Fascist Neo-liberalism and the Fate of Radical Democracy Conference

Name: Fascist Neo-liberalism and the Fate of Radical Democracy Conference
Start: 2024-10-17T19:00:00-07:00
End: 2024-10-20T19:00:00-07:00
Location: 515 West Hastings Street , Vancouver, BC, Canada, British Columbia V6B 5K3

Schedule

Thu Oct 17 2024 at 07:00 pm to Sun Oct 20 2024 at 07:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

515 West Hastings Street , Vancouver, BC, Canada, British Columbia V6B 5K3 | Vancouver, BC

The neoliberalism instituted in the 1970s was justiﬁed as a means to prevent the return of authoritarianism and fascism. However, over the past decade, neoliberalism has instead facilitated a profound authoritarian shift, marked by the rise of racist and xenophobic nationalist identities across the globe, including in the US, UK, Poland, Hungary, India, Brazil, and even Canada during Harper’s majority government. This rise of the far-right coincides with the intensifying global climate crisis, to which far-right governments like Bolsonaro’s have contributed.
The ascendancy of authoritarian populism is not solely due to its inherent strength but also to the weaknesses of an increasingly fragmented and authoritarian left, which has pivoted towards identity politics at the expense of addressing the socio-economic concerns of working people. This shift has alienated many, particularly young White men, who feel disenfranchised by the left’s focus on identity issues and have thus been drawn to far-right ideologies that provide an outlet for their frustrations. The left’s abandonment of the working class, dismissed by ﬁgures like Hillary Clinton as a “basket of deplorables,” signals a fundamental realignment in which the right rhetorically takes social class seriously.
Authoritarian populism constructs an exclusionary “people” by opposing them to “cosmopolitan” elites, migrants, and refugees, transforming social strangers into political enemies. This dynamic underscores the way capitalism creates not only socio-economic crises but also a crisis of meaning, as described by Max Weber. Cultural struggles have been hampered by an identity politics that fragments potential alliances, impeding the broad-based coalition necessary to confront the right.
This conference will explore how the interconnected political, gender, and ecological crises, driven by capitalist contradictions, can be critically analyzed and challenged in pursuit of radical democracy.
PRE-CONFERENCE EVENTS
September 18 @ 6:00PM in Room 7000, SFU Harbour Centre
Global legacies of the “spring thunder”: Indian People’s Association in North America (IPANA), 1975-1987
October 16 @ 6:00PM in Room 1700, SFU Harbour Centre
Book Launch with Author John Holloway: “Hope in Hopeless Times” (https://www.facebook.com/events/987225113160235/)
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
October 17 @ 7:00PM in the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, SFU Woodward’s
- Opening Keynote by Vladimir Safatle: “Finite Crises and Infinite Wars: Global Laboratories of Social Desensitization and the Case of Gaza”
October 18 in Room 1700, SFU Harbour Centre
- Panel 1 (9AM–12PM): “The Neoliberal State”
- Panel 2 (1PM–4PM): “Realignments of Left and Right”
- Lecture by Gord Hill (7PM): Third Annual Chinmoy Banerjee Memorial Lecture in Anti-racism on “From Pine Ridge to Palestine: A Comparison of Colonization and Anti-colonial Struggle”
October 19 in Room 1700, SFU Harbour Centre
- Panel 3 (9AM–12PM): “Socio-Ecological Crisis”
- Panel 4 (1PM–4PM): “Algorithmic Politics”
- Film Screening with Director Jill Daniels (7PM): “Resisters”
October 20 in Room 1700, SFU Harbour Centre
- Panel 5 (9AM–12PM): “The Crisis of Masculinity”
- Panel 6 (1PM–4PM): Fascism and Anti-Fascism
- Closing Roundtable (5PM): Building a Global Anti-Fascist Network
***For full conference details, including speaker bios and abstracts, please visit: https://events.sfu.ca/live/files/221-fascist-neo-liberalism-and-the-fate-of-radical
WE THANK OUR GENEROUS CO-SPONSORS
- The Joanne Brown Symposium on Violence and its Alternatives
- Department of Global Humanities, SFU
- J. S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities, SFU
- The Simons Foundation Canada
- Refugee and Newcomer Program, SFU
- Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation
- David Lam Centre, SFU
- SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement
- SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies, SFU
- School of International Studies, SFU
- Department of English, SFU
- Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, SFU
- Department of History, SFU
- Department of Sociology and Anthropology, SFU