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A fascist paramilitary is a type of paramilitary fighting force – whether armed, unarmed, or merely symbolic – that is independent of regular military command and is established for the defence and advancement of a social-political movement that adheres to the far-right authoritarian and radical nationalist political ideology of fascism. [citation needed]
Because fascism is an inherently militarist ideology, there are very few varieties of fascism for which, after any such variety gains significant or centralized power in a polity, paramilitaries do not play a central role in said polity; accordingly, some kind of paramilitary participation is almost always a basic requirement of membership in nearly all fascist movements. [citation needed]
Fascist paramilitaries have seen action in both peacetime and wartime. [citation needed] Most fascist paramilitaries' members wear political uniforms indicating their participation in, and allegiance to, a given paramilitary force. [citation needed] Many such organizations have chosen their groups' names on the basis of the colours of their uniforms. [citation needed]
The first definite fascist paramilitary was the Blackshirts of Italian Fascism led by Benito Mussolini. [citation needed] While many of the Blackshirts were former members of the Arditi who had fought in World War I or the Fascio of the immediate post-war years, the most direct inspiration for the first fascist paramilitary was Giuseppe Garibaldi's Redshirts. [citation needed]
A number of other fascist movements established paramilitaries modeled after the Italian original, most notably Nazism with its racialist view and its Sturmabteilung and Schutzstaffel. [citation needed] Others include:
- the Fascist Defence Force of the British Union of Fascists [citation needed]
- the Blueshirts under Eoin O'Duffy in Ireland [citation needed]
- the Gold Shirts in Mexico [citation needed]
- the Greenshirts in Brazil [citation needed]
- the Heimwehr in Austria, in the 1920s and 1930s
- the Legionary Greenshirts of the Iron Guard in Romania [citation needed]
- the Iron Wolf organization in Lithuania [citation needed]
- the Legião Portuguesa in Portugal [citation needed]
Several fascist movements took their cue from the Nazi Sturmabteilung rather than the fascist Blackshirts, such as the Greyshirts in South Africa and the Silver Legion of America. [citation needed] Following the Axis invasion of Albania, the occupation forces formed the Albanian Militia under the Blackshirts. [citation needed] Several fascist paramilitaries were active in Romania including the Lăncieri. [citation needed]
Some Nazi movements have also established paramilitary youth organizations similar to fascist ones such as the Hitler Youth or the Mocidade Portuguesa. [citation needed]
A number of fascist paramilitaries have been deployed in conventional warfare. [citation needed] For example, in the later years of World War II the Italian Blackshirts developed into the Black Brigades. [citation needed] Likewise, the combat wing of the Nazi Schutzstaffel, the Waffen-SS, fought in many major battles of World War II. [citation needed] The Einsatzgruppen were death squads active in Eastern Europe which carried out the Holocaust and other political killings. [citation needed] In an act of desperation, the Nazis deployed remnants of the Hitler Youth and Sturmabteilung against the Red Army in the Battle of Berlin. [citation needed] At the eleventh hour of the war, the Nazis laid plans for a guerrilla resistance movement they called the Werwolf. [citation needed] However, these plans amounted to little more than a handful of sabotages and assassinations which were ineffective. [citation needed]
Neo-Nazis have used the white power skinhead scene as a recruitment base for Neo-Nazi paramilitaries like Combat 18. [citation needed] Soccer hooliganism throughout Europe is another source of recruits. [citation needed] Some groups in the white supremacist wing of the militia movement in the United States can be seen as neo-Nazi paramilitaries. [citation needed] The differentiating factor between fascism and Nazism, is the racial aspect of Nazism called Nordicism, where as orthodox fascism was not known to have a viewpoint on race, Nazism believed that the Germanic race was superior. [citation needed] Both ideologies are considered hard-right. [citation needed] Both ideologies agreed on economics and nationalism, however they differed on race, and had different end goals. [citation needed]