BERLIN — Global Fascisms, curated by Cosmin Cosinas and Paz Guevara and currently on view at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), features the work of more than 50 international artists. In the catalog, HKW Director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung quotes Michel Foucault: “The major enemy is fascism … not only historical fascism, but also the fascism in our heads, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates us.”If only we would heed our own citations. The HKW stands on the site of the former Institute for Sexual Science, inaugurated in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld, physician, activist, and founder of the world’s first LGBTQ+ rights organization. From the early 1920s onward, Hirschfeld became a target of the far right in Germany, including the Nazi Party, and on May 10, 1933, the institute’s library and archives were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets. HKW was built in 1957 on the rubble of this fascism. Its bar still bears Hirschfeld’s name and its garden honors Lili Elbe, the Danish painter and transgender woman whom he cared for before her gender-affirming surgery — the first of its kind. HKW was a postwar gift from the United States to West Berlin and is a striking emblem of Cold War ideology and its use of soft power. Its sweeping roof and glass facade were meant to symbolize freedom, transparency, and democratic openness, a visual and ideological counterpoint to the rigidity of Soviet architecture on the other side of the Berlin Wall. It projected the values of the “free world” through culture, framing modernist design as proof of liberal superiority. Decades later, now under Ndikung’s direction, it serves as a venue for postcolonial and global discourse. A building once erected to promote Western universalism today houses debates seeking to deconstruct it.Costume party at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft with Magnus Hirschfeld (second from right) (© Archiv of Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft)HKW is funded almost entirely by the federal government. In a Germany that has been hijacked by Staatsräson (reason of state) — meaning its unconditional support for the State of Israel — this funding has a price: preemptive obedience. Ndikung’s appointment as director came with the condition that he publicly renounce the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement; in 2022, shortly before assuming office, he did so in several media outlets.The 2019 German anti-BDS resolution labeled the movement antisemitic, effectively criminalizing discussion itself. The result is a collapse of distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism — between the critique of state policy and the supposed denial of Israel’s so-called “right to exist.”When someone of Ndikung’s stature disavows BDS, it is not only ideological, it is also an abandonment of Palestinians and all those who have acted in solidarity. Once a custodian of critical culture, HKW has become a model of capitulation to state control. Similarly, Berlin, once a haven for dissent, has become a capital of censorship. A cultural space complicit in censoring and criminalizing artists who express solidarity with Palestine is now mounting an exhibition on “the machinations of fascism”; the irony is intolerable.Sliman Mansour, “Camel of Hardship” (1974)Outside HKW’s glass walls, Berlin seethes with intimidation: press smears, police violence, censorship. These are all symptoms of the fascism the exhibition pretends to diagnose. Not one work in the exhibition acknowledges the world burning just beyond the door. In Jara Nassar’s words, “What is the role of art when the world is on fire?”The museum’s assimilative force even managed to domesticate the sculpture “Council with emblem” (2025) by South African artist Jane Alexander. These are the haunted cousins of her “Butcher Boys” (1985–86) that glared back at the South African apartheid regime at the height of the struggle. As a teenager in Johannesburg, I sought solace in these sculptures’ ability to hurt both viewers and the regime. Here, however, her work seems embalmed, their insurgent power neutralized.“What does fascism do?” Ndikung asks in his catalog essay. “It denigrates and exterminates those deemed inferior.” By that measure, the inclusion of Palestinian painter Sliman Mansour should be vital, yet the curators chose only his gentlest metaphorical work. “Camel of Hardship” (1974) is described in the show’s texts as “a possible allegory of the burden of Palestinian existence under occupation.” At a time of genocide, such restraint feels like evasion. The audience’s comfort seems the curatorial priority. No rubble, no bodies — fascist violence made tasteful for modernist walls.Roee Rosen, “Absolute Victory” from the series Gaza War Tattoos (2024–25)Not far away hangs the work of Israeli artist Roee Rosen, the close proximity serving as a convenient normalizing gesture. According to the catalog, his photography series, Gaza War Tattoos (2024–25), explores “the cultural meaning of tattoos in the context of the ongoing atrocious war.” Only an Israeli artist is allowed to respond to the current events; the Palestinian is relegated to showing decades-old work. Moreover, a genocide is reduced to an “atrocious war” and then further abstracted into a “context” for artistic musings. Rosen’s photographs depict temporary tattoos applied to various White bodies. According to the catalog, “’The Dreadful Dreidel: A Military Poem’ is composed exclusively from the names given by the Israeli army to its military violence during the current century.” By “military violence” I understand Rosen to be referencing the 19 IDF Operations conducted in Gaza, and one in Jenin, between 2004 and 2024. Based on conservative UN estimates, 5,200 Palestinians and 102 Israeli soldiers were killed and more than 24,000 Palestinians as well as 858 Israeli soldiers were severely injured in the “operations,” the names of which are painted on this White model’s back. These figures do not include the so-called operation “Iron Swords” — the Israeli term for the genocide the nation has unleashed upon Gaza for two years and counting, which has killed at least 70,000 Palestinians, with estimates ranging up to 680,000 murdered.I can feel only revulsion at the aestheticization of atrocity in Rosen’s work, at how horror is turned into fashion while the genocide rages on. This work distills the easy arrogance, decadence, and moral numbness that a fascist society cultivates. Last year, Ndikung, alongside the other KBB directors, the Berlinale, Berliner Festspiele, and KBB administration, reported a young trans employee of the Berlinale to the police for signing off an internal email with the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The staffer was charged, had their visa suspended, and was threatened with deportation to the country from which they had fled.Roee Rosen, “The Dreadful Dreidel: A Military Historical Poem” (2025)Germany’s unwavering support for Israel’s war on Gaza can endure only if dissent is extinguished here. What were once our most progressive institutions and artists have become instruments of that silence, helping the genocide to proceed politely. When an institution reaches this level of corruption, it neutralizes any political potential of the art it shelters. Every work becomes a prop in the pretense of inclusion, queerness, Indigeneity, and postcolonialism. This theater serves the institution’s simulation of anti-fascism. As Berlin’s former culture minister Joe Chialo declared, “We must distinguish art from activism.” But when governments define art’s boundaries, it’s a sign of democracy becoming performative. Germany knows this history: Gleichschaltung in 1933 bound every cultural institution into a single ideological machine.The fascism we live under has not abolished culture; it has perfected its manipulation by occupying our cultural institutions and appointing directors willing to follow orders. The fact that these institutions — apparently in full seriousness — engage with “global fascisms” while blithely enabling it at home is salt in the wound of the German cultural scene’s demise.Global Fascisms continues at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, Berlin, Germany) through December 7. The exhibition was curated by Cosmin Cosinas and Paz Guevara.