Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) over the course of his lifetime went from Socialism - he was editor of Avanti, a socialist newspaper - to the leadership of a new political movement called "fascism"
Named after the "fasces", a symbol of bound sticks and an axe used as totem of power in ancient Rome.
The fasces is a SYMBOL, and it exists in every Fascist country!
These is the Fasces:
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link to home.uchicago.edu]
This symbol originates from the dictatorships of Roman times, and is the symbol of Fasism.
It was also used by the Nazi's.
This is the Fasces displayed prominantly in the American capitol building.
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link to suzar.com]
This is the Fasces in the house of representitives.
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link to www.oilempire.us]
This is the Fasces on an American dime.
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link to www.prisonplanet.com]
This is just the tip of the iceburg.
But you have to ask yourself, if you doubt that you live in a fascist state, why this symbology?
Is it an accident?
Just adding a little more to the post of Anonymous Coward 120330 because I found it interesting and thought to share.
Fasces (the plural, almost a plurale tantum, of the Latin word fascis, meaning bundle) symbolise summary power and jurisdiction.
The traditional Roman fasces consisted of a bundle of birch rods tied together with a red ribbon as a cylinder around an axe.
Numerous governments and other authorities have used the image of the fasces as a symbol of power since the end of the Roman Empire. Italian fascism, which derives its name from the fasces, arguably used this symbolism the most in the 20th century. However, unlike for example the swastika, the fasces have avoided the stigma associated with fascist symbolism, and many authorities continue to display them.
The fasces lictoriae ("bundles of the lictors") (in Italian, fascio littorio) symbolised power and authority (imperium) in ancient Rome. A corps of apparitores (subordinate officials) called lictors each carried fasces as a sort of staff of office before a magistrate, in a number corresponding to his rank, in public ceremonies and inspections, and bearers of fasces preceded praetors, propraetors, consuls, proconsuls, Masters of the Horse, dictators, and Caesars. During triumphs (public celebrations held in Rome after a military conquest) heroic soldiers — those who had suffered injury in battle — carried fasces in procession.
Roman historians recalled that twelve lictors had ceremoniously accompanied the Etruscan kings of Rome in the distant past, and sought to account for the number and to provide etymologies for the name lictor.
The symbolism of the fasces at one level suggested strength through unity. The bundle of rods bound together symbolizes the strength which a single rod lacks. The rods symbolized the state's power to punish delinquents. The axe represented the ultimate power of high justice to execute (decapitate), and has a long history in the eastern Mediterranean: see labrys, the Anatolian and Minoan double-headed axe.
Traditionally, fasces carried within the Pomerium - the limits of the sacred inner City of Rome - had their axe blades removed. This signified that under normal political circumstances, the imperium-bearing magistrates did not have the judicial power of life and death. That power rested, within the city, with the people through the assemblies. Lictors attending to dictators, however, kept the axe blades even inside the Pomerium — a sign that a dictator had the ultimate power in his own hands. But in 48 BC, guards holding bladed fasces guided Isauricus to the tribunal of Marcus Caelius, and Isauricus used one to destroy Caelius's magisterial chair (sella curulis).
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link to en.wikipedia.org]
