What is Fascism?

Here is an article from mises.org that deals with Mussolini's brand of Fascism. It has great relevance for Europeans and Americans today.

Here are the concluding words of the author:

We cannot count on all good people in America rejecting fascist ideas. To many the pursuit of the hated Red justified the elements of violence in the episode. To others the imperious need of meeting the challenge of labor justified the cudgels. Mussolini was all right as long as he played along with the democratic powers. "I do not deny," said Mr. Churchill as late as December 1940, in a speech in the House, "that he is a very great man. But he became a criminal when he attacked England." Mussolini's crime lay not in all the oppressions he had committed upon his own people, not in his trampling down of liberty in Italy, in attacking Ethiopia or Spain, but in "attacking England." It is precisely in this tolerance of ordinarily decent people for the performances of such a man that the terrible menace of fascism lies for all peoples.