Description
AbstractIn recent years, we have witnessed a resurgence of an increasingly emboldened and mainstreamed far right in Britain and globally. In response, there has been a groundswell of political, media and academic interest and analysis. In terms of academic, as well as media narratives and political responses, it has been dominated by normative, system-supportive ‘problem solving’ counterextremism and counterterrorism assumptions and approaches. Ones that rest on and reproduce racist and colonial assumptions. Through these frameworks, the far right is often exceptionalised, treated as a proxy for both racism and class inequality, and represented as a primary threat to social relations, the state and democracy. They are rarely treated as part of mainstream society and or associated with wider structural and systemic issues and inequalities, notably racism, which a focus on the exceptional and extreme can distract from and even reinforce. In this talk, I will examine the rise and mainstreaming of the far right, its place and function within the wider system(s) of liberal democracy, white supremacy and racialised capitalism, and the related challenges we face understanding and combating it – particularly as social scientists - in light of dominant modes of analysis and response which serve that system, and obscure or feed that function.
| Period | 24/02/2026 |
|---|---|
| Event title | York St John Discussing Decolonisation Series Lecture: Aaron Winter - Racism, Resistance and the Mainstreaming of the Far Right |
| Event type | Seminar |
| Conference number | 1/2026 |
| Location | York, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |