Rock music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the early 1950s, developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and particularly in the United Kingdom and in the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style which drew on the genres of blues and blues, from country music. Rock music drew on a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. Musically, rock has centered on the electric guitar as part of a rock group with electric bass and one or more singers. Rock is song-based music with a 4/4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become diverse. Like pop music, lyrics stress romantic love but address a wide variety of other themes that are social or political. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, jazz-rock, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene.
New genres that emerged included progressive rock. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and alternative rock. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop punk, electronic rock, rap rock, rap metal, as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk and techno-pop revivals at the beginning of the 2000s. Rock music has embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the hippie counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. 1970s punk culture spawned the goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race and drug use, is seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.
The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists; the sound of an electric guitar in rock music is supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered in jazz music in the same era, percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ, the synthesizer; the basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed as a rock group. Furthermore, it consists of between three and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboard player or other instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four.
Melodies originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian, as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s and from the mid 1960s onwards, rock music used the verse-chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock; because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition." Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, rebellion against "The Establishment", social concerns, life styles. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music, rhythm and blues.
Music journalist Robert Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more noise." The predominance of white and middle class musicians in rock music has been noted, rock has been seen as an appropriation of black musical forms for a young and male audience. As a result, it has been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from wh
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States throughout the mid to late 1960s. Termed "progressive pop", the style was an outgrowth of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more associated with jazz, folk, or classical music. Additional elements contributed to its "progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of "art", the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which involved creating music for listening, not dancing. Prog is based on fusions of styles and genres, involving a continuous move between formalism and eclecticism. Due to its historical reception, prog's scope is sometimes limited to a stereotype of long solos, overlong albums, fantasy lyrics, grandiose stage sets and costumes, an obsessive dedication to technical skill. While the genre is cited for its merging of high culture and low culture, few artists incorporated literal classical themes in their work to any great degree, only a handful of groups purposely emulated or referenced classical music.
The genre coincided with the mid 1960s economic boom that allowed record labels to allocate more creative control to their artists, as well as the new journalistic division between "pop" and "rock" that lent generic significance to both terms. Prog faded soon after. Conventional wisdom holds that the rise of punk rock caused this, but several more factors contributed to the decline. Music critics, who labelled the concepts as "pretentious" and the sounds as "pompous" and "overblown", tended to be hostile towards the genre or to ignore it. After the late 1970s, progressive rock fragmented in numerous forms; some bands achieved commercial success well into the 1980s or crossed into symphonic pop, arena rock, or new wave. Early groups who exhibited progressive features are retroactively described as "proto-prog"; the Canterbury scene, originating in the late 1960s, denoted a subset of prog bands who emphasised the use of wind instruments, complex chord changes and long improvisations. Rock in Opposition, from the late 1970s, was more avant-garde, when combined with the Canterbury style, created avant-prog.
In the 1980s, a new subgenre, neo-progressive rock, enjoyed some commercial success, although it was accused of being derivative and lacking in innovation. Post-progressive draws upon newer developments in popular music and the avant-garde since the mid 1970s; the term "progressive rock" is synonymous with "art rock", "classical rock" and "symphonic rock". "art rock" has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music. The first is progressive rock as it is understood, while the second usage refers to groups who rejected psychedelia and the hippie counterculture in favour of a modernist, avant-garde approach. Similarities between the two terms are that they both describe a British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility. However, art rock is more to have experimental or avant-garde influences. "Prog" was devised in the 1990s as a shorthand term, but became a transferable adjective suggesting a wider palette than that drawn on by the most popular 1970s bands.
