The new fascism needs no old uniforms

What if we are waiting for the wrong image? For uniforms, for flags, for language that immediately identifies itself as belonging to the past. While we are still making comparisons, something else may already have become embedded in the present: in public administration, in platforms, in the rules that determine how people become visible – or disappear.

Rainer Mühlhoff’s book Künstliche Intelligenz und der neue Faschismus, which prompted this essay, proposes that we should not regard fascism solely as a historical form whose time has passed. It draws attention to anti-democratic activity, the willingness to use violence and the political charging of technology.^[1] I take that as a starting point. Not for a hasty diagnosis, but for a question: how do we recognise power that no longer wants to accept any limits?

01Not just a question of the past

Fascism is a weighty term. It needs to be. Using it for every affront blurs its meaning. Allowing it only in history books strips it of its ability to warn us. Between thoughtless equivalence and reassuring distance lies work we cannot spare ourselves: looking closely.

For me, that means distinguishing appearance from how something operates. A movement need not display the same symbols to send people the same fundamental message: you do not belong. Your dissent does not count. Your protection applies only for as long as we grant it. Historical differences remain important. But they must not become an excuse to overlook degradation in the present.

02When democracy is declared an obstacle

Democracy is not just about someone winning an election. It is also about power remaining limited. Courts must be able to object. Parliaments must be able to slow things down. Public administration must be bound by law, not by personal allegiance. Opposition is not a flaw in the system, but one of its prerequisites.

The dividing line is therefore not simply between left and right. It lies where political competition itself is to be abolished. Where oversight is seen only as sabotage. Where independent institutions are not to be improved, but brought under control. Anyone who declares every limit on their own power a betrayal is no longer merely arguing about politics. They are calling into question the conditions under which argument remains possible at all.

Of course an agency can perform poorly. Of course procedures can be reformed. But asking for better administration is different from wanting administration without dissent. Efficiency is no substitute for legitimacy.

03Violence begins with permission to despise

A willingness to use violence reveals itself not only in physical attacks. It also appears in a readiness to justify attacks, downplay threats and deny certain people their right to protection. Not every hurtful statement is already fascist. What matters is whether degradation becomes a political method.

When people are declared a problem that must be eliminated, the boundaries of what is thinkable shift. The question is no longer how we live together. It is who is still recognised as an equal at all. Within such a logic, racism, sexism and the denigration of political opponents can be different routes into the same hierarchy.

04Technology as an instrument of power

This is where the question becomes particularly urgent for Welt am Draht. Technology does not merely organise information. It can also organise the scope for action: who gets access? Who is scrutinised? Which decision is considered plausible? Which person becomes a risk? A system can enforce these classifications at scale without those affected being able to understand or challenge its rules.

Databases, platforms and AI are not inherently fascist. What is dangerous is the combination of technological reach with a politics that ranks people in hierarchies and dismantles democratic oversight. A tool then becomes an infrastructure of control. Whoever controls access, data and decision-making rules can exercise power long before it appears as overt coercion.

What concerns me here is the belief that social conflicts can simply be resolved through technology. As if all we needed were to collect enough data, automate enough processes and remove enough resistance from the workflow. But a conflict over rights is not a calculation error. And a human being is not an inefficient dataset.

The excerpts describe this elevation of technical solutions as solutionism.^[2] My question is this: what happens when the promise of optimisation coincides with a claim to make decisions without democratic negotiation? Then it is not merely a procedure that becomes faster. The procedure itself may lose its protective function.

05Disruption is not legitimacy

Destroying something is not proof that something better will follow. With institutions in particular, the distinction matters. An avenue of oversight considered bothersome today might tomorrow be the only way to challenge a wrong decision. An independent body that slows things down today might tomorrow prevent arbitrary rule from becoming the norm.

When politics and technological power promise each other a shortcut, we therefore need to ask about the exits. Who can object? Who can reverse a decision? Who oversees those doing the overseeing? And what remains of freedom when a system can record every person, yet owes accountability to no one?

06What I want to examine

This category should not become an archive of ever more alarming labels. I want to examine the connections: between anti-democratic politics and economic power, between dehumanisation and violence, between technological convenience and political unfreedom. Not every problematic system belongs under the same term. But every one deserves the question of which power relations it entrenches.

• Does power remain limited and removable through elections – even when those wielding it invoke efficiency?
• Does the protection of dignity and rights apply to everyone, or only to those recognised as belonging?
• Can those affected understand technological decisions, challenge them and have them independently reviewed?
• Can an infrastructure be changed again, or does it create dependencies that hardly anyone can escape?

The new fascism needs no old uniforms. For me, that is not a claim that history repeats itself unchanged. It is a call not to confuse its warning signs with its costumes. I do not want to wait until the option to say no has already been removed from the system before asking what technology is doing to our freedom.