On "Antifascism" - When the Struggle Reproduces What It Fights
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Perhaps the most paradoxical danger: an “antifascism” that itself reproduces fascist structures.
Defining the enemy through governmental power:
- When governments define who counts as an “enemy of democracy”
- “The fight against the right” as an instrument of domination
- Domestic intelligence services (constitutional protection agencies) as political tools
- Negated: self-application (who controls the controllers?), recognition (administrative dehumanization)
Banning criticism as “right-wing”:
- Legitimate criticism (of migration policy, the energy transition, COVID measures) gets labeled “right-wing”
- This renders any criticism impossible
- Even facts become “narratives of the right”
- Negated: dialectical movement (no room for different perspectives), self-application (one’s own position becomes immune to criticism)
Militarization of language:
- “Fight against the right,” “war on disinformation”
- Opponents turn into enemies
- Politics as a war of annihilation rather than a contest of positions
- Negated: recognition (opponents as enemies rather than interlocutors), sublation (annihilation instead of integration)
The particular problem: This form is the hardest to recognize and criticize. Anyone who criticizes the “fight against the right” makes themselves suspect. Anyone who questions the methods of antifascism is declared a defender of fascists. The moral immunization is perfect.
And yet: precisely here lies the greatest danger. For an “antifascism” that itself negates the basic operations can no longer be functionally distinguished from what it claims to fight.