The return of the Messiah: Look who’s back and the eternal fascism

Abstract

In 2012, when the global democratic recession was still only in its sixth consecutive year according to Freedom House, Timur Vermes published the bestseller Look who’s back. Quickly transformed into a film, the absurdity of Vermes' political satire borders on the Kafkaesque: Hitler returns from the dead. He is taken lightly as a fascinating actor, for never breaking his role, and gradually ascends to politics again. Flexing the boundaries between the real of politics and the real of literature, as well as between humor and horror, Look who’s back, rawly explores the possibility of fascism returning and the dangerous denial of the phenomenon. This article will put a theoretical basis on the concept of fascism - understanding it as a generic political concept, therefore liable to shift beyond its original manifestation - in dialogue with Verme’s novel, making it possible, in the process, to perceive not only appearances traces of fascism in fiction, but also of its contemporary manifestations. Thus, it is expected to contribute to the state of the art by increasing the understanding of a polysemic concept, as well as to alert to the danger of believing that fascism died with Hitler's death in 1945. For, as Vermes shows, a Hitler can always come back.