Understanding Mussolini's Fascism

From the conclusion of World War I and the worldwide depression that followed rose a political and social movement that shaped world history. The name comes from fasces, a bundle of rods with a projecting ax blade, which was used as symbol by the early Etruscans and ancient Romans to indicate power and strength through unity. Political groups in nineteenth-century Italy were called fascio in a nod to the same idea. In 1919 Benito Mussolini, a veteran and former socialist who had broken with that party over the question of Italy’s intervention in World War I, founded the nationalist Fasci di Combattimento, or “fighting band.” Mussolini’s Fasci came to be known as the Fascist Party.