The Fascist Personality
Agitation and the Politics of Affect
Recently, there was a small feuilletonistic debate among scholars over whether the word “fascism” is justified when applied to far-right movements and governments – from Trump to the AfD – or whether other terms might be more accurate; whether the F-word carries a certain alarmism, and whether, more generally, it might not be more important to describe what is happening accurately, leaving the question of what to call it as a secondary matter. But precisely if we describe the processes of radicalisation we are witnessing accurately, we might come to the conclusion that familiar terms such as “right-wing populism” are euphemistic, and that “new fascism” may in fact be the right term.
It is well documented in scholarship and in essays on social theory what forms of social malaise foster the emergence of far-right protest movements (fear of downward mobility, gaps in political representation, frustration with established political parties…), as well as which kinds of personalities are particularly receptive to far-right worldviews and messages (the “authoritarian personality,” as analysed by Adorno and others). One could even draw up checklists of the demands and political programs put forward by almost all far-right parties. And yet none of this would adequately describe the phenomenon. Because, as we all know, it often matters not only what political demands are made, but how they are propagated; social malaise, too, is only a kind of precondition. It does not explain how people change when they are drawn into the vortex of far-right propaganda. Nor is the authoritarian personality a static condition, but rather a dynamic process: authoritarian aggression, intense affective fury, the pleasure of imagining what one might do to the deceitful elites and the imagined enemies of the people – all the way to a disturbing delight in cruelty – has a distinctly escalating character. Those caught in the vortex, where one more outrageous take follows another, gradually become someone else. Without the vocabulary of mass psychology, none of this can be described accurately. What we are witnessing is nothing less than a veritable Erziehung zur Grausamkeit – an “education in cruelty.”
It operates through powerful emotions, first and foremost fear. Fear is stoked to the point of paranoia – by the new fascists and the pseudo-media associated with them, with the traditional tabloids playing a supporting role. The world is portrayed as a dangerous place, a cesspool of crime and depravity; it comes with the outright scaremongering about the “Great Replacement,” a “genocide of Germans” (or of “whites”), and knife-wielding men, and so on. Every problem is seized upon as an opportunity to whip people up, piling invented horrors onto real ones until cruelty appears as a legitimate act of self-defence. At the same time, the appetite for cruelty is deliberately inflamed: the pleasure of imagining how one might exact revenge for the wrongs inflicted by others. A language of cruelty, but also of crude, boorish brutality, is therefore a fixed part of the repertoire, and merciless acts must not only be committed but committed in full public view.
++++++++++Advertisement++++++++++++
Call for Papers: Conference “Democracy Under Pressure: Conditions of the Authoritarian Turn Yesterday and Today”, co-hosted by the Institute of Law and Governance at WU Vienna, Department of Socioeconomics, 24–26 May 2027.
Explore legal and socioeconomic responses to rising authoritarianism through the lens of Hayek, Polanyi, Kelsen, and Schmitt. Keynotes by Katharina Pistor (Columbia) and Quinn Slobodian (Boston). Submit abstracts by 15 Oct 2026.
Details: wu.ac.at/en/socioeconomics/events
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Once the feeling of belonging to a besieged community has been stoked, supporters come to experience the gratification of their thirst for revenge as a form of liberation – this endless torrent of malice, fantasies of murder and a culture of hatred that pours out of social media, among other places. Leo Löwenthal, one of the leading figures of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, described this in breathtaking detail in his study False Prophets. In his later years, he once remarked that this propaganda worked like a “reverse psychoanalysis” – it does not heal trauma, neuroses and paranoia but feeds them – and that it “reinforces murderous, aggressive and destructive impulses.”
Anyone who looks at the world with open eyes can see today that propaganda is not a one-way street. Its followers are not merely incited or simply “seduced”; they are themselves actively involved in the escalation and the mounting of what Hans-Jürgen Wirth calls an “affective fury.” They egg one another on and, in extreme cases, can even drive their leaders forward in the spiral of escalation. Intense negativity is coupled with the euphoria that salvation is at hand and that “they” are about to get what is coming to them. All of this happens in the crowd, and only in the crowd, because the mass gives the individual carte blanche to be worse than they would be on their own. The dynamics of “emotional contagion,” the suspension of conscience and the lowering of instinctual restraints have been well documented in the psychology of crowds for a century. If this goes on for long enough, if people are “bombarded” hour after hour with these messages, fear-inducing (fake) news and fantasies of revenge, they undergo a veritable apprenticeship in inhumanity.
Anger is stoked, along with bitterness, paranoia and what Adorno called “sadistic pleasure”; the authoritarian leader is imagined as a saviour capable of restoring a world supposedly stolen by immigrants, ethnic minorities, feminists, intellectuals, dissidents and other invented enemies. Revenge itself becomes a political program. A culture of cruelty feeds on this affective fury and offers those blinded by resentment the intoxicating pleasures of belonging, hostility and revenge. Careful observers of these dynamics have pointed out that this is often overlooked in conventional accounts of fascism: the emergence of an emotional contagion in which resentment, humiliation, fear and the longing for revenge become infectious. They spread through social media, right-wing television channels, podcasts, rallies, and so on.
