ABSTRACT
Analysing the postwar discourse of the extreme and populist right in German-speaking countries involves the notoriously difficult problem of defining “fascism”. It is frequently argued that there is not even a conceptual minimum which covers all historical varieties of interwar and postwar fascism or is acceptable for all relevant scholarly frameworks (cf. Neugebauer 2010: 5ff.; Priester 2010: 38 on similar problems defining “right-wing extremism”). Nevertheless, a brief survey of a few classical definitions of “fascism”, mainly based on the reader published by Griffin (1998a), allows both a critical comparison of some similarities and differences of these frameworks and the establishment of a starting point for the analysis of German right-wing postwar discourse.
