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Afascist paramilitary is a 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 movement that adheres to the radical nationalist ideology offascism. Since fascism is such a militarist ideology, there are very few varieties of fascism where paramilitaries do not play a central role, and some kind ofparamilitary participation is almost always a basic requirement of membership in fascist movements. Fascist paramilitaries have seen action in both peacetime and wartime. Most fascist paramilitaries wearpolitical uniforms, and many have taken their names from the colours of their uniforms.
The first fascist paramilitary was theBlackshirts ofItalian Fascism led byBenito Mussolini. While many of the Blackshirts were former members of theArditi who had fought inWorld War I or theFascio of the immediate post-war years, the most direct inspiration for the first fascist paramilitary wasGiuseppe Garibaldi'sRedshirts.
A number of other fascist movements established paramilitaries modeled after the Italian original, most notablyNazism with itsracialist view and itsSturmabteilung andSchutzstaffel. Others include:
Several fascist movements took their cue from the Nazi Sturmabteilung rather than the fascist Blackshirts, such as theGreyshirts in South Africa and theSilver Legion of America. Following the Axis invasion of Albania, the occupation forces formed theAlbanian Militia under the Blackshirts. Several fascist paramilitaries were active inRomania including theLăncieri.
Some Nazi movements have also established paramilitary youth organizations similar to fascist ones such as theHitler Youth or theMocidade Portuguesa.
A number of fascist paramilitaries have been deployed in conventional warfare. For example, in the later years ofWorld War II the Italian Blackshirts developed into theBlack Brigades. Likewise, the combat wing of the Nazi Schutzstaffel, theWaffen-SS, fought in many major battles of World War II. TheEinsatzgruppen weredeath squads active inEastern Europe which carried out theHolocaust and other political killings. In an act of desperation, the Nazis deployed remnants of the Hitler Youth and Sturmabteilung against theRed Army in theBattle of Berlin. At the eleventh hour of the war, the Nazis laid plans for a guerrilla resistance movement they called theWerwolf. However, these plans amounted to little more than a handful of sabotages and assassinations which were ineffective.
Neo-Nazis have used thewhite power skinhead scene as a recruitment base for Neo-Nazi paramilitaries likeCombat 18.Soccer hooliganism throughoutEurope is another source of recruits. Some groups in thewhite supremacist wing of themilitia movement in the United States can be seen as neo-Nazi paramilitaries. The differentiating factor between fascism and Nazism, is the racial aspect of Nazism calledNordicism, where as orthodox fascism was not known to have a viewpoint on race, Nazism believed that theGermanic race was superior. Both ideologies are consideredhard-right. Both ideologies agreed on economics and nationalism, however they differed on race, and had differentend goals.