Dagmar Herzog on the "Sexy Racism" of the AfD
In her book The New Fascist Body, historian Dagmar Herzog has provided one of the most clear-eyed analyses of the German far right.
US historian Dagmar Herzog has spent her career tracing the sexual politics of German fascism: a subject which, regrettably, is perhaps more relevant now than at any other point over that span. Last year, that research resulted in a short, powerful book, The New Fascist Body, whose central argument was vividly demonstrated earlier this year when research showed the AfD has been using AI avatars and OnlyFans models to spread anti-immigration messaging.
As Herzog shows through a historical analysis of sex in Nazi propaganda, the fascist stance is not typically a conservative, forbidding, or repressive one. Rather, fascism licenses its followers to be aggressively sexual, just as it permits them to break societal rules in other ways. This disinhibited mixture of lust and hostility is something Herzog terms "sexy racism." When she spoke to HEIST, this was the starting point for our conversation.
Can you outline the idea of "sexy racism," the term you give for a distinct strategy of sexual politics employed by the far right? What is it, and when did you first start to notice it?