Fascism is an authoritarian and nationalistic system of government and social organisation, characterised by dictatorial power and forcible suppression of opposition, with an economy composed mostly of large corporations favoured by the state. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic approach.
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and they regard the complete mobilisation of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties. The term fascism was first used of the totalitarian nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy, and later the regimes of the Nazis in Germany, and Franco in Spain.