Over several years now, ghosts of fascism have escaped their 20th-century crypts and come to haunt our present. With the global COVID-19 pandemic, however, we face the prospect of the US's own 'Reichstag Fire' moment. This was an arson attack on the German legislature exactly four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor, which the Nazis immediately claimed was the result of a communist plot. It became the pretext for their seizure of power (Machtergreifung) and total co-ordination of the state (Gleichschaltung).
As noted recently by The Economist, close to a dozen states from Azerbaijan to Togo have already used the pandemic to arrogate more power to themselves. Indeed, this development has been particularly visible in Washington, Budapest, and Delhi. If the pandemic could be seen as our Reichstag Fire moment, then the attacks on the Capitol on 6 January 2021 might be regarded as Kristallnacht, portending the catastrophic violence to come.
Nevertheless, as I argue in the introduction to my book 'Spectres of Fascism' (Pluto, 2020), one must always be careful when using the word “fascism”. The term is often used so indiscriminately – especially on the Left – to vilify one’s political opponents, that it is in continual danger of losing all meaning. In what sense, then, can we say that what we are witnessing throughout the globe is the re-emergence of fascism?
