Two German sociologists sought to draw up a psychological portrait of far-right voters. The broken promises of liberal society explain the desire for destruction at the heart of fascist identity.
What psychic economy is at the heart of personalities with fascist potential today, and how has it been forged by contemporary social processes? ? These are the questions of the recent study by two sociologists from Basel, Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey, entitled “ Pleasure of destruction. Elements of democratic fascism » (“ Zerstörungslust. Element of democratic Faschismus ») and published in October 2025 by the German publisher Suhrkamp. Prize winner “ Geschwister Scholl », the work met with immediate success in Germany, in particular for its attempt to offer a large-scale empirical study on the affects today politicized by the authoritarian right. This work is based on a survey of 2,600 people in Germany and 41 in-depth interviews with people chosen according to different criteria: people who showed a “ destructive personality » (“ destructive Persönlichkeit “, p. 17) during the survey, supporters of the AfD or people involved in an authoritarian-libertarian association contacted by the researchers (p. 19).
The Basel sociologists are developing an ambitious program: to grasp the social, economic and emotional change that occurred after the Second World War and to study the “ deep affective structures » ( “ Affective Tiefenstrukturen »p. 16) produced by this new social organization. The objective is to provide an analysis of contemporary fascism, studied in its German (AfD) and American (MAGA) and to understand the emotional structure that leads to voting for the authoritarian right. Not hesitating to qualify these movements as fascist, they nevertheless insist on their democratic dimension in order to distinguish them from historical fascisms. The work is divided into four chapters: it first offers an analysis of the socio-economic genesis of the “ destructive personality », before examining the affective economy of neoliberalism, then grasping the nature of fascist destructiveness. The last chapter is devoted to current forms of fascism and its propaganda strategies.
Neoliberalism and class struggle
What social transformations have shaped the affective economy of individuals in contemporary liberal democracies ? Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey first note a shift in social conflict specific to what they call “ post-modernity » (“ Nachmoderne »p.42). This, such is their thesis, is based both on the social experience of an opening, through a “ reduction of horizontal discrimination » (“ Abbau horizontaler Diskriminierungen »p. 34), and a closure, via a “ radicalization of vertical inequality » (“ Verschärfung vertikaler Ungleichheiten »p. 35). This double movement would have favored the emergence of a mentality of “ zero-sum thinking » (“ Nullsummendenken »p. 137). The latter shifts the location of the social conflict: the antagonism between the working class and the possessing class loses its verticality to become “ horizontal » (p.138). Added to this is the pressure of self-realization and the experience of increased freedom, to which is now added a new relationship with time: the ecological catastrophe puts an end to the promise of unlimited progress and the future no longer appears as a possible and better future, but on the contrary, as “ uncertain future » (p. 93).
The specific configuration of neoliberalism requires both significant autonomy and adaptability. It produces, in the face of “ indirect mode of government » (“ indirect regulation »p. 75) of the neoliberal state, a “ feeling of generalized unfreedom » (“ Gefühl der verallgemeinerten Unfreiheit “, p. 77), and this in particular through a heavy bureaucratic apparatus (p. 75). This social regime requires a “ sacrifice » (“ Opferbereitschaft »p. 23) and a personal investment of individuals and thus prepares a fertile ground for reactionary politicization (p. 81).
This analysis of the economic, political and social changes induced by neoliberalism is extended by a study of the “ blocked life » (“ blockierte Leben », p. 87) and the role of affects in its politicization. If this experience is not a subjective perception, but corresponds to a very real austerity policy, the authors nevertheless point out a particularity in the vote for the AfD: AfD voters “ articulate a general feeling of injustice, but they do not necessarily transfer it to their own position » (“ (sie artikulieren) ein allgemeines Gefühl der Ungerechtigkeit, (übertragen) dieses aber nicht zwingend auf die eigene Position “, p. 98). The feeling of inequality and humiliation is widely shared, but “ experienced on an abstract level » (“ Add to basket Ebene empfunden » p. 91). It is intensified by individualization and “ disappearance of political organizations » historically playing the role of “ emotional mediators » (“ emotional Mediatoren »p. 91). This experience of blocked life finds, according to the researchers, “ three sources » (p. 137) main ones: the decline in prospects for social ascension, the questioning of “ social boundaries » historically protective of certain privileges (white, male), and, finally, the feeling of a policy of “ unfair competition » (p.137), seen as distorted by policies supporting minorities (p. 137).
