fascism [E20th] The term fascism was first used of the right-wing nationalist regime of Benito Mussolini in Italy (1922–43), the Partito Nazionale Fascista (‘National Fascist Party’), and later applied to the regimes of Franco in Spain and of the Nazis in Germany. It comes from Latin fascis ‘bundle’. In ancient Rome the fasces were the bundle of rods, with an axe through them, carried in front of a magistrate as a symbol of his power to punish people.