Chapter 21: The Faciest Alternative in Europe

I found it interesting to read about how the fascist movement began. So many people grabbed onto this new idea of government and embraced its ideas, I am hoping without really knowing what it is. The description the textbook gives of fascism makes me very unwary when realizing so many nations accepted this concept. Fascists bitterly condemned individualism, liberalism, feminism, parliamentary, democracy and communism, all of which they argued divided and weakened the nation. Fascists were intensely nationalistic, seeking to revitalize and purify the nation, they condoned violence and exalted action rather than thought and or reflection. Nations that accepted the fascist ideas and joined the movement, included Germany, Italy, and Russia. These were the main three nations and all were taken over by an inspiring charismatic leader that could make some of the most horrid and treacherous things seem like the right thing to do.
For example, Hitler was the leader that began to influence Germany and his party was able to eventually take over the entire nation's government. Hitler was such a good speaker and influencer that he nearly influenced an entire nation that it was right to kill a neighbor due to the way they looked or the religion they chose to follow. He turned friends against friends, lovers against lovers and in some cases family against family to lead a nation to one of the largest and most horrible genocides in history. The fact that people could be influenced enough to let something this horrid take place and also in some cases follow along and commit these types of crimes is scary to me. I sometimes wonder if something like this could happen again and the people of one nation or even my own nation could do something similar.
What I have learned from this is that I must craefully choose which leader I choose to follow and allow to influence me. The other people of the nation must also do this. In a case where a mistake was made or the people were blinded by someone's character, I hope that people would choose to stand up and do whats right so that history willl not ever repeat itself. This was a very interesting subject and I am curious to read more on the subject.