Unser Justitiariat sucht Verstärkung (Volljurist*in, m/w/d)
Das Justitiariat unterstützt und berät die Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in Rechtsfragen. Wir suchen schnellstmöglich Verstärkung für unser Team. Ein besonderer Fokus der Tätigkeit liegt auf Fragen des Parlamentsrechts und der Innenpolitik sowie verfassungs-, europa- und völkerrechtlichen Inhalten.
Hier geht es zur Stellenausschreibung Volljurist*in (m/w/d) im Justitiariat | Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The incited individual does not simply appear out of nowhere; they are made. They undergo this process of learning to be ruthless. History teaches us that people can enthusiastically participate in crimes they could not have imagined themselves committing just a few years earlier. Today, we are once again seeing peculiar alliances between fascist emotional politics, hard-line conservatism and radicalised neoliberalism, bringing to mind Max Horkheimer’s old dictum that anyone unwilling to talk about capitalism should keep quiet about fascism. Even if one wishes to avoid the platitudes of simplistic critiques of capitalism, one must not forget, in taking in the dark panorama as a whole, that neoliberalism itself has established a “cult of toughness”: a celebration of the strong and contempt for weakness, destroying any sense of solidarity and instead celebrating a spirit of competition in whose light existence as a whole comes to resemble a struggle of all against all for the last remaining crumbs. Together with the objective crises of our age, this produces that peculiar sense of impending catastrophe that turns our societies into vast emotional battlefields, as the feeling takes hold that everyone must defend their existence on their own. When things are looking up for everyone, the neighbour is the colleague with whom one shares the general progress; when it seems that things are going downhill for everyone, the neighbour becomes the competitor one hopes will be crushed beneath the wheels, so that one is not the one who gets hit.
The question of whether parties such as the AfD are hostile to the constitution cannot be answered simply by looking narrowly at their programs, individual statements and demands, or suggestions about how they intend to remake institutions. It should also take into account how fascist emotional politics affects their supporters, how it transforms its subjects and drives them into a frenzy, with the aim of making them lose all inhibitions.
*
Editor’s Pick
by EVA MARIA BREDLER
Photo: private
Nick Cave is such a goddamn rockstar. He has always done his own thing, unbothered by what his fans expected of him. The Red Hand Files stands as a testament to these transformations. Since 2018, he has used the platform to answer questions, a project born out of grief: when his son Arthur died ten years ago, Cave received countless letters – expressions of condolence, but also of hope, from people who shared his pain. The letter exchanges turned into this public mailbox, “a strange exercise in communal vulnerability and transparency”, as he calls it. The questions range from “What’s the worst thing about having become a really old rockstar?” to “Why fucking bother?”. Judging by his answers, he probably wouldn’t write People Ain’t No Good today. So, Nick: why fucking bother?
“My advice to you is to fully offer up your messy, broken, limited, disastrous human self to the act of creation […]. And then go and do it again. Become the all-singing, all-dancing, all-human answer to this most dark and demoralised question.”
*
The Week on Verfassungsblog
summarised by EVA MARIA BREDLER
What do Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Russia have in common? Both are holding elections this week. Oh, and the AfD in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern would love to go back to Russian gas, for nicer prices at the pump.
Before we plunge straight into the niceties of the next elections, let’s keep digesting Saxony-Anhalt a little longer. The AfD wants to terminate the interstate media treaties in both Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – presumably meaning the ones governing public broadcasting. Is that possible? HUBERTUS GERSDORF (GER) sketches the key constitutional standards in four theses and draws the red and green lines.
The Berlin Administrative Court had to rule along similar lines. Its verdict: the Berlin-Brandenburg media authority was entitled to ban the German broadcast arm of Russia Today (RT) from distributing its programming. But due to the EU’s extensive sanctions, RT and other Russian state media barely matter in the EU anymore, as JUDITH BEETZ, JANA LIPINSKI and JOHANNES MAURER (GER) explain.
Another unsettling demand: the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt wants to introduce voluntary citizens’ patrols (Bürgerwachten). They did not spell out what exactly that means, though. Either way, the dusty old term bodes nothing good: is state power meant to pass into private hands? As FRIEDEMANN GROTH (GER) reads the proposal, it would violate the state’s monopoly on the use of force under the Basic Law.
Who will govern Saxony-Anhalt remains completely unclear. Yet the state parliament is supposed to pass a state budget for 2027 before the end of the year. Can it do that without a state government? SIMON DIETHELM MEYER (GER) shows that even a caretaker government in Saxony-Anhalt must table a draft budget for 2027 – but without a majority in the new state parliament, all that is left is provisional budget management.
With the AfD in the state parliament, Saxony-Anhalt is unlikely to fight discrimination any time soon – but after Berlin, Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia are now getting one too, and Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg and Bremen will probably follow soon. What do state anti-discrimination acts need to look like to effectively protect against discrimination? DORIS LIEBSCHER and JANA STÖCKLE (GER) draw lessons from Berlin.
