title: Fascism and ideology

text: Francisco Franco's quasi-fascist Falangist one-party state in Spain was officially neutral during World War II and survived the collapse of the Axis Powers. Franco's rise to power had been directly assisted by the militaries of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the Spanish Civil War and had sent volunteers to fight on the side of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. After World War II and a period of international isolation, Franco's regime normalized relations with Western powers during the early years of the Cold War until Franco's death in 1975 and the transformation of Spain into a liberal democracy.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Peronism, which is associated with the regime of Juan Peron in Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974, was strongly influenced by fascism. Prior to rising to power, from 1939 to 1941 Peron had developed a deep admiration of Italian Fascism and modelled his economic policies on Italian Fascist economic policies.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The South African government of Afrikaner nationalist and white supremacist Daniel François Malan was closely associated with pro-fascist and pro-Nazi politics. In 1937, Malan's Purified National Party, the South African Fascists and the Blackshirts agreed to form a coalition for the South African election. Malan had fiercely opposed South Africa's participation on the Allied side in World War II. Malan's government founded apartheid, the system of racial segregation of whites and non-whites in South Africa. The most extreme Afrikaner fascist movement is the neo-Nazi white supremacist Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) that at one point was recorded in 1991 to have 50,000 supporters with rising support. The AWB grew in support in response to efforts to dismantle apartheid in the 1980s and early 1990s and its paramilitary wing the Storm Falcons threatened violence against people it considered "trouble makers".


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Another ideology strongly influenced by fascism is Ba'athism. Ba'athism is a revolutionary Arab nationalist ideology that seeks the unification of all claimed Arab lands into a single Arab state. Zaki al-Arsuzi, one of the principal founders of Ba'athism, was strongly influenced by and supportive of Fascism and Nazism. Several close associates of Ba'athism's key ideologist Michel Aflaq have admitted that Aflaq had been directly inspired by certain fascist and Nazi theorists. Ba'athist regimes in power in Iraq and Syria have held strong similarities to fascism, they are radical authoritarian nationalist one-party states. Due to Ba'athism's anti-Western stances it preferred the Soviet Union in the Cold War and admired and adopted certain Soviet organizational structures for their governments, but the Ba'athist regimes have persecuted communists. Like fascist regimes, Ba'athism became heavily militarized in power. Ba'athist movements governed Iraq in 1963 and again from 1968 to 2003 and in Syria from 1963 to the present. Ba'athist heads of state such as Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein created personality cults around themselves portraying themselves as the nationalist saviours of the Arab world.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Ba'athist Iraq under Saddam Hussein pursued ethnic cleansing or the liquidation of minorities, pursued expansionist wars against Iran and Kuwait and gradually replaced pan-Arabism with an Iraqi nationalism that emphasized Iraq's connection to the glories of ancient Mesopotamian empires, including Babylonia. Historian of fascism Stanley Payne has said about Saddam Hussein's regime: "There will probably never again be a reproduction of the Third Reich, but Saddam Hussein has come closer than any other dictator since 1945".


title: Fascism and ideology

text: In the 1990s, Payne claimed that the Hindu nationalist movement "Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh" (RSS) holds strong resemblances to fascism, including its use of paramilitaries and its irredentist claims calling for the creation of a Greater India. Cyprian Blamires in "World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia" describes the ideology of the RSS as "fascism with Sanskrit characters" – a unique Indian variant of fascism. Blamires notes that there is evidence that the RSS held direct contact with Italy's Fascist regime and admired European fascism, a view with some support from A. James Gregor. However, these views have met wide criticism, especially from academics specializing Indian politics. Paul Brass, expert on Hindu-Muslim violence, notes that there are many problems with accepting this point of view and identified four reasons that it is difficult to define the Sangh as fascist. Firstly, most scholars of the field do not subscribe to the view the RSS is fascist, notably among them Christophe Jaffrelot, A. James Gregor and Chetan Bhatt. The other reasons include an absence of charismatic leadership, a desire on the part of the RSS to differentiate itself from European fascism, major cultural differences between the RSS and European fascists and factionalism within the Sangh Parivar. Stanley Payne claims that it also has substantial differences with fascism such as its emphasis on traditional religion as the basis of identity.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Since the Great Recession of 2008, fascism has seen an international surge in popularity, alongside closely associated phenomena like xenophobia, antisemitism, authoritarianism and euroskepticism.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The alt-right—a loosely connected coalition of individuals and organizations which advocates a wide range of far-right ideas, from neoreactionaries to white nationalists—is often included under the umbrella term neo-fascism because alt-right individuals and organizations advocate a radical form of authoritarian ultranationalism. Alt right neofascists often campaign in indirect ways linked to conspiracy theories like "white genocide," pizzagate and QAnon, and seek to question the legitimacy of elections. Groups which are identified as neo-fascist in the United States generally include neo-Nazi organizations and movements such as the Proud Boys, the National Alliance, and the American Nazi Party. The Institute for Historical Review publishes negationist articles of an anti-semitic nature.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Since 2016 and increasingly over the course of the presidency of Donald Trump, scholars have debated whether Trumpism should be considered a form of fascism.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Mussolini saw fascism as opposing socialism and left-wing ideologies, writing in "The Doctrine of Fascism": "If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the 'Right,' a Fascist century."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Fascism had a complex relationship with capitalism, both supporting and opposing different aspects of it at different times and in different countries. In general, fascists held an instrumental view of capitalism, regarding it as a tool that may be useful or not, depending on circumstances. Fascists aimed to promote what they considered the national interests of their countries; they supported the right to own private property and the profit motive because they believed that they were beneficial to the economic development of a nation, but they commonly sought to eliminate the autonomy of large-scale business interests from the state.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: There were both pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist elements in fascist thought. Fascist opposition to capitalism was based on the perceived decadence, hedonism and cosmopolitanism of the wealthy, in contrast to the idealized discipline, patriotism and moral virtue of the members of the middle classes. Fascist support for capitalism was based on the idea that economic competition was good for the nation, as well as social Darwinist beliefs that the economic success of the wealthy proved their superiority and the idea that interfering with natural selection in the economy would burden the nation by preserving weak individuals. These two ways of thinking about capitalism – viewing it as a positive force which promotes economic efficiency and is necessary for the prosperity of the nation but also viewing it as a negative force which promotes decadence and disloyalty to the nation – remained in uneasy coexistence within most fascist movements. The economic policies of fascist governments, meanwhile, were generally not based on ideological commitments one way or the other, instead being dictated by pragmatic concerns with building a strong national economy, promoting autarky, and the need to prepare for and to wage war.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The earliest version of a fascist movement, the small groups led by Benito Mussolini in Italy from 1915 to 1920, formed a radical pro-war movement which focused on Italian territorial expansion and aimed to unite people from across the political spectrum in service to this goal. As such, this movement did not take a clear stance either for or against capitalism, as that would have divided its supporters. Many of its leaders, including Mussolini himself, had come from the anti-capitalist revolutionary syndicalist tradition and were known for their anti-capitalist rhetoric. However, a significant part of the movement's funding came from pro-war business interests and major landowners. Mussolini at this stage tried to maintain a balance, by still claiming to be a social revolutionary while also cultivating a "positive attitude" towards capitalism and capitalists. The small fascist movement that was led by Mussolini in Milan in 1919 bore almost no resemblance with the Italian Fascism of ten years later, as it put forward an ambitious anti-capitalist program calling for redistributing land to the peasants, a progressive tax on capital, greater inheritance taxes and the confiscation of excessive war profits, while also proclaiming its opposition to "any kind of dictatorship or arbitrary power" and demanding an independent judiciary, universal suffrage, and complete freedom of speech. Yet Mussolini at the same time promised to eliminate state intervention in business and to transfer large segments of the economy from public to private control, and the fascists met in a hall provided by Milanese businessmen. These contradictions were regarded by Mussolini as a virtue of the fascist movement, which, at this early stage, intended to appeal to everyone.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Starting in 1921, Italian Fascism shifted from presenting itself as a broad-based expansionist movement, to claiming to represent the extreme right of Italian politics. This was accompanied by a shift in its attitude towards capitalism. Whereas in the beginning it had accommodated both anti-capitalist and pro-capitalist stances, it now took on a strongly pro-free-enterprise policy. After being elected to the Italian parliament for the first time, the Fascists took a stand against economic collectivization and nationalization, and advocated for the privatization of postal and railway services. Mussolini appealed to conservative liberals to support a future fascist seizure of power by arguing that "capitalism would flourish best if Italy discarded democracy and accepted dictatorship as necessary in order to crush socialism and make government effective." He also promised that the fascists would reduce taxes and balance the budget, repudiated his socialist past and affirmed his faith in economic liberalism.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: In 1922, following the March on Rome, the National Fascist Party came to power and Mussolini became prime minister of Italy. From that time until the advent of the Great Depression in 1929, the Italian Fascists pursued a generally free-market and pro-capitalist economic policy, in collaboration with traditional Italian business elites. Near the beginning of his tenure as prime minister, in 1923, Mussolini declared that "the [Fascist] government will accord full freedom to private enterprise and will abandon all intervention in private economy." Mussolini's government privatized former government monopolies (such as the telephone system), repealed previous legislation that had been introduced by the Socialists (such as the inheritance tax), and balanced the budget. Alfredo Rocco, the Fascist Minister of Justice at the time, wrote in 1926 that:


