_Fascism_: political ideology and mass movement. The name comes from the Latin word fasces, a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an axe) used as a

_Fascism_: political ideology and mass movement. The name comes from the Latin word fasces, a bundle of elm or birch rods (usually containing an axe) used as a symbol of penal authority in ancient Rome. Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. If anything fascist states want their citizens to get more children, not fewer. More children means more workers, more soldiers, more future mothers for yet even more children, all to propel the State (with a capital 'S') to greater heights.