Sticking to Its Guns: On the Allure of Fascism. A Lecture by Arkadiusz Żychliński

For over a decade now, the so-called “Rechtsruck”—or shift to the right—has once again been increasingly evident in German public and political discourse. The resurgence of retrotopic desires is accompanied by attempts to understand them conceptually. One of the most recent examples is the widely discussed book *Dieser Drang nach Härte. Über den neuen Faschismus* (2026) by Eva von Redecker. eschewing an in-depth exploration of historical analogies, the German philosopher focuses on the contemporary Anthropocene, framing fascism in its current manifestation as the culmination of “unrestrained logic of property” in the form of “eliminatory defense of phantom property.” The presentation will reconstruct the book’s premises, discuss its insights, and attempt to situate them within the context of the diagnoses found in contemporary literary works.

Arkadiusz Żychliński