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Mussolini attracted the wealthy in the 1920s by praising free enterprise, by talking about reducing the bureaucracy and abolishing unemployment relief, and by supporting increased inequality in society. He advocated economic liberalization, asserted that the state should keep out of the economy and even said that government intervention in general was "absolutely ruinous to the development of the economy." At the same time, however, he also tried to maintain some of fascism's early appeal to people of all classes by insisting that he was not against the workers, and sometimes by outright contradicting himself and saying different things to different audiences. Many of the wealthy Italian industrialists and landlords backed Mussolini because he provided stability (especially compared to the Giolitti era), and because under Mussolini's government there were "few strikes, plenty of tax concessions for the well-to-do, an end to rent controls and generally high profits for business."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The Italian Fascist outlook towards capitalism changed after 1929, with the onset of the Great Depression which dealt a heavy blow to the Italian economy. Prices fell, production slowed, and unemployment more than tripled in the first four years of the Depression. In response, the Fascist government abandoned economic liberalism and turned to state intervention in the economy. Mussolini developed a theory which held that capitalism had degenerated over time, and that the capitalism of his era was facing a crisis because it had departed too far from its original roots. According to Mussolini, the original form was heroic capitalism or dynamic capitalism (1830–1870), which gave way to static capitalism (1870–1914), which then transformed into decadent capitalism or "supercapitalism", starting in 1914. Mussolini denounced this supercapitalism as a failure due to its alleged decadence, support for unlimited consumerism and intention to create the "standardization of humankind". He claimed that supercapitalism had resulted in the collapse of the capitalist system in the Great Depression, but that the industrial developments of earlier types of capitalism were valuable and that private property should be supported as long as it was productive. Fascists also argued that, without intervention, supercapitalism "would ultimately decay and open the way for a Marxist revolution as labour-capital relations broke down". They presented their new economic program as a way to avoid this result.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The idea of corporatism, which had already been part of Fascist rhetoric for some time, rose to prominence as a solution that would preserve private enterprise and property while allowing the state to intervene in the economy when private enterprise failed. Corporatism was promoted as reconciling the interests of capital and labour. Mussolini argued that this fascist corporatism would preserve those elements of capitalism that were deemed beneficial, such as private enterprise, and combine them with state supervision. At this time he also said that he rejected the typical capitalist elements of economic individualism and laissez-faire. Mussolini claimed that in supercapitalism "a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention begins and becomes more necessary. It is then that those who once ignored the state now seek it out anxiously". Due to the inability of businesses to operate properly when facing economic difficulties, Mussolini claimed that this proved that state intervention into the economy was necessary to stabilize the economy.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Statements from Italian Fascist leaders in the 1930s tended to be critical of economic liberalism and "laissez-faire", while promoting corporatism as the basis for a new economic model. Mussolini said in an interview in October 1933 that he "want[ed] to establish the corporative regime," and in a speech on 14 November 1933 he declared:


title: Fascism and ideology

text: A year later, in 1934, Italian Agriculture Minister Giacomo Acerbo claimed that Fascist corporatism was the best way to defend private property in the context of the Great Depression:


title: Fascism and ideology

text: In the late 1930s, Fascist Italy tried to achieve autarky (national economic self-sufficiency), and for this purpose the government promoted manufacturing cartels and introduced significant tariff barriers, currency restrictions and regulations of the economy to attempt to balance payments with Italy's trade partners. The attempt to achieve effective economic autonomy was not successful, but minimizing international trade remained an official goal of Italian Fascism.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: German Nazism, like Italian Fascism, also incorporated both pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist views. The main difference was that Nazism interpreted everything through a racial lens. Thus, Nazi views on capitalism were shaped by the question of which race the capitalists belonged to. Jewish capitalists (especially bankers) were considered to be mortal enemies of Germany and part of a global conspiracy that also included Jewish communists. On the other hand, ethnic German capitalists were regarded as potential allies by the Nazis.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: From the beginning of the Nazi movement, and especially from the late 1920s onward, the Nazi Party took the stance that it was not opposed to private property or capitalism as such, but only to its excesses and the domination of the German economy by "foreign" capitalists (including German Jews). There were a range of economic views within the early Nazi Party, ranging from the Strasserite wing which championed extensive state intervention, to the Völkisch conservatives who promoted a program of conservative corporatism, to the economic right-wing within Nazism, who hoped to avoid corporatism because it was viewed as too restrictive for big business. In the end, the approach that prevailed after the Nazis came to power was a pragmatic one, in which there would be no new economic system, but rather a continuation of "the long German tradition of authoritarian statist economics, which dated well back into the nineteenth century."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Like Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany similarly pursued an economic agenda with the aims of autarky and rearmament and imposed protectionist policies, including forcing the German steel industry to use lower-quality German iron ore rather than superior-quality imported iron. The Nazis were economic nationalists who "favoured protective tariffs, foreign debt reduction, and import substitution to remove what they regarded as debilitating dependence on the world economy."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The purpose of the economy, according to the Nazi worldview, was to "provide the material springboard for military conquest." As such, the Nazis aimed to place the focus of the German economy on a drive for empire and conquest, and they found and promoted businessmen who were willing to cooperate with their goals. They opposed free-market economics and instead promoted a state-driven economy that would guarantee high profits to friendly private companies in exchange for their support, which was a model adopted by many other political movements and governments in the 1930s, including the governments of Britain and France. Private capitalism was not directly challenged, but it was subordinated to the military and foreign policy goals of the state, in a way that reduced the decision-making power of industrial managers but did not interfere with the pursuit of private profit. Leading German business interests supported the goals of the Nazi government and its war effort in exchange for advantageous contracts, subsidies, and the suppression of the trade union movement. Avraham Barkai concludes that, because "the individual firm still operated according to the principle of maximum profit," the Nazi German economy was therefore "a capitalist economy in which capitalists, like all other citizens, were not free even though they enjoyed a privileged status, had a limited measure of freedom in their activities, and were able to accumulate huge profits as long as they accepted the primacy of politics."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Other fascist movements mirrored the general outlook of the Italian Fascists and German Nazis. The Spanish Falange called for respect for private property and was founded with support from Spanish landowners and industrialists. However, the Falange distinguished between "private property", which it supported, and "capitalism", which it opposed. The Falangist program of 1937 recognized "private property as a legitimate means for achieving individual, family and social goals," but Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said in 1935: "We reject the capitalist system, which disregards the needs of the people, dehumanizes private property and transforms the workers into shapeless masses prone to misery and despair." After his death and the rise of Francisco Franco, the rhetoric changed, and Falangist leader Raimundo Fernández-Cuesta declared the movement's ideology to be compatible with capitalism. In Hungary, the Arrow Cross Party held anti-feudal, anti-capitalist and anti-socialist beliefs, supporting land reform and militarism and drawing most of its support from the ranks of the army. The Romanian Iron Guard espoused anti-capitalist, anti-banking and anti-bourgeois rhetoric, combined with anti-communism and a religious form of anti-Semitism. The Iron Guard saw both capitalism and communism as being Jewish creations that served to divide the nation, and accused Jews of being "the enemies of the Christian nation."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Conservatives and fascists in Europe have held similar positions on many issues, including anti-communism and support of national pride. Conservatives and fascists both reject the liberal and Marxist emphasis on linear progressive evolution in history. Fascism's emphasis on order, discipline, hierarchy, military virtues and preservation of private property appealed to conservatives. The fascist promotion of "healthy", "uncontaminated" elements of national tradition such as chivalric culture and glorifying a nation's historical golden age has similarities with conservative aims. Fascists also made pragmatic tactical alliances with traditional conservative forces to achieve and maintain power. Even at the height of their influence and popularity, fascist movements were never able to seize power entirely by themselves, and relied on alliances with conservative parties to come to power. However, while conservatives made alliances with fascists in countries where the conservatives felt themselves under threat and therefore in need of such an alliance, this did not happen in places where the conservatives were securely in power. Several authoritarian conservative regimes across Europe suppressed fascist parties in the 1930s and 40s.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Many of fascism's recruits were disaffected right-wing conservatives who were dissatisfied with the traditional right's inability to achieve national unity and its inability to respond to socialism, feminism, economic crisis and international difficulties. With traditional conservative parties in Europe severely weakened in the aftermath of World War I, there was a political vacuum on the right which fascism filled. Fascists gathered support from landlords, business owners, army officers, and other conservative individuals and groups, by successfully presenting themselves as the last line of defense against land reform, social welfare measures, demilitarization, higher wages, and the socialization of the means of production.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: However, unlike conservatism, fascism specifically presents itself as a modern ideology that is willing to break free from the moral and political constraints of traditional society. The conservative authoritarian right is distinguished from fascism in that such conservatives tended to use traditional religion as the basis for their philosophical views, while fascists based their views on vitalism, nonrationalism, or secular neo-idealism. Fascists often drew upon religious imagery, but used it as a symbol for the nation and replaced spirituality with secular nationalism. Even in the most religious of the fascist movements, the Romanian Iron Guard, "Christ was stripped of genuine otherworldly mystery and was reduced to a metaphor for national redemption." Fascists claimed to support the traditional religions of their countries, but did not regard religion as a source of important moral principles, seeing it only as an aspect of national culture and a source of national identity and pride. Furthermore, while conservatives in interwar Europe generally wished to return to the pre-1914 status quo, fascists did not. Fascism combined an idealization of the past with an enthusiasm for modern technology. Nazi Germany "celebrated Aryan values and the glories of the Germanic knights while also taking pride in its newly created motorway system." Fascists looked to the spirit of the past to inspire a new era of national greatness and set out to "forge a mythic link between the present generation and a glorious stage in the past", but they did not seek to directly copy or restore past societies.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Another difference with traditional conservatism lies in the fact that fascism had radical aspirations for reshaping society. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote that "Fascists were not conservative in any very meaningful sense… The Fascists, in a meaningful sense, were revolutionaries". Fascists sought to destroy existing elites through revolutionary action to replace them with a new elite selected on the principle of the survival of the fittest, and thus they "rejected existing aristocracies in favor of their own new aristocracy." Yet at the same time, some fascist leaders claimed to be counter-revolutionary, and fascism saw itself as being opposed to all previous revolutions from the French Revolution onward, blaming them for liberalism, socialism, and decadence. In his book "Fascism" (1997), Mark Neocleous sums up these paradoxical tendencies by referring to fascism as "a prime example of reactionary modernism" as well as "the culmination of the "conservative revolutionary" tradition."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Fascism is strongly opposed to the individualism found in classical liberalism. Fascists accuse liberalism of de-spiritualizing human beings and transforming them into materialistic beings whose highest ideal is moneymaking. In particular, fascism opposes liberalism for its materialism, rationalism, individualism and utilitarianism. Fascists believe that the liberal emphasis on individual freedom produces national divisiveness. Mussolini criticized classical liberalism for its individualistic nature, writing: "Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; ... It is opposed to classical Liberalism ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual." However, Fascists and Nazis support a type of hierarchical individualism in the form of Social Darwinism because they believe it promotes "superior individuals" and weeds out "the weak". They also accuse both Marxism and democracy, with their emphasis on equality, of destroying individuality in favor of the "dead weight" of the masses.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: One issue where Fascism is in accord with liberalism is in its support of private property rights and the existence of a market economy. Although Fascism sought to "destroy the existing political order", it had tentatively adopted the economic elements of liberalism, but "completely denied its philosophical principles and the intellectual and moral heritage of modernity". Fascism espoused antimaterialism, which meant that it rejected the "rationalistic, individualistic and utilitarian heritage" that defined the liberal-centric Age of Enlightenment. Nevertheless, between the two pillars of fascist economic policy – national syndicalism and productionism – it was the latter that was given more importance, so the goal of creating a less materialist society was generally not accomplished.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Fascists saw contemporary politics as a life or death struggle of their nations against Marxism, and they believed that liberalism weakened their nations in this struggle and left them defenseless. While the socialist left was seen by the fascists as their main enemy, liberals were seen as the enemy's accomplices, "incompetent guardians of the nation against the class warfare waged by the socialists."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Fascists opposed social welfare for those they regarded as weak and decadent, but supported state assistance for those they regarded as strong and pure. As such, fascist movements criticized the welfare policies of the democratic governments they opposed, but eventually adopted welfare policies of their own to gain popular support. The Nazis condemned indiscriminate social welfare and charity, whether run by the state or by private entities, because they saw it as "supporting many people who were racially inferior." After coming to power, they adopted a type of selective welfare system that would only help those who were biologically and racially valuable. Italian Fascism had changing attitudes towards welfare, taking a stance against unemployment benefits upon coming to power in 1922, but later arguing that improving the well-being of the labor force could serve the national interest by increasing productive potential, and adopting welfare measures on this basis.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: From 1925 to 1939, the Italian Fascist government "embarked upon an elaborate program" of social welfare provision, supplemented by private charity from wealthy industrialists "in the spirit of Fascist class collaboration." This program included food supplementary assistance, infant care, maternity assistance, family allowances per child to encourage higher birth rates, paid vacations, public housing, and insurance for unemployment, occupational diseases, old age and disability. Many of these were continuations of programs already begun under the parliamentary system that fascism had replaced, and they were similar to programs instituted by democratic governments across Europe and North America in the same time period. Social welfare under democratic governments was sometimes more generous, but given that Italy was a poorer country, its efforts were more ambitious, and its legislation "compared favorably with the more advanced European nations and in some respects was more progressive."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Out of a "determination to make Italy the powerful, modern state of his imagination," Mussolini also began a broad campaign of public works after 1925, such that "bridges, canals, and roads were built, hospitals and schools, railway stations and orphanages; swamps were drained and land reclaimed, forests were planted and universities were endowed". The Mussolini administration "devoted 400 million lire of public monies" for school construction between 1922 and 1942, compared to only 60 million lire between 1862 and 1922. Extensive archaeological works were also financed, with the intention of highlighting the legacy of the Roman Empire, and clearing ancient monuments of "everything that has grown up round them during the centuries of decadence."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: In Germany, the Nazi Party condemned the welfare system of the Weimar Republic, together with private charity and philanthropy, as being "evils that had to be eliminated if the German race was to be strengthened and its weakest elements weeded out in the process of natural selection." Once in power, the Nazis drew sharp distinctions between those undeserving and those deserving of assistance, and strove to direct all public and private aid towards the latter. They argued that this approach represented "racial self-help" and not indiscriminate charity or universal social welfare.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: An organization called National Socialist People's Welfare ("Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt", NSV) was given the task of taking over the functions of social welfare institutions and "coordinating" the private charities, which had previously been run mainly by the churches and by the labour movement. Hitler instructed NSV chairman Erich Hilgenfeldt to "see to the disbanding of all private welfare institutions," in an effort to direct who was to receive social benefits. Welfare benefits were abruptly withdrawn from Jews, Communists, many Social Democrats, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others that were considered enemies of the Nazi regime, at first without any legal justification.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The NSV officially defined its mandate very broadly. For instance, one of the NSV branches, the Office of Institutional and Special Welfare, was responsible "for travellers' aid at railway stations; relief for ex-convicts; 'support' for re-migrants from abroad; assistance for the physically disabled, hard-of-hearing, deaf, mute, and blind; relief for the elderly, homeless and alcoholics; and the fight against illicit drugs and epidemics". But the NSV also explicitly stated that all such benefits would only be available to "racially superior" persons. NSV administrators were able to mount an effort towards the "cleansing of their cities of 'asocials'," who were deemed unworthy of receiving assistance for various reasons.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The NSV limited its assistance to those who were "racially sound, capable of and willing to work, politically reliable, and willing and able to reproduce," and excluded non-Aryans, the "work-shy", "asocials" and the "hereditarily ill." The agency successfully "projected a powerful image of caring and support" for "those who were judged to have got into difficulties through no fault of their own," as over 17 million Germans had obtained assistance from the NSV by 1939. However, the organization also resorted to intrusive questioning and monitoring to judge who was worthy of support, and for this reason it was "feared and disliked among society's poorest."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Fascism is historically strongly opposed to socialism and communism, due to their support of class revolution as well as "decadent" values, including internationalism, egalitarianism, horizontal collectivism, materialism and cosmopolitanism. Fascists have thus commonly campaigned with anti-communist agendas. Fascists saw themselves as building a new aristocracy, a "warrior race or nation", based on purity of blood, heroism and virility. They strongly opposed ideas of universal human equality and advocated hierarchy in its place, adhering to "the Aristotelian conviction, amplified by the modern elite theorists, that the human race is divided by nature into sheep and shepherds." Fascists believed in the survival of the fittest, and argued that society should be led by an elite of "the fittest, the strongest, the most heroic, the most productive, and, even more than that, those most fervently possessed with the national idea."


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Marxism and fascism oppose each other primarily because Marxism "called on the workers of the world to unite across national borders in a global battle against their oppressors, treating nation-states and national pride as tools in the arsenal of bourgeois propaganda", while fascism, on the contrary, exalted the interests of the nation or race as the highest good, and rejected all ideas of universal human interests standing above the nation or race. Within the nation, Marxism calls for class struggle by the working class against the ruling class, while fascism calls for collaboration between the classes to achieve national rejuvenation. Fascism proposes a type of society in which different classes continue to exist, but the rich and poor both serve the national interest and do not oppose each other.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the creation of the Soviet Union, fear of and opposition to communism became a major aspect of European politics in the 1920s and 1930s. Fascists were able to take advantage of this and presented themselves as the political force most capable of defeating communism. This was a major factor in enabling fascists to make alliances with the old establishment and to come to power in Italy and Germany, in spite of fascism's own radical agenda, because of the shared anti-Marxism of fascists and conservatives. The Nazis in particular came to power "on the back of a powerfully anticommunist program and in an atmosphere of widespread fear of a Bolshevik revolution at home," and their first concentration camps in 1933 were meant for holding socialist and communist political prisoners. Both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany also suppressed independent working-class organizations.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Fascism opposed the internationalist character of mainstream socialism, but in doing so, it sometimes defined itself as a new, "nationalist" form of socialism, an alternative to the mainstream form of socialism which it regarded as its bitter enemy. Hitler at times attempted to redefine the word socialism, such as saying: "Socialism! That is an unfortunate word altogether... What does socialism really mean? If people have something to eat and their pleasures, then they have their socialism". In 1930, Hitler said: "Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxist Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not". The name that Hitler later wished he had used to describe his political party was "social revolutionary".


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Mainstream socialists have typically rejected and opposed fascism in turn. Many communists regarded fascism as a tool of the ruling-class to destroy the working-class, regarding it as "the open but indirect dictatorship of capital." Nikita Khrushchev sardonically remarked: "In modern times the word Socialism has become very fashionable, and it has also been used very loosely. Even Hitler used to babble about Socialism, and he worked the word into the name of his Nazi [National Socialist] party. The whole world knows what sort of Socialism Hitler had in mind".


title: Fascism and ideology

text: However, the agency and genuine belief of fascists was recognised by some communist writers, like Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti and Otto Bauer, who instead believed fascism to be a genuine mass movement that arose as a consequence of the specific socio-economic conditions of the societies it arose in. Despite the mutual antagonism that would later develop between the two, the attitude of communists towards early fascism was more ambivalent than it might appear from the writings of individual communist theorists. In the early days, Fascism was sometimes perceived as less of a mortal rival to revolutionary Marxism than as a heresy from it. Mussolini's government was one of the first in Western Europe to diplomatically recognise the USSR, doing so in 1924. On 20 June 1923, Karl Radek gave a speech before the Comintern in which he proposed a common front with the Nazis in Germany. However, the two radicalisms were mutually exclusive and they later become profound enemies.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: While fascism is opposed to Bolshevism, both Bolshevism and fascism promote the one-party state and the use of political party militias. Fascists and communists also agree on the need for violent revolution to forge a new era, and they hold common positions in their opposition to liberalism, capitalism, individualism and parliamentarism.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Fascism denounces democratic socialism as a failure. Fascists see themselves as supporting a moral and spiritual renewal based on a warlike spirit of violence and heroism, and they condemn democratic socialism for advocating "humanistic lachrimosity" such as natural rights, justice, and equality. Fascists also oppose democratic socialism for its support of reformism and the parliamentary system that fascism typically rejects.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: Italian Fascism had ideological connections with revolutionary syndicalism, in particular Sorelian syndicalism. Benito Mussolini mentioned revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel—along with Hubert Lagardelle and his journal "Le Mouvement socialiste", which advocated a technocratic vision of society—as major influences on fascism. According to Zeev Sternhell, World War I caused Italian revolutionary syndicalism to develop into a national syndicalism reuniting all social classes, which later transitioned into Italian Fascism, such that "most syndicalist leaders were among the founders of the Fascist movement" and "many even held key posts" in the Italian Fascist regime by the mid-1920s.


title: Fascism and ideology

text: The Sorelian emphasis on the need for a revolution based upon action of intuition, a cult of energy and vitality, activism, heroism and the use of myth was used by fascists. Many prominent fascist figures were formerly associated with revolutionary syndicalism, including Mussolini, Arturo Labriola, Robert Michels and Paolo Orano.


title: Jason Weaver

text: Jason Michael Weaver (born July 18, 1979) is an American actor and singer best known for his roles as Marcus Henderson on The WB sitcom "Smart Guy," Jerome Turrell on the short-lived sitcom "Thea" from 1993 to 1994, and the pre-teenaged Michael Jackson on the 1992 miniseries ".", which originally both aired on ABC. He was also the singing voice of the young Simba in Walt Disney Feature Animation's 1994 film "The Lion King". He was featured on Chingy's 2004 hit single "One Call Away", which peaked at number 2 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. He played Teddy in the 2006 hit movie "ATL".


title: Jason Weaver

text: One of Weaver's earliest acting roles was on Oprah Winfrey's 1990 television series "Brewster Place". He went on to portray a young Michael Jackson in the 1992 miniseries "", and starred on the television sitcoms "Thea" (1993–1994) and "Smart Guy" (1997–1999). In 1994, he provided the singing voice of young Simba in Disney's animated feature film "The Lion King".


title: Jason Weaver

text: In 2002, Weaver appeared in "Drumline" with Nick Cannon, followed by a role in "The Ladykillers" in 2004. In 2004, he also was a featured artist in the song "One Call Away", as well as in the music video that also starred Keshia Knight Pulliam and AND1 baller Phillip "Hot Sauce" Champion. In 2006, Weaver was featured in a supporting role in the film "ATL" starring rappers T.I. and Big Boi from OutKast. He also appeared as an extra in the music video "Rock Yo Hips" by Crime Mob featuring Lil Scrappy and "Make Up Bag" by The-Dream featuring T.I. In 2011, he starred in the film "He's Mine Not Yours" alongside Caryn Ward, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Carl Anthony Payne II and Clifton Powell.


title: Jason Weaver

text: Weaver is also a recording artist. He provided vocals for his role as Michael Jackson in "" and as the singing voice of the cub Simba in Disney's 1994 animated feature film "The Lion King".


title: Jason Weaver

text: His debut album, "Love Ambition", was released on Motown Records on June 27, 1995. He released two versions of the song "Stay With Me".


title: Jason Weaver

text: In 2003, he collaborated with hip-hop rapper Chingy on the track "One Call Away". The single was a Top 5 hit single in the United States.


title: Jason Weaver

text: Jason is son of Marilyn “Kitty” Haywood and Robert Lincoln Weaver. His mother is the key member of the Chicago-based female vocal group Kitty & the Haywoods, who backed with the late Aretha Franklin on the soundtrack album to the 1970s film "Sparkle". As a father, Weaver has one son named Jaylen. Jason studied at Thornwood High School.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester (24 July 1689 – 30 July 1700), was the son of Princess Anne (later Queen of England, Ireland and Scotland from 1702) and her husband, Prince George of Denmark. He was their only child to survive infancy. Styled Duke of Gloucester, he was viewed by contemporaries as a Protestant champion because his birth seemed to cement the Protestant succession established in the "Glorious Revolution" that had deposed his Catholic grandfather James II & VII the previous year.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Anne was estranged from her brother-in-law and cousin, William III & II, and her sister, Mary II, but supported links between them and her son. He grew close to his uncle William, who created him a Knight of the Garter, and his aunt Mary, who frequently sent him presents. At his nursery in Campden House, Kensington, he befriended his Welsh body-servant, Jenkin Lewis, whose memoir of the Duke is an important source for historians, and operated his own miniature army, called the "Horse Guards", which eventually comprised 90 boys.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Gloucester's precarious health was a constant source of worry to his mother. His death in 1700 at the age of 11 precipitated a succession crisis as his mother was the only individual remaining in the Protestant line of succession established by the Bill of Rights 1689. The English Parliament did not want the throne to revert to a Catholic, and so passed the Act of Settlement 1701, which settled the throne of England on Electress Sophia of Hanover, a cousin of King James II & VII, and her Protestant heirs.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: In late 1688, in what became known as the "Glorious Revolution", the Roman Catholic King James of England, Scotland and Ireland was deposed by his Protestant nephew and son-in-law, Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange. William and his wife, James's elder daughter Mary, were recognised by the English and Scottish parliaments as king and queen. As they had no children, Mary's younger sister, Anne, was designated their heir presumptive in England and Scotland. The accession of William and Mary and the succession through Anne were enshrined in the Bill of Rights 1689.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Anne was married to Prince George of Denmark, and in their first six years of marriage Anne had been pregnant six times, which ended with two stillbirths, two miscarriages, and two baby daughters who died of smallpox in 1687 shortly after Anne’s first miscarriage. Her seventh pregnancy resulted in the birth of a son at 5 a.m. on 24 July 1689 in Hampton Court Palace. As it was usual for the births of potential heirs to the throne to be attended by several witnesses, the King and Queen and "most of the persons of quality about the court" were present. Three days later, the newborn baby was baptised William Henry after his uncle King William by Henry Compton, Bishop of London. The King, who was one of the godparents along with the Marchioness of Halifax and the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Dorset, declared him Duke of Gloucester, although the peerage was never formally created. Gloucester was second in line to the throne after his mother, and because his birth secured the Protestant succession, he was the hope of the revolution's supporters. The ode "The Noise of Foreign Wars", attributed to Henry Purcell, was written in celebration of the birth. Other congratulatory odes, such as Purcell's last royal ode "Who Can From Joy Refrain?" and John Blow's "The Duke of Gloucester's March" and "A Song upon the Duke of Gloucester", were composed for his birthdays in later years. Opponents of the revolution, supporters of James known as the Jacobites, spoke of Gloucester as "a sickly and doomed usurper".


