The political tradition that emerged in early 20th-century Europe — first as Mussolini's Italian Fascism, then in its most radical form as German National Socialism — fusing the nation, the state, and the leader into a single organic whole and seeking national rebirth through will, discipline, and violence. Its intellectual roots run through Georges Sorel's myth of revolutionary violence and Giovanni Gentile's "actual idealism," the philosophy Gentile wrote for the Italian regime, and it draws on a wider authoritarian and anti-liberal current that includes Carl Schmitt's decisionist legal theory and Julius Evola's radical Traditionalism. Fascism rejects liberal individualism, parliamentary democracy, and Marxist class analysis alike, replacing them with hierarchy, myth, and the cult of the nation and its leader. It is studied today primarily as a historical tradition — its regimes defeated by 1945 — though its themes recur in contemporary far-right and authoritarian-nationalist movements.
Fascism
The authoritarian, ultranationalist tradition that fuses nation, state, and leader into a single organic whole, exalts will, action, and violence over reason, and defines itself against both liberalism and Marxism.
Giovanni Gentile
Giovanni Gentile was the philosopher of Italian Fascism whose 'actual idealism' fused individual and state, giving the movement its most systematic intellectual foundation
ThinkerJulius Evola
Julius Evola was an Italian Traditionalist philosopher of the radical right whose anti-egalitarian vision of a spiritual aristocracy remains a touchstone for far-right and identitarian currents
ThinkerAdolf Hitler
1889–1945
Adolf Hitler was the Nazi dictator who dismantled German democracy, perpetrated the industrialized murder of six million Jews, and plunged the world into the Second World War
ThinkerBenito Mussolini
1883–1945
Benito Mussolini was the founder of fascism and dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943, whose model of authoritarian nationalism influenced movements worldwide, including Nazism
ThinkerFrancisco Franco
1892–1975
Francisco Franco was Spain's authoritarian dictator, whose regime fused Catholic traditionalism, Spanish nationalism, and anti-communism across nearly four decades of repressive rule
ThinkerCarl Schmitt
1888–1985
Carl Schmitt was an anti-liberal legal theorist and committed Nazi whose accounts of sovereignty, the state of exception, and the friend-enemy distinction still haunt debates over liberal democracy