The Far Right of a Special Type

Social + Political Science, University of Technology Sydney

Vijay Prashad - The Far Right of a Special Type

Chair: Prof Devleena Ghosh, UTS

In-person: Room 580 Level 5, Building 10, University of Technology Sydney
Online: Zoom: 863 764 5831 Passcode 345711

Recent years have seen the emergence of strongmen as serious political forces in liberal democracies the world over: Narendra Modi in India, Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and perhaps now Prabowo Subianto in Indonesia, despite the latter's attempt to project a gentler public image. These figures represent the ascendance of a new kind of right wing, one that operates not only through elections but by exerting dominance in the arenas of culture, society, ideology, and the economy. This new right is not necessarily concerned with overthrowing the norms of liberal democracy, but in many cases with making use of them. "Fascism" is therefore an insufficient term to describe the new right wing, for it denies what has been called by Aijaz Ahmad ‘the intimate embrace between liberalism and the far right.’

In this talk, Vijay Prashad argues that the formulation of this 'intimate embrace' allows us to understand that there is no necessary contradiction between liberalism and the far right, and indeed that liberalism is not even a shield against the far right, let alone its antidote. The talk draws on his recent article with Tricontinental.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. His 2022 book, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (2022) was written with Noam Chomsky. His latest  book, On Cuba will be published in August 2024. He is Executive Director of 'The Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research' and Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter. He is also the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi) and a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has appeared in two films – Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

Further info: James Goodman, james.goodman@uts.edu.au