Progressive rock is varied and is based on fusions of styles and genres, tapping into broader cultural resonances that connect to avant-garde art, classical music and folk music and the moving image. Although a unidirectional English "progressive" style emerged in the late 1960s, by 1967, progressive rock had come to constitute a diversity of loosely associated style codes; when the "progressive" label arrived, the music was dubbed "progressive pop" before it was called "progressive rock", with the term "progressive" referring to the wide range of attempts to break with standard pop music formula. A number of additional factors contributed to the acquired "progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic. Critics of the genre limit its scope to a stereotype of long solos, overlong albums, fantasy lyrics, grandiose stage sets and costumes, an obsessive dedication to technical skill. While progressive rock is cited for its merging of high culture and low culture, few artists incorporated literal classical themes in their work to any great degree, only a handful of groups purposely emulated or referenced classical music.
Writer Emily Robinson says that the narrowed definition of "progressive rock" was a measure against the term's loose application in the late 1960s, when it was "applied to everyone from Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones". Debate over the genre's criterion continued to the 2010s on Internet forums dedicated to prog. According to musicologists Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell, Bill Martin and Edward Macan authored major books about prog rock while "effectively accept the characterization of progressive rock offered by its critics.... They each do so unconsciously." Academic John S. Cotner contests Macan's view that progressive rock cannot exist without the continuous and overt assimilation of classical music into rock. Author Kevin Holm-Hudson ag
Andalusia
Andalusia is an autonomous community in southern Spain. It is the most populous, the second largest autonomous community in the country; the Andalusian autonomous community is recognised as a "historical nationality". The territory is divided into eight provinces: Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville, its capital is the city of Seville. Andalusia is located in the south of the Iberian peninsula, in south-western Europe south of the autonomous communities of Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha. Andalusia is the only European region with both Atlantic coastlines; the small British overseas territory of Gibraltar shares a three-quarter-mile land border with the Andalusian province of Cádiz at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar. The main mountain ranges of Andalusia are the Sierra Morena and the Baetic System, consisting of the Subbaetic and Penibaetic Mountains, separated by the Intrabaetic Basin. In the north, the Sierra Morena separates Andalusia from the plains of Extremadura and Castile–La Mancha on Spain's Meseta Central.
To the south the geographic subregion of Upper Andalusia lies within the Baetic System, while Lower Andalusia is in the Baetic Depression of the valley of the Guadalquivir. The name "Andalusia" is derived from the Arabic word Al-Andalus; the toponym al-Andalus is first attested by inscriptions on coins minted in 716 by the new Muslim government of Iberia. These coins, called dinars, were inscribed in both Arabic; the etymology of the name "al-Andalus" has traditionally been derived from the name of the Vandals. Halm in 1989 derived the name from a Gothic term, *landahlauts, in 2002, Bossong suggested its derivation from a pre-Roman substrate; the region's history and culture have been influenced by the native Iberians, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Jews, Muslim Moors and the Castilian and other Christian North Iberian nationalities who reconquered and settled the area in the latter phases of the Reconquista. Andalusia has been a agricultural region, compared to the rest of Spain and the rest of Europe.
However, the growth of the community in the sectors of industry and services was above average in Spain and higher than many communities in the Eurozone. The region has a strong identity. Many cultural phenomena that are seen internationally as distinctively Spanish are or Andalusian in origin; these include flamenco and, to a lesser extent and Hispano-Moorish architectural styles, both of which are prevalent in other regions of Spain. Andalusia's hinterland is the hottest area of Europe, with cities like Córdoba and Seville averaging above 36 °C in summer high temperatures. Late evening temperatures can sometimes stay around 35 °C until close to midnight, with daytime highs of over 40 °C common. Seville has the highest average annual temperature in mainland Spain and mainland Europe followed by Almería, its present form is derived from the Arabic name for Muslim Iberia, "Al-Andalus". However, the etymology of the name "Al-Andalus" is disputed, the extent of Iberian territory encompassed by the name has changed over the centuries.
