Events & Calendars "The Global Rise of Nativism and Illiberalism: A Conversation on the Contemporary Political Pathology"

In the contemporary political pathology, two phenomena appear currently intertwined: exclusionary nativist beliefs and electoral preferences for illiberal styles of politics. Do we witness a global return to a longing for closed ethnic communities and authoritarian rulers, promising security in an age of perceived systematic crises? Whereas the rapid rise of the populist radical right in Europe as much as in the U.S. is an evident starting point, the aim of the panel is also to open up the conversation to a larger outlook. How can we explain these global reactions upon geopolitical developments as much as the globalization of uncertainty? These issues will be addressed by the four panelists, followed by a discussion in plenum.

Panelists Tamir Bar-On, Chip Berlet, Dwaipayan Sen and Maria Sidorkina will be moderated by discussant Andreas Önnerfors. Dr. Tamir Bar-On is one of world’s leading experts on the French and European New Right. He is a professor in the School of Social Sciences and Government, Tecnológico de Monterrey, in Queretaro, Mexico. Chip Berlet is a Boston-based American investigative journalist, research analyst, photojournalist, scholar and activist, specializing in the study of extreme right-wing movements in the U.S. and the dissemination of conspiracy theories. Dr. Dwaipayan Sen is an expert on the history of caste policy and postcolonial democratization in India. He is an assistant professor of Asian Languages and Civilizations and History at Amherst College. Dr. Maria Alexandrovna Sidorkina is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Humanistic Inquiry at Amherst College. Her research concerns illiberal publics and politics in post-socialist space, linguistic anthropology and digital sociability. Dr. Andreas Önnerfors is associate professor in intellectual history at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, currently specializing in contemporary European New Right populist rhetoric, and STINT Fellow at Amherst College.