Regardless of whether or not that was a tactic of Mussolini, that is most definitely not the definition of fascism.

You can wait to wake up to a totalitarian government biting you on the nose, but some of us remember that Mussolini was a journalist and rose to power in the media and don't want to let it get that far.

Fascism has a specific definition that is not just "whatever Mussolini did".

Considering that the term itself comes from his movement, the "Fasces of Revolutionary Action", and that he coined the word fascism personally in 1919 (after the word "fascio"), I think at the very least he gets to be attributed the lions' share of it.

Newton can be credited as being substantially the inventor of Newtonian Physics. That doesn't make alchemy a sub-field of Newtonian Physics, despite the fact that Newton wrote numerous treatises on alchemy.

Or possibly that alchemy has nothing to do with motion and gravitation.

Chemistry isn't a sub-field of Physics either.

>Chemistry isn't a sub-field of Physics either.

Chemistry is just applied Physics.

And yes, for all you mathematicians out there, Physics is just applied math. :)

Except neither is true.

> has nothing to do with motion and gravitation.

Oh but it does. (The force of gravity is essential for some (al)chemical techniques.)

Exactly.

No, we don't agree.

He literally coined the term when talking about his movement. If anyone has claim to what the definition was, it's him.

But history is written by the winners and I'm sure modern day fascists would like to distance themselves from that history as much as possible...and thus the term gets narrowed and redefined.

> That doesn't make alchemy a sub-field of Newtonian Physics

No, but it does make it part of "Newtonism."

So then why not take Mussolini's own words on what fascism is and isn't? His definition required it to be totalitarian: "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state".

> Considering that the term itself comes from his movement, the "Fasces of Revolutionary Action", and that he coined the word fascism personally in 1919 (after the word "fascio"), I think at the very least he gets to be attributed the lions' share of it.

Sure, but that doesn't mean any one aspect of what he did, in isolation from the rest, is "the definition of fascism". (And the understanding of the genericized term is at least as much shaped by Naziism as Italian fascism, anyhow; this might annoy Mussolini if he was around to be annoyed -- frankly, that Nazis are taken as an example of "fascism" would probably annoy Hitler, too -- but, you know, that's just the way language evolves; if we're talking about Mussolini's movement in Italy specifically, we generally say "Italian fascism", not just "fascism" unless there is context to indicate that we are specifically talking about Italy.)

I mean, since this is an argument about semantics

> a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader

is the definition of fascism. This is a tool often deployed by fascists.

And saying that something is "the (very) definition of" something is a colloquialism drawing comparison that dates back at least to James Madison and the Federalist Papers.

No. 47, if you'd like to read it.

To be fair, Hitler himself was not universally recognized as a "bad guy" until, well, later.

To be depressingly fair, Hitler was never (and is still not) universally recognized as a "bad guy".

That's still not how you use the word "literally".

It is a technique used by fascist regimes, communist regimes, dictatorships (basically totalitarian regimes of all stripes.)

It is a separate concept from fascism.

EDIT downvoters seem to have weak English skills...