The Spanish place name Andalucía was introduced into the Spanish languages in the 13th century under the form el Andalucía. The name was adopted to refer to those territories still under Moorish rule, south of Castilla Nueva and Valencia, corresponding with the former Roman province hitherto called Baetica in Latin sources; this was a Castilianization of Al-Andalusiya, the adjectival form of the Arabic language al-Andalus, the name given by the Arabs to all of the Iberian territories under Muslim rule from 711 to 1492. The etymology of al-Andalus is itself somewhat debated, but in fact it entered the Arabic language before this area came under Muslim rule. Like the Arabic term al-Andalus, in historical contexts the Spanish term Andalucía or the English term Andalusia do not refer to the exact territory designated by these terms today; the term referred to territories under Muslim control. In the Estoria de España of Alfonso X of Castile, written in the second half of the 13th century, the term Andalucía is used with three different meanings: As a literal translation of the Arabic al-Ándalus when Arabic texts are quoted.
To designate the territories the Christians had regained by that time in the Guadalquivir valley and in the Kingdoms of Granada and Murcia. In a document from 1253, Alfonso X styled himself León y de toda Andalucía. To designate the territories the Christians had regained by that time in the Guadalquivir valley but not the Kingdom of Granada; this was the most common significance in Early modern period. From an administrative point of view, Granada remained separate for many years after the completion of the Reconquista due, above all, to its emblematic character as the last territory regained, as the seat of the important Real Chancillería de Granada, a court of last resort. Stil
MusicBrainz
MusicBrainz is a project that aims to create an open data music database, similar to the freedb project. MusicBrainz was founded in response to the restrictions placed on the Compact Disc Database, a database for software applications to look up audio CD information on the Internet. MusicBrainz has expanded its goals to reach beyond a compact disc metadata storehouse to become a structured open online database for music. MusicBrainz captures information about artists, their recorded works, the relationships between them. Recorded works entries capture at a minimum the album title, track titles, the length of each track; these entries are maintained by volunteer editors. Recorded works can store information about the release date and country, the CD ID, cover art, acoustic fingerprint, free-form annotation text and other metadata; as of 21 September 2018, MusicBrainz contained information about 1.4 million artists, 2 million releases, 19 million recordings. End-users can use software that communicates with MusicBrainz to add metadata tags to their digital media files, such as FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis or AAC.
MusicBrainz allows contributors to upload cover art images of releases to the database. Internet Archive provides the bandwidth and legal protection for hosting the images, while MusicBrainz stores metadata and provides public access through the web and via an API for third parties to use; as with other contributions, the MusicBrainz community is in charge of maintaining and reviewing the data. Cover art is provided for items on sale at Amazon.com and some other online resources, but CAA is now preferred because it gives the community more control and flexibility for managing the images. Besides collecting metadata about music, MusicBrainz allows looking up recordings by their acoustic fingerprint. A separate application, such as MusicBrainz Picard, must be used for this. In 2000, MusicBrainz started using Relatable's patented TRM for acoustic fingerprint matching; this feature allowed the database to grow quickly. However, by 2005 TRM was showing scalability issues as the number of tracks in the database had reached into the millions.
This issue was resolved in May 2006 when MusicBrainz partnered with MusicIP, replacing TRM with MusicDNS. TRMs were phased out and replaced by MusicDNS in November 2008. In October 2009 MusicIP was acquired by AmpliFIND; some time after the acquisition, the MusicDNS service began having intermittent problems. Since the future of the free identification service was uncertain, a replacement for it was sought; the Chromaprint acoustic fingerprinting algorithm, the basis for AcoustID identification service, was started in February 2010 by a long-time MusicBrainz contributor Lukáš Lalinský. While AcoustID and Chromaprint are not MusicBrainz projects, they are tied with each other and both are open source. Chromaprint works by analyzing the first two minutes of a track, detecting the strength in each of 12 pitch classes, storing these 8 times per second. Additional post-processing is applied to compress this fingerprint while retaining patterns; the AcoustID search server searches from the database of fingerprints by similarity and returns the AcoustID identifier along with MusicBrainz recording identifiers if known.
