14/04/2023
The next MA Culture Diaspora Ethnicity & Race Forum at Birkbeck Public Lecture will take place on Tuesday 2 May 2023 6.00 – 7.30 pm
Room B01, Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck College
To book your place for the event, sign up here: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=36530
'On Reactionary Democracy and the Mainstreaming of Racism and the Far Right: Where Next?'
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
Speakers: Aaron Winter and Aurelien Mondon
On Reactionary Democracy and the Mainstreaming of Racism and the Far Right: Where Next? By Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter
