Gothic fascism

This article explores the place of fear in fascism ‐ the fear experienced by fascism, as found throughout Hitler’s writings and speeches, and the fear fascism fabricates in order to sustain itself. The article suggests that this fear overlaps and intersects with a shift in the culture of the Gothic in the late‐nineteenth century, such that fascism’s enemy comes to be interpellated as a truly monstrous figure. An exploration of the shifting place of the vampire in late‐nineteenth century Gothic culture creates the possibility of exploring the Gothic opening through which fascism came to both articulate its own fear and to generate a more widespread political fear and social insecurity.