Since 2003, MusicBrainz's core data are in the public domain, additional content, including moderation data, is placed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0 license. The relational database management system is PostgreSQL; the server software is covered by the GNU General Public License. The MusicBrainz client software library, libmusicbrainz, is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, which allows use of the code by proprietary software products. In December 2004, the MusicBrainz project was turned over to the MetaBrainz Foundation, a non-profit group, by its creator Robert Kaye. On 20 January 2006, the first commercial venture to use MusicBrainz data was the Barcelona, Spain-based Linkara in their Linkara Música service. On 28 June 2007, BBC announced that it has licensed MusicBrainz's live data feed to augment their music Web pages; the BBC online music editors will join the MusicBrainz community to contribute their knowledge to the database. On 28 July 2008, the beta of the new BBC Music site was launched, which publishes a page for each MusicBrainz artist.
Amarok – KDE audio player Banshee – multi-platform audio player Beets – automatic CLI music tagger/organiser for Unix-like systems Clementine – multi-platform audio player CDex – Microsoft Windows CD ripper Demlo – a dynamic and extensible music manager using a CLI iEatBrainz – Mac OS X deprecated foo_musicbrainz component for foobar2000 – Music Library/Audio Player Jaikoz – Java mass tag editor Max – Mac OS X CD ripper and audio transcoder Mp3tag – Windows metadata editor and music organizer MusicBrainz Picard – cross-platform album-oriented tag editor MusicBrainz Tagger – deprecated Microsoft Windows tag editor puddletag – a tag editor for PyQt under the GPLv3 Rhythmbox music player – an audio player for Unix-like systems Sound Juicer – GNOME CD ripper Zortam Mp3 Media Studio – Windows music organizer and ID3 Tag Editor. Freedb clients can access MusicBrainz data through the freedb protocol by using the MusicBrainz to FreeDB gateway service, mb2freedb. List of online music databases Making Metadata: The Case of Mus
Biblioteca Nacional de España
The Biblioteca Nacional de España is a major public library, the largest in Spain, one of the largest in the world. It is located on the Paseo de Recoletos; the library was founded by King Philip V in 1712 as the Palace Public Library. The Royal Letters Patent that he granted, the predecessor of the current legal deposit requirement, made it mandatory for printers to submit a copy of every book printed in Spain to the library. In 1836, the library's status as Crown property was revoked and ownership was transferred to the Ministry of Governance. At the same time, it was renamed the Biblioteca Nacional. During the 19th century, confiscations and donations enabled the Biblioteca Nacional to acquire the majority of the antique and valuable books that it holds. In 1892 the building was used to host the Historical American Exposition. On March 16, 1896, the Biblioteca Nacional opened to the public in the same building in which it is housed and included a vast Reading Room on the main floor designed to hold 320 readers.
In 1931 the Reading Room was reorganised, providing it with a major collection of reference works, the General Reading Room was created to cater for students and general readers. During the Spanish Civil War close to 500,000 volumes were collected by the Confiscation Committee and stored in the Biblioteca Nacional to safeguard works of art and books held until in religious establishments and private houses. During the 20th century numerous modifications were made to the building to adapt its rooms and repositories to its expanding collections, to the growing volume of material received following the modification to the Legal Deposit requirement in 1958, to the numerous works purchased by the library. Among this building work, some of the most noteworthy changes were the alterations made in 1955 to triple the capacity of the library's repositories, those started in 1986 and completed in 2000, which led to the creation of the new building in Alcalá de Henares and complete remodelling of the building on Paseo de Recoletos, Madrid.
In 1986, when Spain's main bibliographic institutions - the National Newspaper Library, the Spanish Bibliographic Institute and the Centre for Documentary and Bibliographic Treasures - were incorporated into the Biblioteca Nacional, the library was established as the State Repository of Spain's Cultural Memory, making all of Spain's bibliographic output on any media available to the Spanish Library System and national and international researchers and cultural and educational institutions. In 1990 it was made an Autonomous Entity attached to the Ministry of Culture; the Madrid premises are shared with the National Archaeological Museum. The Biblioteca Nacional is Spain's highest library institution and is head of the Spanish Library System; as the country's national library, it is the centre responsible for identifying, preserving and disseminating information about Spain's documentary heritage, it aspires to be an essential point of reference for research into Spanish culture. In accordance with its Articles of Association, passed by Royal Decree 1581/1991 of October 31, 1991, its principal functions are to: Compile and conserve bibliographic archives produced in any language of the Spanish state, or any other language, for the purposes of research and information.
Promote research through the study and reproduction of its bibliographic archive. Disseminate information on Spain's bibliographic output based on the entries received through the legal deposit requirement; the library's collection consists of more than 26,000,000 items, including 15,000,000 books and other printed materials, 4,500,000 graphic materials, 600,000 sound recordings, 510,000 music scores, more than 500,000 microforms, 500,000 maps, 143,000 newspapers and serials, 90,000 audiovisuals, 90,000 electronic documents, 30,000 manuscripts. The current director of the Biblioteca Nacional is Ana Santos Aramburo, appointed in 2013. Former directors include her predecessors Glòria Pérez-Salmerón and Milagros del Corral as well as historian Juan Pablo Fusi and author Rosa Regàs. Given its role as the legal deposit for the whole of Spain, since 1991 it has kept most of the overflowing collection at a secondary site in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid; the Biblioteca Nacional provides access to its collections through the following library services: Guidance and general information on the institution and other libraries.
Bibliographic information about its collection and those held by other libraries or library systems. Access to its automated catalogue, which contains close to 3,000,000 bibliographic records encompassing all of its collections. Archive consultation in the library's reading rooms. Interlibrary loans. Archive reproduction. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica, digital library launched in 2008 by the Biblioteca Nacional de España List of libraries in Spain Media related to Biblioteca Nacional de España at Wikimedia Commons Official site Official web catalog
Flamenco
Flamenco, in its strictest sense, is a professionalized art-form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain in the autonomous communities of Andalusia and Murcia. In a wider sense, it refers to these musical traditions and more modern musical styles which have themselves been influenced by and become blurred with the development of flamenco over the past two centuries, it includes cante, baile, jaleo and pitos. The oldest record of flamenco dates to 1774 in the book Las Cartas Marruecas by José Cadalso. Flamenco has been associated with the Romani people in Spain; the origin of flamenco is a subject of disagreement. The Diccionario de la lengua española attributes the creation of the style to the Spanish Romani. Of the hypotheses regarding its origin, the most widespread states that flamenco was developed through the cross-cultural interchange between native Andalusians, Castilians and Sephardi Jews that occurred in Andalusia; the early 20th century poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca wrote that the presence of flamenco in Andalusia predates the arrival of Romani people to the region.
Flamenco has become popular all over the world and is taught in many non-Hispanic countries the United States and Japan. In Japan, there are more flamenco academies. On November 16, 2010, UNESCO declared flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. There are many suggestions for the origin of the word flamenco as a musical term but no solid evidence for any of them; the word was not recorded as a musical and dance term until the late 18th century. One theory, proposed by Andalusian historian and nationalist Blas Infante in his 1933 book Orígenes de lo Flamenco y Secreto del Cante Jondo suggested that the word flamenco comes in fact from the Hispano-Arabic term fellah mengu, meaning "expelled peasant"; this term referred to the many Andalusians of the Islamic faith, the Moriscos who remained, in order to avoid religious persecution, joined with the Roma newcomers. Another theory is that the Spanish word flamenco could have been a derivative of the Spanish word flama, meaning "fire" or "flame".
The word flamenco may have come to be used for fiery behaviour, which could have come to be applied to the Gitano players and performers. Palos are flamenco styles, classified by criteria such as rhythmic pattern, chord progression, stanzaic form and geographic origin. There are over 50 different palos, some are sung unaccompanied while others have guitar or other accompaniment; some forms are danced. Some are reserved for men and others for women while some may be performed by either, though these traditional distinctions are breaking down: the Farruca, for example, once a male dance, is now performed by women too. There are many ways to categorize Palos but they traditionally fall into three classes: the most serious is known as cante jondo, while lighter, frivolous forms are called cante chico. Forms that do not fit either category are classed as cante intermedio; these are the best known palos: Alegrías Bulerías Bulerías por soleá Caracoles Cartageneras Fandango Fandango de Huelva Fandango Malagueño Farruca Granaínas Guajiras Malagueñas Martinete Mineras Peteneras Rondeñas Saeta Seguiriyas Soleá Tangos Tanguillos Tarantos Tientos Villancicos A typical flamenco recital with voice and guitar accompaniment, comprises a series of pieces in different palos.
Each song of a set of verses, which are punctuated by guitar interludes called falsetas. The guitarist provides a short introduction which sets the tonality, compás and tempo of the cante. In some palos, these falsetas are played with certain structures too. Flamenco uses the Flamenco mode, in addition to the major and minor scales used in modern Western music; the Phrygian mode occurs in palos such as soleá, most bulerías, siguiriyas and tientos. A typical chord sequence called the "Andalusian cadence" may be viewed as in a modified Phrygian: in E the sequence is Am–G–F–E. According to Manolo Sanlúcar E is here the tonic, F has the harmonic function of dominant while Am and G assume the functions of subdominant and mediant respectively. Guitarists tend to use only two basic inversions or "chord shapes" for the tonic chord, the open 1st inversion E and the open 3rd inversion A, though they transpose these by using a capo. Modern guitarists such as Ramón Montoya, have introduced other positions: Montoya himself started to use other chords for the tonic in the modern Dorian sections of several palos.
Montoya created a new palo as a solo for guitar, the rondeña in C♯ with scordatura. Guitarists have further extended the repertoire of tonalities, chord positions and scordatura. There are palos in major mode; the minor mode is restricted to the Farruca, the milongas, some styles of tangos, bulerías, etc. In general traditional palos in major and
Fascism
Fascism is a form of radical, right-wing, authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, strong regimentation of society and of the economy, which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I before it spread to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism and anarchism, fascism is placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum. Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, the state, technology; the advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war; the war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.
Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond to economic difficulties. Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society. Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation. Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have described themselves as fascist, the term is instead now used pejoratively by political opponents; the descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far-right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th-century fascist movements.
The Italian term fascismo is derived from fascio meaning a bundle of rods from the Latin word fasces. This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates. According to Mussolini's own account, the Fascist Revolutionary Party was founded in Italy in 1915. In 1919, Mussolini founded the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in Milan, which became the Partito Nazionale Fascista two years later; the Fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces or fascio littorio—a bundle of rods tied around an axe, an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate carried by his lictors, which could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command. The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is broken, while the bundle is difficult to break. Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements: for example, the Falange symbol is five arrows joined together by a yoke. Historians, political scientists, other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism.
Each group described as fascist has at least some unique elements, many definitions of fascism have been criticized as either too wide or narrow. One common definition of the term focuses on three concepts: the fascist negations. According to many scholars, fascism—especially once in power—has attacked communism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support from the far-right. Historian Stanley Payne identifies three main strands in fascism, his typology is cited by reliable sources as a standard definition. First, Payne's "fascist negations" refers to such typical policies as anti-communism and anti-liberalism. Second, "fascist goals" include an expanded empire. Third, "fascist style" is seen in its emphasis on violence and authoritarianism and its exultation of men above women and young against old. Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism". Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: " the rebirth myth, populist ultra-nationalism, the myth of decadence".
Fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence. Robert Paxton says that fascism is "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion". Racism was a
