Para-fascism in the context of "Federal State of Austria"

The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From August 1910 to September 1945, it included the Japanese archipelago, the Kurils, Karafuto, Korea, and Taiwan. The South Seas Mandate and concessions such as the Kwantung Leased Territory were de jure not internal parts of the empire but dependent territories. In the closing stages of World War II, with Japan defeated alongside the rest of the Axis powers, the formalized surrender was issued on September 2, 1945, in compliance with the Potsdam Declaration of the Allies, and the empire's territory subsequently shrunk to cover only the Japanese archipelago resembling modern Japan.

Under the slogans of "Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Armed Forces" and "Promote Industry" which followed the Boshin War and the restoration of power to the emperor from the shogun, Japan underwent a period of large-scale industrialization and militarization, often regarded as the fastest modernization of any country to date. All of these aspects contributed to Japan's emergence as a great power following the First Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War, and World War I. Economic and political turmoil in the 1920s, including the Great Depression, led to the rise of militarism, nationalism, statism and authoritarianism, during which Japan joined the Axis alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, conquering a large part of the Asia–Pacific; during this period, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) committed numerous atrocities and war crimes, including the Nanjing Massacre. There has been a debate over defining the political system of Japan as a dictatorship, which has been disputed due by the absence of a dictator, and over calling it fascist. The other suggested terms were para-fascism, militarism, corporatism, totalitarianism, and police state.

The Kingdom of Hungary, referred to retrospectively as the Regency, the Horthy era, the Horthy regime, and Horthyist Hungary, existed as a country from 1920 to 1946 under the rule of Miklós Horthy for the most of its existence, who officially represented the Hungarian monarchy after a period of revolutions and the counter-revolution as the Regent of Hungary. In reality there was no king, and attempts by King Charles IV to return to the throne shortly before his death were prevented by Horthy.

Horthy came to power after supressing the Hungarian Soviet Republic during the period of White Terror, installing an authoritarian political system relying on the traditional economic elites and bureaucracy. Hungary under Horthy was characterized by its conservative, nationalist, and fiercely anti-communist character; some historians have described this system as para-fascist. The government was based on an unstable alliance of conservatives and right-wingers; while conservatism was predominant in the 1920s, afterwards Horthy manoeuvered between conservatives and the radical right with fascist leanings. Foreign policy was characterized by revisionism — the total or partial revision of the Treaty of Trianon, which had seen Hungary lose over 70% of its historic territory along with over three million Hungarians, who mostly lived in the border territories outside the new borders of the kingdom, in the Kingdom of Romania and the newly created states of Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (in greatly enlarged Romania there also remained a significant Hungarian population in Székely Land). Republican Austria, the successor of the former other half of the dual monarchy also received some minor territory from Hungary. Thus the post-1918 kingdom can be described as a rump state. Hungary's interwar politics were dominated by a focus on the territorial losses suffered from this treaty, with the resentment continuing until the present. After a period of international isolation in the 1920s, it began maintaining ties with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

Francoist Spain (Spanish: España franquista; English: pronounced Franco-ist), also known as the Francoist dictatorship (dictadura franquista), or Nationalist Spain (España nacionalista), and Falangist Spain (España falangista), was the period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title Caudillo. After his death in 1975, Spain transitioned into a democracy. During Franco's rule, Spain was officially known as the Spanish State (Estado Español). The informal term "Fascist Spain" is also used, especially before and during World War II.

During its existence, the nature of the regime evolved and changed. Months after the start of the Civil War in July 1936, Franco emerged as the dominant rebel military leader and he was proclaimed head of state on 1 October 1936, ruling over the territory which was controlled by the Nationalist faction. In 1937, Franco became an uncontested dictator and issued the Unification Decree which merged all of the parties which supported the rebel side, turning Nationalist Spain into a one-party state under the FET y de las JONS. The Spanish Natioanlists received crucial support from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Estado Novo Portugal, allowing them to win the civil war over the Spanish Republicans. The end of the Civil War in 1939 brought the extension of the Franco rule to the whole country and the exile of Republican institutions. The Francoist dictatorship originally took a form described as, "fascist or quasi-fascist", "fascistized", "para-fascist", "semi-fascist", or a strictly fascist regime, showing clear influence of fascism in fields such as labor relations, the autarkic economic policy, aesthetics, the single-party system, and totalitarian control of public and private life. As time went on, the regime opened up and became closer to developmental dictatorships and abandoned the radical fascist ideology of Falangism, although it always preserved residual fascist trappings and a "major radical fascist ingredient."

The 4th of August Regime (Greek: Καθεστώς της 4ης Αυγούστου, romanized: Kathestós tis tetártis Avgoústou), commonly also known as the Metaxas regime (Καθεστώς Μεταξά, Kathestós Metaxá), was a dictatorial regime under the leadership of General Ioannis Metaxas that ruled the Kingdom of Greece from 1936 to 1941.

On 4 August 1936, Metaxas, with the support of King George II, suspended the Greek parliament and went on to preside over a conservative, staunchly anti-communist and ultranationalist government under the ideology of Metaxism, which has been described either as an authoritarian conservative system or as a Greek variation of Fascism; a middle position is that it was a regime with a strong Fascist component or a para-fascist regime. Metaxas himself and some contemporary historians have described the government as totalitarian. In its symbolism and rhetoric, the regime took inspiration from Fascist Italy, but it retained close links to Britain and the French Third Republic, rather than the Axis powers.

Palingenetic ultranationalism is a definition of "true fascism" proposed by political theorist Roger Griffin. The phrase was first coined by Griffin in his 1991 book The Nature of Fascism. A key element is the belief that fascism can be defined by what Griffin posits in his book to be the true core myth of fascism, namely that of the need for a social revolution to occur first before a "national rebirth", palingenesis, could then take place.

Griffin argues that the unique synthesis of palingenesis, populism and ultranationalism differentiates fascism from para-fascism and other authoritarian, nationalist ideologies. He asserts that this is the "fascist minimum" without which, according to his definition, there can be no "true fascism". Griffin himself describes fascism as a political philosophy built on the "perverse mythic logic" of destruction, which the fascist believes will then be followed by some form of political rebirth.