Italian Fascism

The authoritarian, nationalist political ideology and movement led by Benito Mussolini in Italy from the early 1920s through World War II, distinguished here from German Nazism and later theorists’ notion of totalitarianism. It is characterized in these claims as a form of rule continuous with the existing nation-state rather than a break from it.

Claims that use this term

• Italian Fascism remained continuous with the nation-state; totalitarianism broke from it
• British diplomats saw Italian Fascism as authority reasserting itself against liberty