While the elections give fresh momentum to the debate over banning the AfD, TARUNABH KHAITAN (ENG) proposes a form of indirect militant democracy instead. One could change the electoral system itself so that the AfD structurally faces greater obstacles: with ranked-choice voting, parties have to win support beyond their core electorate, as the 2023 district administrator election in Sonneberg showed.
Russian gas notwithstanding, securing raw materials is a security-policy challenge in its own right. That is why Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is set to be explicitly authorised to gather intelligence on other states’ raw-material supply chains. ROBERT FRAU and MAXIMILIAN SCHUMACHER (GER) welcome this as overdue.
What counts as a security-policy challenge is often a challenge of power. The United States has now designated an Italian company that offers encrypted email and hosting services a terrorist organisation. MARCO PERUGINI (ENG) explains how the measure takes effect without Europe having any say or control over it.
European oversight also appears to be in short supply in Romania. There, the Constitutional Court has now broken with one of the most fundamental constitutional principles: the prohibition on retroactivity. BIANCA SELEJAN-GUTAN (ENG) reads the episode as a political vendetta.
For many in Kosovo, the trial before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague is seen as an attack on the country’s own liberation heroes. On Wednesday, former President Hashim Thaçi was sentenced to 25 years in prison for war crimes. But FRED ABRAHAMS (ENG) shows that it was not only the victims who were missing from the courtroom – arguably, some defendants were not in court either.
Ratko Mladić, the “Butcher of Bosnia”, was also convicted as a war criminal – and buried as a national hero in Serbia in early September. CARNA PISTAN (ENG) explains how Serbia’s politics of memory collides with the country’s Europeanisation.
On 10 September, oral hearings concluded on Germany’s preliminary objections in the case Alleged Breaches of Certain International Obligations in respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Nicaragua v. Germany). JULIETTE MCINTYRE(ENG) puts the most important and most interesting questions in context.
Du brennst für Kommunikation, gesellschaftspolitische Themen und digitale Öffentlichkeitsarbeit? Du schreibst gern, bewegst Dich sicher in sozialen Medien und hast Lust, dabei mitzuhelfen, die Inhalte und Angebote des Verfassungsblogs sichtbar zu machen?
Dann bewirb Dich als studentische Hilfskraft (10 Std./Woche) im Bereich Kommunikation & Outreach (ab dem 01.10.2026). Eingehende Bewerbungen werden fortlaufend geprüft.
Hier findest Du mehr Informationen.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Today the Deutscher Juristentag – Germany’s biennial congress of jurists – draws to a close. Once again, legal education was on the agenda. Before I get carried away, you’d do better to read the piece by MARIUS THYE, MARC CASTENDIEK and QUINT HAIDAR ALY (GER), who soberly summarise the empirical evidence and argue for blind second marking as a measure that could be implemented quickly. In the long run, though, I think we should tear this whole inhumane system down and rebuild it on empathy and evidence (oh dear, there go my emotions again – forgive me).
If one really wants to change the conditions at universities, it can be done – as North Rhine-Westphalia just demonstrated: despite sharp criticism, its state parliament has passed new rules against abuse of power and scientific misconduct at universities. FABIAN ENDEMANN (GER) thinks that’s the right call – academic freedom, he argues, is precisely what legal proceedings now protect.
In that spirit, our symposium “The Contested Freedom of Science” (GER) launched this week, asking about the foundations, limits and threats to academic freedom. The contributions grew out of a conference in May 2026 and bring together authors from philosophy, legal scholarship, science studies and political theory.
Whoever funds science risks helping to fund resistance against their own interest. Opening the symposium, CASPAR HIRSCHI shows why only a liberal ethos can bear that risk. Unlike the US Constitution, the Basic Law expressly separates freedom of expression from academic freedom. SABINE DÖRING, drawing on Kant, explains that there is a philosophical reason for this distinction. Can it be legitimate to criticise scientists morally for their theses? Yes, says TIM HENNING, arguing that scientific autonomy does not rule out moral criticism. PETER STROHSCHNEIDER stresses science’s democratic function. JAN-WERNER MÜLLER (ENG), in turn, warns against overrating the connection between science and democracy. TORSTEN WILHOLT takes a philosophical look at academic freedom, asks what justifies it, and shows why defending it alone is not enough. The AfD labels certain fields of research “agenda science” and invokes academic freedom to do so. GEERT KEIL answers the question of what actually needs protecting: a process of evidence-based, open-ended inquiry. UWE VOLKMANN asks how independent science can really be from political interests, and where the line between knowledge and opinion begins.
Ah, the politicisation of science. I do find Volkmann’s observation interesting: that the Basic Law mentions freedom of science and freedom of art in the same breath. What would the freedom of both fields look like? Constitutional codes are all well and good – but where are the constitutional odes, if I may ask?
*
That’s it for this week. Take care and all the best!
Yours,
the Verfassungsblog Team
If you would like to receive the weekly editorial as an e-mail, you can subscribe here.