Introduction: Terror at the Gates: Fascist Amnesia and Fascist Desire Introduction

At the end of World War II, the total number of deaths was estimated to be around 70–85 million people. Approximately 17 million of these deaths (20–25 percent of the total) were due to crimes against humanity carried out by the Nazi regime in Europe. Many Nazis escaped justice and fled to South America. Fascist cruelty was revived in the military dictatorships of Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. Under Stalin, Russia would murder over one million people from 1936 to 1938 during the Great Purge or Terror. This was establishing a totalitarian regime loyal to Stalin. Eventually, these dictatorships and autocratic governments fell, in a new democratic era. But, as Eco (1995) suggests, the ghost of fascism never rests. Once again, there is a global turn toward right wing authoritarianism. First accelerated in Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, now, neo-Nazi parties are gaining force in Europe. With Trumpism in the U.S.A., antidemocratic forces are claiming totalizing powers. These movements are linked around the world. They exalt racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and a violent, white male supremacy. In many ways, this era echoes 1920s Italy and 1930s Germany.

We know how all of that turned out. But this contemporary turn is marked by denial and amnesia. Haunted historical memory is still written on the persecuted and their descendants. But, at the same time, our collective memory seems erased. Instead of memory, there is a fascist fever, a lust for an absolute, electrifying leader. White Christian Nationalism repudiates Christian compassion as weak. Instead, it idealizes a God of vengeance. These movements have rewritten Jesus as a phallic warrior. His guns are locked and loaded, and he sanctifies fascism’s hatred. In this fascist mythology, divine inspiration becomes a call for violent retribution. This turn seems like manic thirst for the

‘halcyon days,’ when non-Jewish Germans loved Hitler and Mussolini was e