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'On Reactionary Democracy and the Mainstreaming of Racism and the Far Right: Where Next?'

When: —
Venue: Birkbeck Clore Management Centre

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The MA Culture Diaspora Ethnicity & Race Forum at Birkbeck Public Lecture

The event will take place in Clore Management Centre, CLO B01

Two years after the publication of Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream, the picture has both changed dramatically and yet many trends have been confirmed. While Donald Trump was defeated in the 2020 election, the insurrection on 6 January 2021 demonstrated the extremism behind his rise and his spectre for the next election continue to shape and haunt US politics. In France, the far and extreme right have been polling over 30% in the lead up to the presidential election. In the UK, while the far right itself seems to have disappeared, its ideas have never been more mainstream. Wider global crises, from the pandemic to the climate emergency, have shown that far and extreme right narratives can take hold and push us ever more towards reactionary, authoritarian politics.

It is in this context that this talk aims to take stock of the latest development and consider them through the various lenses we deploy in the book. Key to our argument is that to understand and combat far right politics, we must understand the role the mainstream and mainstream constructions plays in its rise

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Speakers
  • Aaron Winter -

    Aaron Winter is Senior Lecturer in Sociology (Race and Anti-Racism) at Lancaster University. His research is on the far-right with a focus on racism, mainstreaming and violence. He is co-editor of Historical Perspectives on Organised Crime and Terrorism (Routledge 2018) and Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method and Practice (Routledge 2020), and co-author, with Aurelien Mondon, of Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream (Verso 2020). He is also a co-editor of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power and the Manchester University Press (MUP) book series Racism, Resistance and Social Change

  • Aurelien Mondon -

    Aurelien Mondon is a Senior Lecturer in politics at the University of Bath. His research focuses predominantly on the impact of racism and populism on liberal democracies and the mainstreaming of far right politics through elite discourse. His first book, The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia: A Populist Hegemony?, was published in 2013 and he recently co-edited After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, racism and free speech published with Zed. His new book Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream, co-written with Aaron Winter, is now out with Verso.