Fascism 101

The word fascism is newsworthy right now, and its history is fascinating (no relation) and illuminating.

A Roman fascis (plural fasces) was a mere bundle of sticks, often with an ax sticking out of the middle. This mere bundle took on a weighty significance, coming to symbolize a leader’s power to punish his subjects. Birch rods would serve to enforce magisterial commands. In the Roman official hierarchy, a low-level guy, such as a praeter, might be called the six fasces, and a more powerful consul the twelve fasces. A consul could really whup you.

You can see that the fasces symbolized absolute authority of the state. Rome and its representatives did not shy away from flaunting power, the power to flog you into submission. Processions featured officeholders with accompanying lackeys carrying fasces, just to make the point.

An unbidden memory. In my high school, the coaches who used to monitor study halls strode up and down the aisles bearing large wooden paddles. Huh. Don’t know why that suddenly came to mind.

Anyway, Mussolini and other twentieth-century authoritarians found found this symbol cool. They adopted the fasces, reveling in a kind of Make Italy Great Again nostalgia. Fascists such as Mussolini and Hitler maintained absolute power, not governed by the rule of law. A fascist believes in the ultimate power of the state to control its perceived enemies. He/she carries the big sticks and can wield them against the perceived enemy, unrestrained mere laws.

America’s Mercury dime, produced from 1916 to 1945, bears a fascis on one side, softened somewhat by an accompanying olive branch, signifying peace. Our mint dropped the design because of the image’s sketchy associations with world dictators.

I recall the time that my dad carefully explained to me the political meanings of right and left, and the associated connections of fascism with the right wing and communism with the left wing. He gestured in a kind of circle to demonstrate that the far right and the far left wing meet up at some point. Fascism and communism are not the same thing, but communism can become fascistic when the government becomes all powerful.

Advocating for staying somewhere between the extremes, relying on the power of the vote and the authority of the governed, as opposed to the dominance of a single person, will preserve a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal.