Saddamism is a distinct variation of Ba'athism that originated in Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein. Saddam advocated an Iraq-centered Arab World and supported Iraqi nationalism, calling upon Arab countries to adopt Saddamist Ba'athism and reject Nasserism. The ideology also supported militarism and authoritarianism, and it sought to fuse a connection between Iraq's Mesopotamian and Arab heritage by claiming that Assyrians and Babylonians were the ancestors of the Arabs; the ideology was very similar to fascist national socialism due to their shared beliefs in racial superiority, militarism, nationalism, a right-wing variant of socialism, and anti-communism. Saddamism rejected Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, opposing the concepts of class conflict, dictatorship of the proletariat, and state atheism. Saddamism was the state ideology of Ba'athist Iraq from 1968 until 2003, when Saddam and his regime were toppled by the United States, creating anarchy that would lead to the Iraq War insurgency.