Post‐Fascists: Putting the So‐Called "Populist Right" into Historical Perspective.

Authoritarians are back: Demanding the restoration of community against formalized society and of tradition against the stranger; asking for strong states enforcing law and order, closing borders, preventing dark men from threatening white women; defending traditional family models against individualism and gender‐pluralism; claiming to represent "the people." Today many denounce them as "Fascists!". This article tries to conceptually capture the recent developments in two countries, France and Germany. In both cases, a diachronic comparison seems tempting. Are the '30s ahead of us? What is the extent and what is the impact of the fascist legacy today? The comparison in this article is based on Mann's book "Fascists" (2004). The paper argues that while the current far‐right cannot be considered fascist anymore and resembles interwar fascism only remotely, we have to consider it post‐fascist. If interwar fascism is largely explicable out of a context of multilevel crises to which it provided answers that many found convincing, I conclude that the current strength of the German and French far‐right does happen in a rather moderate crisis context to which it provides some answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]