocate a state-directed, regulated economy that is dedicated to the nation; the use and primacy of regulated private property and private enterprise contingent upon service to the nation, the use of state enterprise where private enterprise is failing or is inefficient, and autarky. It supports criminalization of strikes by employees and lockouts by employers because it deems these acts as prejudicial to the national community.

Fascism a child of crisis

Fascism was born in both Italy and Germany, out of crisis. People were cold, hungry, broke and fearful of their futures. This led to radicalism that promised the people they had the answer. People in this situation will sell their souls to someone who says they can make the hunger and fear stop. In addition, the war demoralized the Italian and German people. The nationalistic attributes of Fascism gave them pride in themselves and who they were again. That is always seductive to people who have lost their way, are looking for identity and to feel good about themselves again.

Hence it becomes evident that fascism can flourish and survive only when there has been a mass moral breakdown in an area. Where people need a force to govern them and instil in them strong nationalistic feelings to bring out confidence in them. The Taleban's religious police have tightened regulations in the Afghan capital Kabul, punishing 120 men for trimming their beards and 90 women for not veiling themselves fully enough, official radio and residents said on Thursday. ``The mobile groups of the Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue (the religious police) punished 120 men for trimming their beards and 90 women for not observing the Islamic veil in the past two days,'' the official Taleban Voice of Shariat radio station reported on Thursday. The police act under the orders of the Taleban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, who is based in the southern city of Kandahar. The Taleban have decreed that men should not shave or trim their beards, which must grow long enough to protrude from a fist clasped at the point of the chin. Women have been ordered to wear the all-enveloping burqa veil -- which leaves just a small patch of gauze to see out of -- when outside their houses, and are forbidden from taking taxis unless accompanied by a male blood relative. Women are also barred from wearing jewellery or high-heeled shoes. The radio said three taxi drivers were punished for carrying women passengers without a male relative but did not specify the type of the punishment given. The common punishment is lashing violators on the street with a leather strap. Residents who witnessed a Taleban policeman punishing a woman on Thursday said she was lashed five times for exposing an ankle and wearing high heel shoes. The Taleban control two thirds of Afghanistan and say they are on a mission to make the country the world's purest Islamic state. The

movement says it will not bow to international pressure to relax its Islamicisation programme.