Differential Distributions of the Digital: A Gender Media Studies Perspective on the Theory of Fascism and Current Digital Media Cultures

This article addresses the relationship between differences and the digital in intertwined online and offline spheres with regard to digital fascism. It contributes a media theoretic approach to recent theories of contemporary fascism in social and cultural sciences as well as philosophy with a special emphasis on gender and queer studies perspectives. The first part discusses four recent theories of contemporary fascism and their specific approaches to defining both fascism and media. The second part introduces gender media studies’ performative concept of mediation to adequately account for the emergent, diffractive media processes digital fascism unfolds. One main focus is to emphasize the necessity of an intersectional perspective on the critique of fascism by taking into account that fascism is a form of differential violence affecting how gender, sex, race, and ability are constructed and rendered sensible. The article closes by suggesting that contemporary (digital) media condition what is rendered sensible as one crucial feature of fascism today.