Yeah, I was a bit on the fence writing my comment without getting into these nuances themselves, so fair game. To me, independently of whether state sanctioned violence can be legitimate, the celebration of it that is inherent to the fasces makes it impossible to distinguish the symbol from the ideology. This is not very surprising considering that the ideology is named after the symbol.

I don’t disagree with your point though. The symbol was in all likelihood not used to mirror the emerging political trends in Europe, but as a symbol in its own right. But nevertheless I maintain that any main that carved fasces into marble a hundred years ago cannot legitimately claim fascism to be a foreign ideology.