[Tervuren]

I see fascist/fascism used a lot, but must admit an actual fascist government that labeled itself such seems to be before my time.

I must admit that I do not have any clear cut ideas of what exactly fascism is.

I only know of three formerly fascist countries, and do not know if I am leaving any out or if there are current countries.

Those former countries are :

Spain
Germany
Italy

I don't know a lot about Italy and fascism aside from the name Mussolini; and that he "made the trains run on time".

With Germany, I believe it was not dissimilar to the communists of Germany. In practice they looked similar, it was just in preaching they had their differences. They both had targeted groups to blame and put down, they both were for increasing state say in all matters of business.

With Spain it was incredibly fractured. It boiled down to a NAZI supported faction vs a Stalinist supported faction with many smaller fragments in the end either being destroyed or taking one side or the other.

But when it comes down to it, I really do not know what fascism is.

My perception is that Fascism structures itself very similar to communism.

In communism there are committees put in charge of the means of production and dictate how and where resources and people would be used.

In Fascism the government can dictate to corporations what they will do with their means of production, and dictate how and where resources and people would be used.

To me, my current perception is that the difference between the governments of Hitler and Stalin is really just one of names rather than functions. Perhaps people here know different?

I am from the U.S., and my education is likely biased in favor of our U.S. ally Stalin. As far as I know, both had purges, deathcamps, etc, just one gets more attention than the other.

So what is it? Lots of people seem to be against it; but I wonder how many people against it know what it is they are against? I will admit, I don't know.