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" Unlike conservatives and cautious liberals, fascists never wanted to keep the masses out of politics. They wanted to enlist, discipline, and energize them. In any event, by the end of World War I, there was no possible turning back to a narrow suffrage. Young men almost everywhere had been summoned to die for their countries, and one could hardly deny the full rights of citizenship to any of them. Women, too, whose economic and social roles the war had expanded enormously, received the vote in many northern European countries (though not yet in France, Italy, Spain, or Switzerland). While fascists sought to restore patriarchy in the family and the workplace, they preferred to mobilize sympathetic women rather than disfranchise them, at least until they could abolish voting altogether. "

Robert O. Paxton , The Anatomy of Fascism


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Robert O. Paxton quote : Unlike conservatives and cautious liberals, fascists never wanted to keep the masses out of politics. They wanted to enlist, discipline, and energize them. In any event, by the end of World War I, there was no possible turning back to a narrow suffrage. Young men almost everywhere had been summoned to die for their countries, and one could hardly deny the full rights of citizenship to any of them. Women, too, whose economic and social roles the war had expanded enormously, received the vote in many northern European countries (though not yet in France, Italy, Spain, or Switzerland). While fascists sought to restore patriarchy in the family and the workplace, they preferred to mobilize sympathetic women rather than disfranchise them, at least until they could abolish voting altogether.