BOOKS & the ARTS ON APRIL 6, 1967, THEODOR W. ADORNO ACCEPTED AN invitation from the Association of Socialist Students at the University of Vienna to deliver a lecture on "aspects of the new right-wing extremism." For those not blind to the resurgence of authoritarian movements across the globe, the earlier spasm of neofascist enthusiasm in mid-'60s West Germany may serve as a sobering confirmation of Adorno's claim that fascist movements are not exceptional to liberal democracy but rather are internal and structural signs of its failure. Forced into exile in 1933, Adorno and many of his Frankfurt School colleagues became preoccupied with fascism as an object of cultural and sociological inquiry. The analysis of fascism as a persistent threat within liberal democracy is a recurrent theme in Adorno's work. [Extracted from the article]
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