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Though described as a "brave livlylike boy", Gloucester became ill with convulsions when he was three weeks old, so his mother moved him into Craven House, Kensington, hoping that the air from the surrounding gravel pits would have a beneficial effect on his health. His convulsions were possibly symptomatic of meningitis, likely contracted at birth and which resulted in hydrocephalus. As was usual among royalty, Gloucester was placed in the care of a governess, Lady Fitzhardinge, and was suckled by a wet nurse, Mrs. Pack, rather than his mother. As part of his treatment, Gloucester was driven outside every day in a small open carriage, pulled by Shetland ponies, to maximise his exposure to the air of the gravel pits. When the effectiveness of this treatment exceeded their expectations, Princess Anne and her husband acquired a permanent residence in the area, Campden House, a Jacobean mansion, in 1690. It was here that Gloucester befriended Welsh body-servant Jenkin Lewis, whose memoir of his master is an important source for historians.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Throughout his life, Gloucester had a recurrent "ague", which was treated with regular doses of Jesuit's bark (an early form of quinine) by his physician, John Radcliffe. Gloucester disliked the treatment intensely, and usually vomited after being given it. Possibly as a result of hydrocephalus, he had an enlarged head, which his surgeons pierced intermittently to draw off fluid. He could not walk properly, and was apt to stumble. Nearing the age of five, Gloucester refused to climb stairs without two attendants to hold him, which Lewis blamed on indulgent nurses who over-protected the boy. His father birched him until he agreed to walk by himself. Corporal punishment was usual at the time, and such treatment would not have been considered harsh.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Gloucester's language acquisition was delayed; he did not speak correctly until the age of three, and consequently the commencement of his education was postponed by a year. The Reverend Samuel Pratt, a Cambridge graduate, was appointed the Duke's tutor in 1693. Lessons concentrated on geography, mathematics, Latin, and French. Pratt was an enemy of Jenkin Lewis, and they frequently disagreed over how Gloucester should be educated. Lewis remained Gloucester's favourite attendant because, unlike Pratt, he was knowledgeable in military matters and could therefore help him with his "Horse Guards", a miniature army consisting of local children. Over a couple of years from 1693, the size of the army grew from 22 to over 90 boys.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Princess Anne had fallen out with her sister and brother-in-law, William and Mary, and reluctantly agreed to the advice of her friend, the Countess of Marlborough, that Gloucester should visit his aunt and uncle regularly to ensure their continued goodwill towards him. In an attempt to heal the rift, Anne invited the King and Queen to see Gloucester drill the "Horse Guards". After watching the boys' display at Kensington Palace, the King praised them, and made a return visit to Campden House the following day. Gloucester grew closer to his aunt and uncle: the Queen bought him presents from his favourite toy shop regularly. Her death in 1694 led to a superficial reconciliation between Anne and William, which occasioned a move to St James's Palace, London. Gloucester having tired of him, Lewis only attended St James's every two months.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: On his seventh birthday, Gloucester attended a ceremony at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, to install him as a knight of the Order of the Garter, an honour the King had given him six months before. Gloucester became ill during the celebratory banquet afterwards and left early, but after his recovery went deer hunting in Windsor Great Park, where he was blooded by Samuel Masham, his father's page. Princess Anne wrote to the Countess of Marlborough, "My boy continues yet very well, and looks better, I think, than ever he did in his life; I mean more healthy, for though I love him very well, I can't brag of his beauty."


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: During the trial of Sir John Fenwick, who was implicated in a plot to assassinate King William, Gloucester signed a letter to the King promising his loyalty. "I, your Majesty's most dutiful subject," the letter read, "had rather lose my life in your Majesty's cause than in any man's else, and I hope it will not be long ere you conquer France." Added to the letter was a declaration by the boys in Gloucester's army: "We, your Majesty's subjects, will stand by you while we have a drop of blood."


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: In 1697, Parliament granted King William £50,000 to establish a household for the Duke of Gloucester, though the King only permitted the release of £15,000, keeping the difference for himself. The establishment of Gloucester's own household in early 1698 revived the feud between Anne and William. William was determined to limit Anne's involvement in the household, and therefore appointed, against her wishes, the low church Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, as Gloucester's preceptor. Anne was high church, and Burnet, knowing she was unhappy, attempted to decline the appointment, but the King insisted he accept it. Anne's anger was only placated by an assurance from King William that she could choose all the lower servants of the household. The Earl of Marlborough, a friend of Anne's, was appointed Gloucester's governor, after the Duke of Shrewsbury declined the office on the grounds of ill health. Shortly before the King sailed for the Netherlands, he received Anne's choices from Marlborough but he refused to confirm them. His favourite, the Earl of Albemarle, eventually convinced him to agree to Anne's appointments, and the King's acceptance was sent from the Netherlands in September 1698. The Marlboroughs' twelve-year-old son, Lord Churchill, was appointed Gloucester's Master of the Horse, and became a friend and playmate. Abigail Hill, a kinswoman of the Countess of Marlborough, was appointed his laundress, and Abigail's brother, Jack Hill, was made one of Gloucester's gentlemen of the bedchamber.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Burnet lectured Gloucester for hours at a time on subjects such as the feudal constitutions of Europe and law before the time of Christianity. Burnet also encouraged Gloucester to memorise facts and dates by heart. Government ministers inspected Gloucester's academic progress every four months, finding themselves "amazed" by his "wonderful memory and good judgement". His childhood troop was disbanded, and King William made him the honorary commander of a real regiment of Dutch footguards. In 1699, he attended the trials in the House of Lords of Lord Mohun and Lord Warwick, who were accused of murder. Mohun was acquitted; Warwick was found guilty of manslaughter but escaped punishment by pleading privilege of peerage.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: As he neared his eleventh birthday, Gloucester was assigned the rooms in Kensington Palace that had been used by his aunt, Queen Mary, who died in 1694. At his birthday party at Windsor, on 24 July 1700, he complained of a sudden fatigue, but was initially thought to have overheated himself while dancing. By nightfall, he had a sore throat and chills, followed by a severe headache and a high fever the next day. A physician, Hannes, did not arrive until 27 July. Gloucester was immediately bled, but his condition continued to deteriorate. Over the next day, he developed a rash and diarrhoea. A second physician, Gibbons, arrived early on 28 July, followed by Radcliffe that evening.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: The physicians could not agree on a diagnosis. Radcliffe thought he had scarlet fever, while others thought it was smallpox. They administered "cordial powders and cordial juleps". Gloucester was bled, to which Radcliffe strongly objected. He told his colleagues, "you have destroyed him and you may finish him". He prescribed blistering, which was no more effective. In great pain, Gloucester spent the evening of 28 July "in great sighings and dejections of spirits ... towards morning, he complained very much of his blisters." Anne, who had spent an entire day and night by her son's bedside, now became so distressed that she fainted. However, by midday on 29 July, Gloucester was breathing more easily and his headache had diminished, leading to hopes that he would recover. The improvement was fleeting, and that evening, he was "taken with a convulsing sort of breathing, a defect in swallowing and a total deprivation of all sense". Prince William died close to 1 a.m. on 30 July 1700, with his parents beside him. In the end, the physicians decided the cause of death was "a malignant fever". An autopsy revealed severe swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck and an abnormal amount of fluid in the ventricles of his brain: "four and a half ounces of a limpid humour were taken out." Gloucester may have died from smallpox or, according to modern medical diagnosis, an acute bacterial pharyngitis, with associated pneumonia. Had he lived, though, it is almost certain the prince would have succumbed to complications of his hydrocephalus.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: King William, who was in the Netherlands, wrote to Marlborough, "It is so great a loss to me as well as to all England, that it pierces my heart." Anne was prostrate with grief, taking to her chamber. In the evenings, she was carried into the garden "to divert her melancholy thoughts". Gloucester's body was moved from Windsor to Westminster on the night of 1 August, and he lay in state in the Palace of Westminster before being entombed in the Royal Vault of the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey on 9 August. As was usual for royalty in mourning, his parents did not attend the funeral service, instead remaining in seclusion at Windsor.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Gloucester's death destabilised the succession, as his mother was the only person remaining in the Protestant line to the throne established by the Bill of Rights 1689. Although Anne had ten other pregnancies after the birth of Gloucester, none of them resulted in a child who survived more than briefly after birth. The English parliament did not want the throne to revert to a Catholic, so it passed the Act of Settlement 1701, which settled the throne of England on a cousin of King James, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and her Protestant heirs. Anne succeeded King William in 1702, and reigned until her death on 1 August 1714. Sophia predeceased her by a few weeks, and so Sophia's son George ascended the throne as the first British monarch of the House of Hanover.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: William was styled as: His Royal Highness Prince William, Duke of Gloucester. The title became extinct on his death.


title: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester

text: Gloucester bore the royal arms, differenced by an inescutcheon of the Danish coat of arms and a label of three points Argent, the centre point bearing a cross Gules.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: The Waverly Hills Sanatorium is a former sanatorium located in southwestern Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: It opened in 1910 as a two-story hospital to accommodate 40 to 50 tuberculosis patients. In the early 1900s, Jefferson County was ravaged by an outbreak of tuberculosis – known as the "White Plague" – which prompted the construction of a new hospital. The hospital closed in 1961, due to the antibiotic drug streptomycin that lowered the need for such a hospital. There were original plans to turn the abandoned hospital into a hotel, but that is no longer the case.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: The land that is known today as "Waverly Hill" was purchased by Major Thomas H. Hays in 1883 as the Hays' family home. Since the new home was far away from any existing schools, Mr. Hays decided to open a local school for his daughters to attend. He started a one-room schoolhouse on Pages Lane and hired Lizzie Lee Harris as the teacher. Due to Miss Harris' fondness for Walter Scott's Waverley novels, she named the schoolhouse Waverley School. Major Hays liked the peaceful-sounding name, so he named his property Waverley Hill. The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name when they bought the land and opened the sanatorium. It is not known exactly when the spelling changed to exclude the second "e" and became Waverly Hills. However, the spelling fluctuated between both spellings many times over the years.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: In the early 1900s, Jefferson County was severely stricken with an outbreak of tuberculosis. There were many tuberculosis cases in Louisville at the time because of all the wetlands along the Ohio River, which were perfect for the tuberculosis bacteria. To try to contain the disease, a two-story wooden sanatorium was opened which consisted of an administrative/main building and two open air pavilions, each housing 20 patients, for the treatment of "early cases".


