9 Dezember 2025, 10:15 am - 12 pm

Lecture | Democracy and Fascism

Free admission, no booking required, in German

Lecture by Dr. Carolin Amlinger and Prof. Dr. Oliver Nachtwey as part of the series "Late Modern Authoritarianism: Causes, Dynamics, and Variants," in cooperation with the University of Basel.

 

The lecture discusses the validity of the term fascism in relation to current political developments, such as the storming of the US Capitol in 2021 and the rise of Donald Trump. While some historians have begun to apply the term to current authoritarian movements, others warn against its inflationary use, which undermines its historical precision. In order to make the term fascism useful for the analysis of the present without equating it with historical fascism and National Socialism, the lecture discusses the idea of speaking in terms of democratic fascism. This term refers to a new configuration in which fascist tendencies arise not outside but within democratic orders, where they operate and are able to undermine the orders’ substance. Unlike the historical seizure of power through violence and party discipline, this process today often unfolds within the normal functioning of parliamentary democracies and everyday culture. The tension between democracy and fascism can be made productive in order to analyse the apparent banality of fascist developments in democracies.