Is 'Fascism' Still the Right Word for Today's Far-Right Surge?

Are Trump, the AfD, and Giorgia Meloni the Undead Specters of Fascism?

The question is doubly complex because the very historical concept of fascism has blurred edges and unsettling ambiguities. Whether Mussolini's regime, Franco's clerical fascism, the death-obsessed Nazism of the Third Reich, and Japanese imperialism up to 1945 were truly kindred in essence remains debatable. Jan Philipp Reemtsma has argued that only Italian fascism fully aligns with the term—and even then, only in theory, since its practical reality loses any clear definition.

The title of the Constance conference, The Specter of Fascism, underscores this discursively murky terrain. After all, ghosts are ephemeral apparitions, and ghost metaphors often betray a certain conceptual unease.

In his lecture, "Is It Fascism?"—What Do We Really Mean When We Ask That?, Reemtsma dismissed the debate over whether Trump or the AfD are fascist as pointless. He framed it as a symptom of public discourse's "obsession with labeling," a desperate attempt to mask our own uncertainty. But his critique went far beyond the casual misuse of the F-word as a buzzword. He questioned whether history offers any lessons at all—and whether the theoretical frameworks of the social sciences are even fit for purpose.

"Theoretical acrobatics" are useless in the face of violent regimes, Reemtsma declared. "The secret of Caesaristic rule is precisely its lack of mystery." When appearance and essence merge, scholarship becomes redundant.

Reemtsma and the Search for Deeper Meaning

It seems a privilege of grand intellectuals, in the twilight of their careers, to rise above their own field with a mix of nonchalant resignation and barely concealed condescension—a tone we've heard before from the likes of Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

Reemtsma's closing punchline? Not even Trump cares whether New York's left-wing mayor, Mamdani, calls him a fascist. "I don't mind." In other words: When irony reigns this supreme, the quest for deeper meaning may well be futile. It comes as little surprise, then, that Reemtsma is shutting down the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, which he founded and funded.

Oliver Nachtwey, a social scientist based in Basel who collaborates with sociologist Carolin Amlinger, is taking a different approach. Drawing on Critical Theory, he seeks to decode the destructive desires fueling the new fascism. Nachtwey responded to Reemtsma's more provocative than enlightening text with a simple remark: "I enjoyed listening to you—and I completely disagree."

Because understanding the conditions that breed fascism—and forging useful concepts—is no mere academic exercise. Action demands insight. And the question of whether the global right is steering toward a fascist coup, a techno-totalitarianism, or an Orbán-style model is anything but trivial.

The Hatred of the Other

Historians are best placed to clarify terms and draw analogies. Sven Reichardt, one of the conference organizers, outlined parallels between Trump's America and historical fascism—from ultranationalism and the eugenicist fantasies of Silicon Valley's tech bros to the vilification of outsiders "poisoning our blood" (Trump's words).

Yet the counterarguments are equally compelling. Every fascist regime crushed unions, dismantled democracy, and brutally suppressed political opposition. Nothing of the sort—despite alarming trends—has yet unfolded in the U.S. or Hungary.

Berlin-based philosopher Eva von Redecker found this checklist approach simplistic and imprecise. "Today's myths can be memes, terror can be algorithmic," she argued. For historians, comparison remains an indispensable tool—just not in the form of a tick-box exercise. Reichardt proposed the term process to break the deadlock of what often feels like a fetishistic fixation on the F-word.

Trumpism as a Fluid Phenomenon

The Logic Is Clear: Trumpism as a Fluid Phenomenon That Radicalizes in Power

Understanding fascism as a process is not a rhetorical evasion but an attempt to keep our conceptual framework up to date. This would also require examining deradicalization and integration into democratic systems, as seen with Meloni and the Sweden Democrats.

So what is driving the right-wing revolt? At its core lies the resentment-fueled belief that something has been unjustly taken away. Right-wing authoritarian leaders channel this rage. Slavoj Žižek interpreted the slogan "Stop the Steal"—the rallying cry of Trump's mob against the allegedly stolen 2020 U.S. election—as a cipher for a broader sense of dispossession.

Eva von Redecker's key concept for grasping this right-wing energy is phantom possession. In the far right's imagination, she argues, "plunder is already underway, which is why property can be defended as an act of self-defense." Contemporary fascism, then, must be understood as radicalized capitalism. For von Redecker, the "displaced frenzy of ownership" drives the fury of white men against gender-inclusive language, migrants, and emancipated women.

All of these symbolize lost dominion—whether control over women or colonial rule. "Phantom pain is felt where no limb remains; phantom possession seeks control where nothing belongs to you," von Redecker explains.

The Most Eloquent Thinker of the Moment

This thesis is original, though it risks being misconstrued as a universal key—it fits too neatly. Eva von Redecker is currently the most compelling voice in the tradition of Critical Theory. What is striking, however, is her conviction that we live "in a world of social inequality on an unprecedented scale." Greater than a century ago? This directly contradicts global inequality research, such as Branko Milanović's findings.

Notable in Constance was how deeply the German discourse remains shaped by Adorno's 70-year-old studies on the authoritarian character and his capitalism-critical theories of fascism. Both von Redecker and Amlinger/Nachtwey stand on the foundation of Critical Theory, co-founded by Adorno. Only Christoph Parets' philological exegesis of Dialectic of Enlightenment struck most as overly self-reflexive.

Yet authoritarian regimes like those in Iran and Russia barely registered on the horizon as points of reference—a striking omission given the global surge of right-wing authoritarianism. The fascist fantasies of Georges Bataille and Jacques Lacan, later expanded by Žižek, were only marginally addressed in Constance.

Perhaps looking backward at historical fascism is less urgent than looking forward. It was no coincidence that the most forceful intervention came from someone whose training focused more on software and mathematics than on Negative Dialectics. Rainer Mühlhoff, a philosophy professor from Osnabrück, outlined a threat scenario reminiscent of the sci-fi film Minority Report.

The Tech Giants' Assault

The danger does not come solely from a public sphere fragmented into social media bubbles. Mühlhoff argues that we are witnessing a frontal assault by tech corporations on the very foundations of democracy. Elon Musk's DOGE, in this light, is an attempt to replace state institutions with AI-driven governance. The fact that the U.S. immigration authority's operating system—including deportation protocols—is provided by Palantir fits this pattern all too well.

After a hostile takeover by AI technology, what remains is a hollowed-out state where "sovereign functions are outsourced to tech companies." Who receives welfare will be determined by data-driven probabilities. The attack by tech giants is systemic, targeting the rule of law and democracy itself. This, Mühlhoff warns, demands a new "anti-fascism of the political center."

His most alarming warning is that the continued expansion of tech corporations will inevitably collide with the rules any democratic constitutional state must enforce. "Democracies will be bulldozed like obstacles in the way."

These are haunting prospects—whether or not we call them by the F-word.