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: In the early part of 1911, the city of Louisville began to make preparations to build a new Louisville City Hospital, and the hospital commissioners decided in their plans that there would be no provision made in the new City Hospital for the admission of pulmonary tuberculosis, and the Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was given $25,000 to erect a hospital for the care of advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: On August 31, 1912, all tuberculosis patients from the City Hospital were relocated to temporary quarters in tents on the grounds of Waverly Hills pending the completion of a hospital for advanced cases. In December 1912 a hospital for advanced cases opened for the treatment of another 40 patients. In 1914 a children's pavilion added another 50 beds making the known "capacity" around 130 patients. The children's pavilion was not only for sick children but also for the children of tuberculosis patients who could not be cared for properly otherwise. This report also mentions that the goal was to add a new building each year to continually grow so there may have even been more beds available than specifically listed.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: Due to constant need for repairs on the wooden structures, need for a more durable structure, as well as need for more beds so that people would not be turned away due to lack of space, construction of a five-story building that could hold more than 400 patients began in March 1924. The new building opened on October 17, 1926, but after the introduction of streptomycin in 1943, the number of tuberculosis cases gradually lowered, until there was no longer need for such a large hospital. The remaining patients were sent to Hazelwood Sanatorium in Louisville. Waverly Hills closed in June 1961.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: The building was reopened in 1962 as Woodhaven Geriatric Center, a nursing home primarily treating aging patients with various stages of dementia and mobility limits, as well as the severely mentally handicapped. However, Woodhaven failed greatly because it was severely understaffed and overcrowded. Woodhaven also had reports over patient neglect and was closed by the state of Kentucky in 1982.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: Simpsonville developer J. Clifford Todd bought the hospital in 1983 for $3,005,000. He and architect Milton Thompson wanted to convert it into a minimum-security prison for the state, but the developers dropped the plan after neighbors protested. Todd and Thompson then proposed converting the hospital into apartments, but they counted on Jefferson Fiscal Court to buy around from them for $400,000, giving them the money to start the project.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: In March 1996, Robert Alberhasky bought Waverly Hills and the surrounding area. Alberhasky's Christ the Redeemer Foundation Inc. made plans to construct the world's tallest statue of Jesus on the site, along with an arts and worship center. The statue, which was inspired by the famed Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, would have been designed by local sculptor Ed Hamilton and architect Jasper Ward. The first phase of the development, coming in at a cost of $4 million, would have been a statue of tall and wide, situated on the roof of the sanatorium. The second phase would convert the old sanatorium into a chapel, theater, and a gift shop at a cost of $8 million or more.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: The plan to construct this religious icon fell through because donations to the project fell well short of expectations. In a period of a year, only $3,000 was raised towards the project despite efforts to pool money from across the nation. The project was canceled in December 1997.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: The tunnel served as a passageway to transport bodies and supplies in and out of the sanatorium. It was built on the first floor with the rest of the building. The corridor is 500 feet to the bottom of the hill and has a set of stairs on one side, which were the stairs used for the workers. On the other side, there was a cart that moved up and down the staircase which transported supplies and other necessities.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: Since antibiotics did not exist in the time that the sanatorium was active, other forms of aid were used to treat TB patients. For example, heat lamps, fresh air, and positive talk and reassurance helped to keep patients alive, since the death rate of TB patients at the time was one death per day. However, at the peak of the disease, the sight of the dead being carried away in full view of the patients lowered the patient morale. Therefore, the sanatorium tried transporting the dead bodies as secretively as possible to increase the morale and lower the death rates, using the tunnel to that end. The doctors and workers of this time also believed that this would help to lower the disease's spreading rate.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: Hence, the tunnel was also known as the "Body Chute" or "Death Tunnel" by the locals and paranormal investigators visiting the sanatorium.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: Apart from transporting dead bodies out of the sanatorium, the tunnel also served as a temporary air raid shelter during World War II.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: After Alberhasky's efforts failed, Waverly Hills was sold to Tina and Charlie Mattingly in 2001. The Mattinglys hold tours of Waverly Hills and host a haunted house attraction each Halloween, with proceeds going toward restoration of the property. They're also currently restoring all the windows in the decrepit building while restoring the interior of the old sanatorium.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: Waverly Hills Sanatorium hosted the last show of the touring music festival Sounds of the Underground on August 11, 2007. The show featured prominent acts in the extreme metal and metalcore scene, including Job for a Cowboy, The Acacia Strain, Hatebreed, Shadows Fall, Chimaira, GWAR, Cameo, Lamb of God and The Number Twelve Looks Like You. Similar festivals or concerts will likely not happen again at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium, due to complaints made by local residents.


title: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

text: The old sanatorium is currently owned by Charlie and Tina Mattingly. The couple purchased the site for $230,000 in 2001 in hopes of restoring the sanatorium and turning it into a local tourist site. Together with volunteers from Waverly Hills Historical Society, the group now runs regular historical and ghost tours all year round.


Waverly Hills Sanatorium


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: The current eight stars flag of Venezuela was introduced in 2006. The basic design includes a horizontal tricolour of yellow, blue, and red, dating to the original flag introduced in 1811, in the Venezuelan War of Independence.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: Further modifications have involved including a set of stars, multiple changes to the placement and number of stars and inclusion of an optional coat of arms at the upper-left corner.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: The flag is essentially the one designed by Francisco de Miranda for his unsuccessful 1806 expedition to liberate Venezuela and later adopted by the National Congress of 1811. It consisted of three equal horizontal stripes of yellow, blue and red. Miranda's flag is also the inspiration for the flags of Colombia and Ecuador. The flag of the short-lived Republic of Spanish Haiti was also based on Miranda's tricolore and resembles the current Venezuelan flag. This original design was first flown on 12 March 1806, at Jacmel, Haiti, as Miranda's expedition prepared to make the final leg of its voyage to Venezuela. The flag was first flown over Venezuelan soil at La Vela de Coro, on 3 August. Until 3 August 2006, Flag Day was celebrated in Venezuela on 12 March. Since 2006 it has been celebrated on 3 August.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: Miranda gave at least two sources of inspiration for his flag. In a letter written to Count Semyon Vorontsov in 1792, Miranda stated that the colours were based on a theory of primary colours given to him by the German writer and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Miranda described a late-night conversation he had with Goethe at a party in Weimar during the winter of 1785. Fascinated with Miranda's account of his exploits in the United States Revolutionary War and his travels throughout the Americas and Europe, Goethe told him that, ""Your destiny is to create in your land a place where primary colours are not distorted.”" He proceeded to clarify what he meant by this:


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: ""First he explained to me the way the iris transforms light into the three primary colours […] then he proved to me why yellow is the warmest, noble and closest to [white] light; why blue is that mix of excitement and serenity, a distance that evokes shadows; and why red is the exaltation of yellow and blue, the synthesis, the vanishing of light into shadow".


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: " It is not that the world is made of yellows, blues, and reds; it is that in this manner, as if in an infinite combination of these three colours, we human beings see it. […] A country starts out from a name and a flag, and it then becomes them, just as a man fulfills his destiny.""


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: After Miranda later designed his flag based on this conversation, he happily recalled seeing a fresco by Lazzaro Tavarone in the Palazzo Belimbau in Genoa that depicted Christopher Columbus unfurling a similar-coloured flag in Veragua during his fourth voyage.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: In his military diary, Miranda gave another source of inspiration: the yellow, blue and red standard of the Burgers' Guard ("Bürgerwache") of Hamburg, which he also saw during his travels in Germany. The idea of the flag is documented in his 1801 plan for an army to liberate Spanish America, which he submitted unsuccessfully to the British cabinet. In it Miranda requested the materials for "ten flags, whose colours shall be red, yellow and blue, in three zones."


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: The symbolism traditionally ascribed to the colours is that the yellow band stands for the wealth of the land, the red for courage, and the blue for the independence from Spain, or "golden" America separated from bloody Spain by the deep blue sea.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: During the first half of the 19th century, seven stars were added to the flag to represent the seven signatories to the Venezuelan declaration of independence, being the provinces of Caracas, Cumaná, Barcelona, Barinas, Margarita, Mérida, and Trujillo.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: After the Guayana campaign, Simón Bolívar added the eighth star to the national flag (the so-called Flag of Angostura) in the representation of the newly freed province. Bolívar issued the following decree:


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: The "Law of the National Flag, Coat of Arms and Anthem" added the Coat of Arms to the flag on February 19, 1954. The coat of arms was not incorporated into the Civil or Maritime Flag, which is intended for non-governmental purposes, such as civilian use, merchant craft, and international sports competition.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: Several opposition groups and Venezuelan exiles opposing the current government use the tricolor flag with seven stars adopted in 1954.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: In 2006 the President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez announced plans to add an eighth star to the flag of Venezuela to bring about a much-belated fulfillment to Bolívar's 1817 decree. The eighth star represents the Guayana Province, one of the Provinces of Venezuela at the time of the declaration of independence. The Coat of Arms was also changed to a white horse galloping left instead of cantering to the right, a bow and arrow, and a machete. Although the new flag was approved by the Venezuelan government, opposition spokesperson Óscar Pérez stated that they would not use the new flag.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: The new flag change is controversial for another reason, being that the eighth star represents two-thirds of modern-day Guyana, a country that Venezuela has ongoing tensions with over a border dispute of the entire region west of the Essequibo River, which was ruled in Guyana's favour by an international tribunal.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: As with most other national flags, the Venezuelan flag should be flown every day by the legally registered public institutions from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. Private institutions, businesses, and citizens should fly the flag on national holidays or on days determined by the National Executive. Institutions which should fly the flag by obligation are:


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: There is currently no regulation as to the dimensions of the flag, its use inside private or public institutions or by the public in general, its form and protocol. The conventions that currently exist have been freely determined. Nevertheless, educational institutions currently follow a protocol modeled on the regulations issued for the armed forces for use in raising the flag on special days.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: Out of respect for the flag, popular culture holds that upon raising the flag, the national anthem should be played and all civilians present should stand still, straight, with closed hands at the sides and without any headgear, while military and police personnel out of formation must salute.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: Although there is no official regulation on the manner in which the flag should be folded, there is, as in other countries, a procedure with widespread acceptance in schools, scout groups, and military institutions. Its origins are not known, but there are several possibilities, such as the adoption of the custom from other South American nations, in which this singular way of folding a flag originated. In the Venezuelan case, there are two ways of folding the flag depending on whether it is a civil or state flag.


