One week before his inauguration, a Google search for “Trump” and “Fascism” retrieves more than half a million results.

When it comes to the collective memory of Western democracies, it is the experience of Fascism that resonates more strongly than any other with the American president-elect. But is this a precedent that holds up to scrutiny? And how does the literature on Fascism in Germany and Italy look against this contemporary challenge: do we have the kind of history of Fascism in our libraries and our collective memory that we need to confront Trump? By bringing history and contemporary politics into a dialogue, this talk tries to make sense of a phenomenon that may not be quite as unprecedented.

A talk by Dr Frank Uekoetter for the Centre for Modern and Contemporary History and the Institute for German Studies.