Rather than being a unified, cohesive ideology, Fascism has always been very eclectic and based in philosophical [[idealism]]. In fact, it is a core characteristic that fascists opportunistically recycle, adapt and twist narratives to fit their goals. However, the goals are always equally brutal. Therefore, it is necessary to outline fascism's ideological evolution by observing its noteworthy material impacts upon the world, not by discerning its myriad of overlapping, incoherent and obscure ideological tendencies and thinkers. The only uniting force behind fascism, in practice, is its defense of the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy, settler-colonialism and imperialist chauvinism. A disproportionate amount of influence, in fact, originated from European aristocrat ideologues.
The origins of fascism as a counter-revolutionary movement can be traced back to the [[French Republic|French]] far-right [[French Action]],<ref group="lower-alpha">French: ''Action Française''</ref> which was an openly anti-[[Marxism|Marxist]] political organization established in 1899 proposing an "integral nation" for French society through [[class collaboration]].<ref>{{Citation|author=Ernst Nolte|year=1966|title=Three faces of fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|page=|pdf=|city=New York|publisher=New American Library|isbn=9780451008619|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=082DBA3CA0FEE611DCDB8D2CC1DF350C|mia=|trans-title=Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche: Die Action française, Der italienische Faschismus, Der Nationalsozialismus|trans-lang=German}}</ref>The term "fascism" comes from the [[Italian Republic|Italian]] National Fascist Party,<ref group="lower-alpha">Italian: ''Partito Nazionale Fascista''</ref> a party founded by [[Benito Mussolini]] in 1921; whose practices and ideology would later define this [[reactionary]] movement as a whole. Mussolini's fascism was constructed out of an admiration and romanticization of [[Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE)|Roman civilisation]], which originated in modern-day Italy. Thus, the name fascism was based on the ''fasces'', an axe that is surrounded and bound to a bundle of sticks and was carried by officials (''lictors'') in political and military demonstrations. This was a symbol of power and authority that Mussolini repurposed for fascism. Shifting blame away from [[capital]] is as old as fascism's birth. The oldest and most common example for such a distraction shared by fascists worldwide is [[antisemitism]]. The most widely circulated and influential myth since the late 19th century is a conspiracy theory that blames Jewish people for the world's problems, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.<ref>{{Citation|author= JACQUES E. HALBRONN, LARISSA BLIMAN-HALBRONN, לריסה and ז'אק הלברוןבלימן הלברו|year=1997|title=THE TERM PROTOCOLS, FROM THE ZIONIST CONGRESSES TO "THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION" AND THE RECEPTION OF THE RUSSIAN "PROTOCOLS" IN CENTRAL EUROPE BEFORE 1917|publisher=האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדות / World Union of Jewish Studies|title-url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/23535804}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Marisa Meltzer|year=2021|publisher=Washington Post|title=QAnon’s Unexpected Roots in New Age Spirituality|title-url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/03/29/qanon-new-age-spirituality/}}</ref> This rag remains the most widely circulated book by fascists on the internet today. Blavatsky, Cultural Appropriation and New Age Myths
The violent and shameless [[appropriation]] of the world's cultures has been wildly popular among Europeans since European colonialism began, and by the 19th century, their [[orientalism|orientalist]] gaze fixated upon Asia, or "the Orient".<ref>{{Citation|author=Edward Said|year=1978|title=Orientalism|publisher=Vintage Books|page=4|quote=To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in such disparate realms as the imagination itself, the whole of India and the Levant, the Biblical texts and the Biblical lands, the spice trade, colonial armies and a long tradition of colonial administrators, a formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable Oriental "experts" and "hands," an Oriental professorate, a complex array of "Oriental" ideas (Oriental despotism, Oriental splendor, cruelty, sensuality), many Eastern sects, philosophies, and wisdoms domesticated for local European use -- the list can be extended more or less indefinitely. My point is that Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient, which until the early nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II France and Britain dominated the Orient and Orientalism; since World War II America has dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Britain once did.}}</ref> These appropriations became extremely instrumental to fascist myth making. [[New Age]] occultism such as the bizarre "Theosophy" (not to be confused with the term used by Neoplatonists) was invented by 19th century German aristocrat, Helena Blavatsky<ref>{{Citation|author=Jeffrey D. Lavoie |year=2021|title=Theosophical Chronology in the Writings of Guido von List (1848–1919): A Link Between H.P. Blavatsky’s Philosophy and the Nazi Movement|publisher=|title-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-67906-4_10}}</ref>, a lifelong traveler and [[settler]] in Russia, the United States of America and India. Theosophy used a patchwork of orientalist myths and interpretations of various indigenous cultures, such as Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism. Blavatsky was the inventor of the Atlantis myth, Lemurians, etc. Among the bizarre myths, Theosophy claimed that the mixing of races caused degeneration.<ref>{{Citation|author=Helena Petrovna Blavatsky|title=The Secret Doctrine Vols. I & II|publisher=Theosophy|title-url=libgen.li/file.php?md5=4722005421409000a2200f8f271a99a1}}</ref> Theosophy was influential in the 20th century German fascist regime's construction of the "Aryan" national myth through Guido von List's German adaptation of it into the spiritual and cultural framework of Nazism.