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: The flag has its own anthem, which was composed in 1889 with music by Francisco Araldi and lyrics by Zolessi Geronimo, which reads:


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: Similarly, a Flag Oath has also been written for students to be said on 3 August, which is as follows:


title: Flag of Venezuela

text: Versions of this oath and pledge are used for the National Armed Forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Policia Nacional Bolivariana, but in this case, only the pledge is used during graduation and passing out parades.


title: Binge drinking

text: Binge drinking, or heavy episodic drinking, is drinking alcoholic beverages with an intention of becoming intoxicated by heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time, but definitions (see below) vary considerably.


title: Binge drinking

text: Binge drinking is a style of drinking that is popular in several countries worldwide, and overlaps somewhat with social drinking since it is often done in groups. The degree of intoxication, however, varies between and within various cultures that engage in this practice. A binge on alcohol can occur over hours, last up to several days, or in the event of extended abuse, even weeks. Due to the long term effects of alcohol abuse, binge drinking is considered to be a major public health issue.


title: Binge drinking

text: Binge drinking is more common in males, during adolescence and young adulthood. Heavy regular binge drinking is associated with adverse effects on neurologic, cardiac, gastrointestinal, hematologic, immune, and musculoskeletal organ systems as well as increasing the risk of alcohol induced psychiatric disorders. A US-based review of the literature found that up to one-third of adolescents binge-drink, with 6% reaching the threshold of having an alcohol-related substance use disorder. Approximately one in 25 women binge-drinks during pregnancy, which can lead to fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Binge drinking during adolescence is associated with traffic accidents and other types of accidents, violent behavior as well as suicide. The more often a child or adolescent binge drinks and the younger they are the more likely that they will develop an alcohol use disorder including alcoholism. A large number of adolescents who binge-drink also consume other psychotropic substances.


title: Binge drinking

text: Frequent binge drinking can lead to brain damage faster and more severely than chronic drinking (alcoholism). The neurotoxic insults are due to very large amounts of glutamate which are released and overstimulate the brain as a binge finishes. This results in excitotoxicity, a process which damages or kills neurons (brain cells). Each binge drinking episode immediately insults the brain; repeat episodes result in accumulating harm. The developing adolescent brain is thought to be particularly susceptible to the neurotoxic effects of binge drinking, with some evidence of brain damage occurring from drinking more than 10 or 11 drinks once or twice per month. A 2020 study found that even a single episode of binge drinking can lead to atrophy of the brain's corpus callosum, from which damage was still detectable by an MRI scanner five weeks later. With prolonged abstinence neurogenesis occurs which can potentially reverse the damage from alcohol abuse.


title: Binge drinking

text: Stolle, Sack and Thomasius define binge drinking as episodic excessive drinking. There is currently no worldwide consensus on how many drinks constitute a "binge", but in the United States, the term has been described in academic research to mean consuming five or more standard drinks (male), or four or more drinks (female), over a two-hour period. In 2015, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, defines binge drinking as "a pattern of drinking that brings a person's blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 grams percent or above. This typically happens when men consume five or more drinks, and when women consume four or more drinks, in about two hours." and estimated that about 16% of American adults met these criteria at least four times per month. One 2001 definition from the publication "Psychology of Addictive Behavior" states that five drinks for men and four drinks for women must be consumed on one occasion at least once in a two-week period for it to be classed as binge drinking. This is colloquially known as the "5/4 definition", and depending on the source, the timeframe can vary. In the United Kingdom, binge drinking is defined by one academic publication as drinking more than twice the daily limit, that is, drinking eight units or more for men or six units or more for women (roughly equivalent to five or four American standard drinks, respectively). In Australia, binge drinking is also known as risky single occasion drinking (RSOD) and can be classified by the drinking of seven or more standard drinks (by males) and five or more standard drinks (by females) within a single day. When BEACH (Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health) conducted a study which gathered information of people over the age of 18, it defined binge drinkers as those who consumed six or more standard drinks on one occasion whether that be weekly or monthly.


title: Binge drinking

text: The above definitions are limited in that they do not take into account the time period over which the drinking occurs or the body mass of the person drinking. A person could be defined as a binge drinker even if he or she never becomes intoxicated. The term, however, has succeeded in drawing public awareness to the problem of excess drinking..


title: Binge drinking

text: Other, less common definitions rely on blood alcohol concentration (BAC). For example, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines the term "binge drinking" as a pattern of drinking that brings a person's blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 percent or above. Whatever the numerical definition used, heavy drinking or rapid consumption over a short period of time with the intention of becoming intoxicated is often implied when the term is used colloquially, since four or five drinks consumed over the course of a whole day and as an accompaniment to meals will not have the same effects as the same amount consumed over a couple of hours on an empty stomach.


title: Binge drinking

text: An alternative colloquial term for binge drinking, "going on a bender", formerly implied a drinking spree of several days.


title: Binge drinking

text: Culture as well as peer pressure play an important role in driving binge drinking. In adults, binge drinking is more common in people who have never been married and score a grade B or less in education.


title: Binge drinking

text: Other causes include feeling more grown-up and fitting in with peers and to increase the chance of sexual encounters. Some also drink to alleviate psychological stress or anxiety. Research on interpersonal violence focused on mechanisms of victimization and perpetration (specifically stalking, harassment, sexual assault, and teen dating violence) among adolescents reported a significantly higher proportion of teenagers endorsing depressed mood and engagement in binge drinking among those subjected to victimization.


title: Binge drinking

text: Semi-structured interview were carried out with 64 14- to 17-year-olds who had an experience of binge drinking. These interviews found that motivations included social facilitation which was ease in social situations, individual benefits such as getting a 'buzz' and influences of peer pressure and social norms.


title: Binge drinking

text: Risk factors for binge drinking among adolescents include: low socioeconomic status, large amount of disposable (pocket) money, sensation and novelty seeking, low self-control, delinquency and having delinquent friends. Other risk factors include: using alcohol as a coping strategy for emotional problems (more common in adolescent girls), excessive drinking among peers, poor relationship with parents, alcohol abuse by parents. Genetic conditions combined with a background of negative environmental factors increase the harmful use of alcohol. Additionally the risk-taking behavior associated with adolescence promotes binge drinking.


title: Binge drinking

text: Acute intoxication, such as binge drinking and alcoholism, are known potent risk factors for suicide. Binge drinking is also associated with an increased risk of unplanned and unprotected sex, unplanned pregnancies, and an increased risk of HIV infection. 10% of women and 19% of men have reported being assaulted as a result of alcohol. Males who drink more than 35 units of alcohol per week report being physically hurt as a result of alcohol, and 15% report physically hurting others as a result of their drinking. Almost 16% of binge drinkers report being taken advantage of sexually, and 8% report taking advantage of another person sexually as a result of alcohol within a one-year period. Heavy drinkers cause approximately 183,000 rapes and sexual assaults, 197,000 robberies, 661,000 aggravated assaults, and 1.7 million simple assaults each year. Binge drinking has been associated with higher probability of divorce, spousal abuse, and poor job performance. Binge drinking can cause adverse effects on the body including effects on blood homeostasis and its circadian variation, cardiac rhythm, ischaemic heart disease, blood pressure, white blood cell activity, female reproductive hormone levels as well as adverse effects on the fetus. There is also evidence from animal studies that binge drinking causes brain damage. Binge drinking has been associated with lower abdominal pain in women. Ketoacidosis can occur in individuals who chronically abuse alcohol and have a recent history of binge drinking. Alcohol affects brain development quite significantly especially during adolescence when the brain is still developing. The main lobes that are involved in decision making and complex thought processes are undergoing their final development phase during adolescence and binge drinking can negatively stunt the growth of these frontal lobes.


title: Binge drinking

text: The high levels of binge drinking among young people and the adverse consequences that include increased risk of alcoholism as an adult and liver disease make binge drinking a major public health issue. Recent research has found that young college binge drinkers who drink four or more drinks on more than three occasions in the past two weeks are statistically 19 times more likely to develop alcoholism than non-binge drinkers, though the direction of causality remains unclear. This is particularly interesting, as drinking for the sole purpose of getting drunk remains a major health and social problem on college campuses across the United States. Heavy and regular binge drinking during adolescence is associated with an increased risk of alcoholism. Approximately 40% of alcoholics report heavy drinking during adolescence. Repeated episodes of excessive drinking, especially at an early age, are thought to cause a profound increase in the risk of developing an alcohol-related disorder (ICD-10, harmful use/dependence syndrome). Heavy drinking is also closely associated with depression. Those with severe depression have higher rates of alcohol abuse than those with low depression.  College students who are depressed are more susceptible to use alcohol than college students who are not depressed. In a study conducted at Harvard University, it was found that about 32% of students surveyed were diagnosable for alcohol abuse and about 6% were diagnosed as alcohol dependent. Binge drinking is also becoming an increasing problem in Australian adolescents, the Australian School Students Alcohol and Drug survey conducted by the National Cancer Council discovered that around 33% of students between years 7 and 11 consumed alcohol in the week leading up to the survey, they also found that 10% of the students participated in binge drinking at a consumption level which is considered dangerous to adults. When the survey results were separated into age groups the findings were that 13% of 15-year-old's and 22% of 17-year-old's had alcohol consumption levels above the daily maximum suggested to adults and that 20% of 17-year-old's had a consumption level of alcohol considered risky to adults.


title: Binge drinking

text: Other risk factors that influence the development of alcohol abuse or alcoholism include social and genetic factors. Several researchers have found that starting drinking before the age of 15 is associated with a fourfold increased risk for developing alcoholism compared to people that delay drinking until age 20 or later. It has been estimated by some that if the age at which people started drinking could be delayed to age 20, there would be a 50% reduction in the number of cases of alcohol use disorder. However, it is unclear whether this is a causal relationship, or a function of confounding familial (and other) factors associated with both age at first drink and propensity for alcoholism.


title: Binge drinking

text: The main cause of death among adolescents as a result of binge drinking is road traffic accidents; a third of all fatal road traffic accidents among 15- to 20-year-olds are associated with drinking alcohol. Cyclists and pedestrians are likely to have less spatial awareness and concentration while travelling after binge drinking and, also, it is more common that adolescents that binge-drink drive drunk or are the passenger of a drunk driver. It has been found that 50% of all head injuries in adolescents in the US are associated with alcohol consumption. Violence and suicide combine to become the third-most-common cause of death associated with binge drinking among adolescents. The suicide risk in adolescents is more than four times higher among binge drinkers than non-binge drinking adolescents.


title: Binge drinking

text: Earlier sexual activity, increased changing of sexual partners, higher rate of unwanted pregnancy, higher rate of sexually transmitted diseases, infertility, and alcohol-related damage to the fetus during pregnancy is associated with binge drinking. Female binge drinkers are three times more likely to be sexually assaulted; 50% of adolescent girls reporting sexual assault were under the influence of alcohol or another psychotropic substance at the time.


title: Binge drinking

text: Adolescents who regularly participated in binge drinking for several years show a smaller hippocampus brain region, in particular those who began drinking in early adolescence. Heavy binge drinking is associated with neurocognitive deficits of frontal lobe processing and impaired working memory as well as delayed auditory and verbal memory deficits. Animal studies suggest that the neurodegenerative effects of alcohol abuse during adolescence can be permanent. Research in humans, which utilised sophisticated brain scanning technology suggests that in adolescent teenagers, drinking more than four or five drinks once or twice a month results in subtle damage to the teenagers developing brain tissue, in particular the white matter. However, this research is primarily cross-sectional and done with fairly small sample sizes, making causality less certain.


title: Binge drinking

text: Several studies have been conducted to discover if there is a link between binge drinking in adolescent years and becoming a chronic alcohol consumer when they transition into adulthood. A particular study conducted by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that harmful drinking during adolescent years was significantly associated with the continuance of dangerous levels of alcohol consumption into adulthood years. Binge drinking is a way for young adolescents to rely alcohol as a way to cope with certain stress or depression.


title: Binge drinking

text: Heavy binge drinkers tend to have delayed auditory and verbal memory and deficits in executive planning function and episodic memory, which are similar to deficits seen in Korsakoff's syndrome. Impairments in spatial working memory and pattern recognition tasks also have been found in heavy binge drinkers. Impulse control is also impaired in binge drinkers, especially female binge drinkers. Additionally, immediate and delayed recall of verbal and visual information is impaired; conversely, semantic organizational ability is better in binge drinkers compared to non-binge drinkers. Studies in adolescents have shown that regular binge drinking may cause long-lasting cognitive impairments, though the threshold needed to produce significant effects remains unclear. Cognitive impairment in adults is also unclear, as one study found no association between binge drinking and cognitive impairment. Binge drinking is believed to increase impulsivity due to altered functioning of prefrontal–subcortical and orbitofrontal circuits. Binge drinking and alcoholics who have undergone multiple detoxifications is associated with an inability to interpret facial expressions properly; this is believed to be due to kindling of the amygdala with resultant distortion of neurotransmission. Adolescents, females and young adults are most sensitive to the neuropsychological effects of binge drinking. Adolescence, in particular early adolescence, is a developmental stage that is particularly vulnerable to the neurotoxic and neurocognitive adverse effects of binge drinking due to it being a time of significant brain development.


title: Binge drinking

text: Binge drinking regimes are associated with causing an imbalance between inhibitory and excitatory amino acids and changes in monoamines release in the central nervous system, which increases neurotoxicity and may result in cognitive impairments, psychological problems and in long-term heavy binge drinkers may cause irreversible brain damage in both adolescents and adults.


title: Binge drinking

text: While several rat studies indicate that alcohol is more toxic during adolescence than adulthood, some researchers believe that it remains unclear whether this is also the case in humans. Though heavy binge drinking adolescent humans show impaired brain activity during memory tests and underdeveloped brain structures compared to adolescents who did not binge-drink, they argue that these findings are similar to adult alcoholics who did not abuse alcohol during adolescence. Extrapolation from animal studies to humans is notoriously difficult, and a review by the group Choose Responsibility concluded that alcohol's long-term damage to cognitive processes was the same regardless of whether heavy drinking commenced during adolescence or later.


title: Binge drinking

text: Binge drinking is a more important factor rather than average alcohol intake, with regard to the severity of alcohol induced damage to the fetus. Alcohol has definite long-term adverse effects on the fetus, in particular impaired attentional skills and may lead to psychiatric disorders when the child grows up. In a 2005 study in the US, approximately one in five non-pregnant women binge-drank and one in 25 pregnant women binge-drank. Binge drinking during pregnancy is associated with fetal alcohol syndrome, alcohol-related birth defects as well as alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorders. The affected children after birth may have an intellectual impairment and problems with learning, memory, attention, problem solving and problems with mental health and social interactions. Deformities in facial features, skeletal and body organs as well as a smaller head circumference are also sometimes present in these children. Studies in sheep indicate that fetal neurotoxicity induced by alcohol may be due to acidaemia and hypercapnia. Binge drinking three or more times during pregnancy has been associated with an increased risk of stillbirth.


title: Binge drinking

text: Binge drinking is also associated with strokes and sudden death. Binge drinking increases the risk of stroke by 10 times. In countries where binge drinking is commonplace, rates of sudden death on the weekend in young adults and middle aged people increase significantly. The withdrawal phase after an episode of binge drinking is particularly associated with ischaemic stroke as well as subarachnoid haemorrhage and intracerebral haemorrhage in younger men. In individuals with an underlying cardiac disorder a binge on alcohol increases the risk of silent myocardial ischaemia as well as angina. Binge drinking has negative effects on metabolism, lipid profile, blood coagulation and fibrinolysis, blood pressure and vascular tone and is associated with embolic stroke and acute myocardial infarction. Due to these risks experts believe that it is extremely important to warn people of the risks of binge drinking. Binge-drinking by people otherwise considered to be light drinkers is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular problems and mortality. Binge drinking increases cardiovascular toxicity due to its adverse effects on the electrical conduction system of the heart and the process of atherothrombosis. Excessive alcohol consumption is responsible for an average of 80,000 deaths in the U.S. each year and $223.5 billion in economic costs in 2006. More than half of these deaths and three-quarters of the economic costs are due to binge drinking (≥4 drinks for women; ≥5 drinks for men, per occasion).


title: Binge drinking

text: The bladder may rupture if overfilled and not emptied. This can occur in the case of binge drinkers having consumed very large quantities, but are not aware, due to stupor, of the need to urinate. This condition is very rare in women, but it does occur. Symptoms include localized pain and uraemia (poisoning due to reabsorbed waste). The recovery rate is high, with most fatalities due to septic blood poisoning. A person is more likely to urinate while passed out before the bladder ruptures, as alcohol relaxes the muscles that normally control their bladder.


title: Binge drinking

text: The most common risk of consuming massive quantities of alcohol in a short period of time is a dangerously high blood alcohol level. The result is called alcohol poisoning (overdose), which can be fatal. Choking on (or inhalation of) vomit is also a potential cause of death, as are injuries from falls, fights, motor vehicle and bicycle accidents. Nine percent of college students who binge drink drive after binge drinking. Another common risk is a blackout (alcohol-related amnesia), which can cause shame, guilt, embarrassment, harm to personal relationships, injury or death, and is also associated with the loss of personal belongings.