To what extent is fascism the product of the failure of modern politics? Is fascism still a threat to Western society in the 21st century? When democracy collapses, people turn to extreme forms of government. Europe between World War I and World War II experienced a phenomenal growth in the popularity of far-right political parties, particularly Benito Mussolini's fascist movement in Italy and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in Germany. The rise of fascism in Italy is commonly attributed to the failure of democratic government, Italian liberalism, and the fear of Bolshevism after the Russian Revolution of 1917 (Linz 1998, pp.177-178). However, long before the First World War and long before the threat of Bolshevism, Italian fascism found support among farmers on large agricultural estates. Corner points out that violence and disorder had been rife on these estates as early as the 1880s. Peasant workers lived and worked in subhuman conditions, and for the landowners the threat of rebellion was never far away. The Italian government's failure to respond to regular shootings of rebellious peasants by landowners led to massive anti-government and anti-state sentiment among peasants. The state and its institutions seemed distant and irrelevant, and this problem worsened as the years passed. Mussolini's fascist party appealed to angry and alienated peasants, promising them better treatment, and gained enormous support (Corner 2002, pp.277-278). Italy's liberal government of the early 20th century had allowed class divisions in Italian society to grow, between peasants and landowners in the countryside and between the working class and bourgeois middle class in the cities. Mussolini promised to unite Italian society... middle of paper... Democracy after the First World War”, International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus, London, pp. 177-178• Hartmann, D (1984) “Anti-Semitism and the Appeal of Nazism”, Political Psychology, 5(4), pp. 635-642 • Leonnig, L. (2004) “More prisoner abuse alleged,” The Washington Post, 26 December 2004. , available: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25962-2004Dec25.html [accessed on 1 April 2009]• Leung, R. (2005) “Torture, Cover-Up at Gitmo?”, CBS News, 1 May , available: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/28/60minutes/main691602.shtml [accessed 1 April 2009] • Shirer, W. (1959) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, New York, p. 193• Synder, L. (1976) Encyclopaedia of the Third Reich, New York, pp. 286-289• World Net Daily (2004), Flunking Fascism 101 [online], available: www.wnd.com/news/article. asp?ARTICLE_ID=39164 [accessed April 14 2009]