<ref>{{Citation|author=Jeffrey D. Lavoie|year=2021|title=Theosophical Chronology in the Writings of Guido von List (1848–1919): A Link Between H.P. Blavatsky’s Philosophy and the Nazi Movement|publisher=Springer|title-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-67906-4_10}}</ref> That is why the Nazis appropriated the swastika from Buddhism.<ref>{{Citation|author=James M. Skidmore|year=2017|title=How Nazis twisted the swastika, a symbol of the Buddha, into an emblem of hate|publisher=Quartz|title-url=https://qz.com/india/1068860/how-nazis-twisted-the-swastika-a-symbol-of-buddhism-hinduism-jainism-into-an-emblem-of-hate}}</ref> It is important to emphasize that the fascists did not truly understand the cultures they were appropriating.The way that early [[orientalism|orientalists]] treated the [[BIPOC]], often Asian, cultures they culturally appropriated is not much different from [[New Age]] followers today, in fact the fundamental idea of a [[New Age]] movement was coined and developed in 1970 by the theosophist David Spangler and maintains its orientalist and settler-colonial core and remains popular into the 21st century.<ref>{{Citation|author=J. Gordon Melton|year=2000-2023|title=New Age movement|publisher=Encyclopaedia Brittanica|title-url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Age-movement}}</ref> The term "New Age" is probably a reference to the magazine ''The New Age'' (1907-1922) which included Nietzschean and Theosophist writings. <ref>{{Citation|author=Robert Scholes|title=General Introduction to The New Age 1907-1922|publisher=The Modernist Journals Project (searchable database). Brown and Tulsa Universities, ongoing.|title-url=https://modjourn.org/general-introduction-to-the-new-age-1907-1922-by-scholes-robert/}}</ref>Historian and [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]] philosopher [[Domenico Losurdo]] in his work ''Nietzsche, the Aristocratic Rebel'', pointed out that [[Nietzsche]], who was an aristocrat, can be associated with a reactionary trend against the rise of the [[Paris commune]] in 1871.<ref>{{Citation|author=Domenico Losurdo|year=2002|title=Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|section=|page=26|quote=[In The Birth of Tragedy,] Nietzsche’s preoccupation, or rather his anguish, about a danger not remote or hypothetical, but real and impending, is plainly evident. The reference to the Paris Commune is transparent, an event that a great part of the culture of that time experienced as the threatening announcement of a possible imminent end of culture.|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=9789004270954|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=1BA09395E9E0D69AB9797AC5DEB89851|mia=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> Nietzsche's views were consistently anti-[[Liberalism|liberal]], anti-[[Socialism|socialist]], anti-democratic and even promoted racial hygiene, a tendency which would later inspire fascist movements.<ref>{{Citation|author=Domenico Losurdo|year=2002|title=Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel|title-url=|chapter=|chapter-url=|section=|page=731|quote=Even a scholar that moves cautiously on ground alien to him, that of philosophical historiography, and clearly wants to avoid a critical confrontation with the hermeneutics of innocence is forced to acknowledge an essential point regarding Nietzsche interpretations: ‘Much in his work can be interpreted in terms of racial hygiene.’ Other authors are even clearer: with his insistence on the ‘degeneration’ and ‘physiological decline of European humanity’, the philosopher must be placed ‘in the context of the direct preparation of eugenics’. Indeed, in this context, he sadly occupies a privileged position: he represents the ‘turning point’ for the transition from the ‘idea of selection’ to ‘anti-degenerative activism’. The reconstruction of the history behind Hitler’s eugenic and genocidal practices cannot, in this view, ignore Nietzsche, who expressly and peremptorily demanded the ‘suppression of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate.’|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=9789004270954|doi=|lg=http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=1BA09395E9E0D69AB9797AC5DEB89851|mia=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>Georges Sorel (1847–1922) was a French syndicalist that contributed and inspired the rise of [[National Syndicalism]] in Italy and Spain. His most famous works centred around the idea of [[myth]], which he highlights as "forming the centre of man’s cosmology and world view in all ages".<ref>{{News citation|title=Georges Sorel and the Triumphant Return of the Myth|date=2020-10-15|url=https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/georges-sorel-and-triumphant-return-myth|journalist=Rodrigo Sobota}}</ref> In 1909, Sorel began to adopt the idea of Integral Nationalism, publishing an article praising the far-right group [[French Action]] in ''Divenire Sociale''—the leading journal for Italian Syndicalists at the time. It received immense praise by French Action; being reprinted under the name "Antiparliamentary Socialists”, and in 1910, he joined the group. During this time, he developed further reactionary ideals, leading him to support Catholic Patriotism and further embedding himself in fascist ideology.<ref>{{Citation|author=Zeev Sternhell|year=1994|title=THE BIRTH OF FASCIST IDEOLOGY|chapter=1–3|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzaceavi2ziwuqzadtp7fjcw24uvkoix4wzybsibskpjmfbksjcxwblyg?filename=Zeev%20Sternhell%2C%20Mario%20Sznajder%2C%20Maia%20Asheri%20-%20The%20Birth%20of%20Fascist%20Ideology_%20From%20Cultural%20Rebellion%20to%20Political%20Revolution-Princeton%20University%20Press%20%281994%29.pdf|isbn=0-691-03289-0|lg=http://library.lol/main/10886BD4A08A7180CDA3D8B3BED5ADD1}}</ref> Mussolini looked up highly to Sorel and claimed he was his "foremost teacher".<ref>{{News citation|title=A Premature Fascist? ― Sorel and Mussolini|date=1950-03-01|url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/106591295000300102?journalCode=prqa&|journalist=James H. Meisel}}</ref>