OnlyFascism

Carina Brück, or « Cassie », has over 85k followers on Instagram. Several times a week, she posts videos of herself in front of German flags or wearing corsets or underwear in the German national colours. Sometimes, the tattoos on her body glitch out or her limbs move in eerie, unnatural ways, revealing that the videos have been edited with AI. The written messages added to many videos take aim at immigrants, trans people or leftists. Often, she signs off with a blue heart emoji, signalling support for the German far-right party, Alternative für Deutschland (the AfD). One typical post reads: « Muslims hate pork, beer, dogs, bikinis, Jesus and freedom of speech. Why the hell are they coming to Germany? » Her caption tells viewers to check her linkinbio, which directs followers to her OnlyFans page.

Cassie is not alone. There are many like her, a recent report by Correctiv found 190 profiles belonging to 22 supposed women, with an audience of millions; a whole wave of influencers combining far-right messaging and sexualised content, using the combination to rile up their opponents and perform availability to the right kind of man. Many of these women do not appear to be actually located within Germany at all (platform location data show profiles run from Romania, Hungary, Thailand or the Philippines). Some are phantoms; spectres taunting Europe. Take Bella Albrecht. Her profile seems to have been deleted now, but in April 2026, far-right monitoring website Belltower News reported her feed showing her at the swimming pool, the gym, canvassing for the AfD, or stopping at a restaurant to eat a hefty-looking plate of Bavarian Schweinshaxe. « I love my daily portion of meat, » the caption read, « and vegans hate me for it. » But Bella Albrecht did not exist; she was entirely an AI creation. Nevertheless, her messaging and many of these other profiles appear to be deliberately coordinated. Both Bella and Cassie, for example, posted videos of themselves captioned with the sentence: « I want my children to say Grüß Gott, and not Wallah. » Occasionally, the captions are identical right down to the same spelling mistakes. 

This mixture of artificial intelligence, false identities and digital sexuality might look, at first glance, like a uniquely 21st century disorder. But to readers of The New Fascist Body by the US historian Dagmar Herzog, the combination will carry a darker historical resonance. The pamphlet-sized work of barely eighty pages builds on her previous books, situating recent examples of the sexual politics of the AfD within the longer history of fascist sexuality. 

Herzog argues that sex and fascism enjoy a closer relationship than is commonly thought. She claims it is actually one of the constitutive strategies of fascism (both today and during the Nazi period) to adopt a deliberately permissive, licentious stance in which (white) women’s bodies are at once under threat from hostile forces — Muslims, Jews — while simultaneously being offered up as the reward for membership in the people’s community. « The secret memo of fascism is not repression, » Herzog writes. « On the contrary, it’s a message of permission, licence and impunity. » Often, she points out, the messaging wants to have it both ways: at once appearing to defend traditional values, whilst also inviting viewers to leer at and voyeuristically enjoy the nudity of women they are being invited to protect.