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The name "fascism" derives from an ancient Roman symbol, the ''[[fasces]],'' a group of birch rods bundled together with an axe. It symbolizes strength in unity; the rods are weak by themselves but strong when bundled together.

The name "fascism" derives from an ancient Roman symbol, the ''[[fasces]],'' a group of birch rods bundled together with an axe. It symbolizes strength in unity; the rods are weak by themselves but strong when bundled together.

Fascists were not conservative in any very meaningful sense. They did not wish to preserve the existing order, or even to turn back the clock to some more stable century. They purposefully planned to transform the existing order into a new and all-absorbing [[authoritarianism]], based upon the energies and frustrations of modern industrialism. The Fascists, in a meaningful sense, were revolutionaries. <ref>[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/schlesinger-notrightleft.html Not Right, Not Left, But a Vital Center], Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ''New York Times Magazine'', April 4, 1948.</ref>

<blockquote>The Fascists, for example, were not conservative in any very meaningful sense. They did not wish to preserve the existing order, or even to turn back the clock to some more stable century. They purposefully planned to transform the existing order into a new and all-absorbing authoritarianism, based upon the energies and frustrations of modern industrialism. The Fascists, in a meaningful sense, were revolutionaries. Yet their totalitarian ideal hardly fitted into the pattern of the Left, which had been the traditional home of greater freedoms and more generous aspirations. So, after boggling and uncertainty, they were assigned positions on the far Right.</blockquote>

 

==References==

==References==