The desire for destruction then appears as an affective reaction to social powerlessness and increased freedom in the individual organization of life. The weakening of traditional authority structures – family, State, homeland – opens up spaces for the conception of life while imposing on individuals the burden of interpreting the world and drawing consequences from it in the organization of our individual lives. This “ malleability » (“ Gestaltbarkeit »p. 95) of life is as much a liberating gesture as it is a destructive one. It expresses, according to C. Amlinger and O. Nachtwey, a relationship with the world where freedom is constructed through the appropriation of what surrounds it (p. 95). They thereby open up a reflection on aggressiveness and destruction, neoliberal necropolitics and fascist necrophilia.
Contemporary fascisms: from necropolitics to necrophilia
Mobilizing an argument from Fromm, sociologists maintain that submission to the current social order and to authority results from a “ central contradiction » (p. 175) between, on the one hand, the weakening of authority (p. 175-176) and, on the other, a “ “feeling of helplessness” » (“ “Gefühl von Ohnmacht“ »Fromm cited by C. Amlinger and O. Nachtwey, p.176). At this “ central contradiction » can be answered in two ways: either by liberation or by submission. The latter takes a form “ sadomasochist » (p.176), because it desires at the same time to dominate and to be dominated, it then creates a unity between “ “aggression and adaptation” » (“ “Aggression and Anpassung“ »Marcuse, cited by C. Amlinger and O. Nachtwey, p.177).
Fromm underlines, in his analyzes of historical fascism, the centrality of necrophilia. C. Amlinger and O. Nachtwey take up his argument by updating it (p.183-184). From the concept of “ petro-masculinity », developed by the political scientist C. Daggett, they describe a fascist subjectivity structured by a “ necrophiliac revenge against liberal society » (“ nekrophile Rache an der liberalen Gesellschaft “, p. 223), revenge which manifests itself through the glorification of the hierarchy and destruction of life and the planet (p.223).
In the last chapter, the theorists finally elaborate more specifically the “ bivalence of fascism » (“ Bivalenz des Faschismus »p. 237). Using a conceptual framework inspired by the power theories of Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari and A. Mbembe, they demonstrate the transformation of “ necropolitics » neoliberal, which determines the right to life or death of certain populations, to the assumed necrophilia of fascism which, thereby, extends and goes beyond neoliberalism. The chapter also explores different figures of the “ destructive personality » in order to grasp the contemporary forms of fascism. The democratic dimension of accession to power of authoritarian rights and the massive use of artificial intelligence occupy a central place. The analysis of algorithmic propaganda highlights our permanent exposure to images generated by artificial intelligence, producing fascist myths freed from the distinction between true and false and capable of permanently arousing powerful affects (p. 284-295).
The anti-fascist response to this affective economy cannot be limited to an appeal to rationality. On the contrary, the two authors underline the insufficiency of strategies which ignore the affective productivity of “ zero-sum thinking “. An anti-fascist response should then attack two things: the alliance between capitalism, liberalism and fascism And the affective order that it generates and instrumentalizes (p. 321).
Questions of method: political questions
One of the major contributions of this work lies in the articulation of a field investigation and an ambitious theoretical elaboration on the social genesis of the current affective economy. In this way, C. Amlinger and O. Nachtwey also intend to open a political perspective. However, it is at this level that the theoretical framework retained shows certain limits.
Studies on the authoritarian personality d’Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson and Sanford play a central role in the work, the authors however favor the Frommian approach, without explicitly engaging in the debate opposing Adorno and Fromm on the relationship between society and the individual psyche. To suggest, as the two authors do, that the decline of family authority would allow us to rule out the hypothesis of the importance of the family in the psychic genesis of authoritarian personalities (p. 25), seems to minimize the analysis of the different moments of mediation between society and the psyche. If the importance of the family as a mediating institution between individual psyche and society has undoubtedly declined, we should nevertheless question more concretely institutions such as the family, the State, the nation, but also the organization of work as moments of specific and historically determined mediation between individual psyche and society.
This deficit in the analysis of the connection between psyche and society raises a political problem. By insisting on the determining force of social structures and their affective effects, the authors underestimate the independence of the psyche in relation to society and seem to present the advent of democratic fascism as almost inevitable. Thus, they relegate to the background the question of political action and resistance to these structures. If the question of the emotional dimension of fascism is crucial and the avenues developed are important, their analysis of the social world should have taken more directly into account that individuals are also the producers of this world. This could finally allow us to understand how we fight contemporary fascism and that its victory is not inevitable.