LIAS Focus Week: Facing the Far-Right

Leuphana University and the Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society are jointly organising the focus week “Facing the Far-Right“. 

In Germany, as in many other European and non-European countries, politics and society are facing major challenges from the right. The growing popularity of ethno-nationalist, authoritarian, often anti-intellectual, and racist ideas is putting liberal democracies under pressure. Right-wing parties and politicians no longer merely propagate political visions in direct opposition to those of the centre and the left, but also attempt to undermine the rules of public debate. The various events during the focus week, initiated by LIAS Fellows in collaboration with colleagues from the Leuphana University, aim to provide a space to discuss these developments and how they are dealt with in different countries.

Location: Transformationroom, Leuphana University Lüneburg, C25.019
Language: German

How can we respond appropriately to the challenge from the right-wing political spectrum? This is a burning question for Leuphana students as well. Times in Europe and Germany have become rougher.
Political extremes are entering the arenas of dialogue – above all right-wing extremism. The accepted and established forms of behaviour that make socio-political discourse possible in democracies are coming under increasing pressure.
The Leuphana Discourse Space is directly involved in the start of the focus week and connects students with the Leuphana Institute of Advanced Studies (LIAS).

The discussion partners are:
Professor Sarah Engler, Professor for Comparative Politics, Leuphana University Lüneburg
Dominique Haas, Commissioner for Combating Right-Wing Extremism District of Lüneburg, Education and Integration Office
Professor Dr. Markus Reihlen, Professor of Business Management, in particular Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship and Vice President for Professional School, Internationalisation, Entrepreneurship and Transfer Leuphana University Lüneburg
Lio Pollmanns, Working group on right-wing populism and higher education
Moderation:
Talja Blumenthal, Studium Individuale, Leuphana University Lüneburg
Martin Auer, Studium International Business Administration & Entrepreneurship, Leuphana University Lüneburg

Here you can find the Poster for the discourse room.

Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lecture Hall 3
Language: English

Talk by Simon Strick (ZeM Potsdam) in English, Introduction: Alex Demirović (LIAS Senior Fellow)
This lecture presents a meme-centric timeline of rightwing online agitation in the past 10 years, from obscure messageboards to Trump’s likely 2nd presidency. Paraphrasing Adorno that „fascism is obsolete but up to date“, it will trace various rearticulations of old fascist ideology in the new guises of digital culture. Rightwing agitation, and a reactionary reworking of political and popular culture, will be shown as the current mainstream of the digital public sphere, a set of cultural conventions and discourses that dominate lifeworlds, attentions, and sensibilities far beyond the limits of what has been called the „alt-right fringe“. The talk will draw on traditions of media and critical theory to come up with assessments of what this means for our reactionary present, and explore possible alternative imaginings beyond fascist exploitability.
Simon Strick is a media scientist and author of Rechte Gefühle (2021). Since the book was published, he has been researching right-wing strategies on the internet, in particular the mixing of lifestyle content and right-wing propaganda in everyday digital life.

Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lecture Hall 4
Language: German

Panel discussion organised by Vera Tollmann (CDC, Leuphana)
Panelists: Andrea Kretschmann (Leuphana), Laura Hille (Leuphana), Benjamin Hundertmark (Leuphana), Simon Strick (ZeM Potsdam), Moderator/ Respondent: Michael Koß (Leuphana)
Right-wing companies sell fashion, music or yoga videos for a right-wing everyday culture, right-wing activists organise fight camps and festivals (e.g. ‘White Boy Summer’ in Finland). They offer entertainment, group affiliation and security and aim to recruit new members and supporters, radicalise them and collect donations. The panel deals with the attention paid to right-wing ideologies and examines right-wing political successes using memes – the smallest, usually authorless text-image units that instrumentalise emotions. Right-wing networks adopt digital subcultural communication strategies, attempt to gain pop-cultural influence with the help of AI image and video generators, misuse digital research tools and operate at the boundaries of community guidelines with their content. This panel deals with the content, emotionalisation strategies and disinformation techniques of right-wing actors and their potential media effects. It also asks how the emergence, circulation and impact of right-wing memes can be scientifically analysed.
Simon Strick is a media scientist and author of Rechte Gefühle (2021). Since the publication of the book, he has been researching right-wing strategies online, in particular the mixing of lifestyle content and right-wing propaganda in everyday digital life.
Laura Hille is a sociologist and associate at the CDC and most recently, as part of the CDC's completed research focus ‘Silicon Valley Ideology’, she examined the far right ideas about the future of some tech entrepreneurs (and opinion leaders?) in California based on their social media posts. 
The sociologist and criminologist Andrea Kretschmann is investigating the role of law as a medium for political interventions in her research project ‘Everyday life in dissent: A study on the use of (imaginary) law by Reichsbürger*innen. In a sub-project of the project, she and criminologist Ben Hundertmark are researching the meme cultures and affect politics of the conspiracy ideology scene of so-called ‘Reichsbürger*innen’.
Political scientist Michael Koß will respond to the contributions by Strick, Hille, Kretschmann and Hundertmark and moderate the subsequent discussion.

Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lecture Hall 3
Language: English

Talk by Adrià Alcoverro (Leuphana, LIAS Alumnus)
The growth of the extreme right occurs in a context defined on the one hand, by a growing competition between individuals for survival with a generalised indifference to the fellow citizen all dressed with the technocentric attires of the digital economy. On the other hand, this context is defined by the emergence of an anger rooted in atomisation and inequalities that activate a fear of loss which is easily translated into essentialism and hate once exploited by the extreme right. Javier Milei’s government in Argentina discursively and materially enhances these apparently contradictory characteristics fusing them to constitute what could be a new model of capitalist society in which human substance and even the idea of progress vanishes within this fog of utter competition and hate trapping the present within an endless totalising struggle for survival.

Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lecture Hall 3
Language: English

Lecture by Charlotte Wiedemann (LIAS Public Fellow)
In Israel, political parties and societal groups from the extreme right have gained substantial influence over the last two decades. This is visible today within the political executive power as well as in the wider society: About 30 percent support far right opinion patterns, according to recent Israeli surveys. On the one hand, right-wing extremism in Israel shares some similarities with the same phenomenon in other countries, on the other hand and more importantly we see specific features born out of the particularities of a Jewish state, the Jewish history of annihilation and the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The topic of “land” and the right to land play a major role in an ideological landscape where radical settlers` influence has moved from the fringes of society to its central institutions. In Germany, with its close ties to Israel due to the history of the Shoah, serious research on this topic is underdeveloped. When the issue is addressed in media or public discourse, usually critical Israeli scholars or activists are invited to speak – which points once again to a particularity: Despite the growing far right influence the freedom of opinion and the academic freedom still exist for Jewish Israelis to a large extent. 

Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg, C40.601
Language: German, English

Participation by prior registration at lias.event@leuphana.de. Texts to be read will be sent after registration.
Workshop organised by Alex Demirović (LIAS senior fellow)
In critical analyses the historical fascism was defined as a praxis of propaganda and violence. In the light of the German experience and under the impression of the US-American right and the spread of antisemitism, remarkable research on the agitator was done by Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor W. Adorno, Leo Löwenthal. Today very often it is emphasised how active the right is on social media: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), Telegram-channels. The workshop intends to discuss the older studies in a comparative sense and to make use of its insights for an assessment of current authoritarian practices. 

Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg, C40.704 
Language: English

Book review & discussion in English with Danny Hayward (LIAS Artist Fellow) & Kerstin Stakemeier (AdBK Nürnberg, LIAS Associate Fellow)
Alberto Toscano’s book Late Fascism (2023) is a significant contribution to debates on the relationship between fascism, capitalism, race and gender. Reconstructing fascist ideas around time, death and myth, it also approaches the question of the plural anti-fascisms, questions of desire, and the relationship between defensive and utopian politics.  “On a more optimistic note”, Toscano writes “that progressive or liberal reforms may appear to racists and reactionaries as signs of a communist dystopia that is almost already here could also be interpreted as the distorted recognition of utopian traces that demand to be blasted out of the continuum of reformism.” 

This discussion of the book, led by Kerstin Stakemeier and Danny Hayward, will address the question of cultural expressions of fascism in the present. We will talk about what it means to think about fascism as a “life form”, as mimesis, and about anti-fascism as method and look at the Art Right, as an example of how fascism’s white supremacy translates into the designated sphere of aesthetic imagination.

The event can be attended without registration. If you want to prepare for the book discussion, please write an email to event.lias@leuphana.de to receive a text for reading.

Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lecture Hall 3
Language: German with English subtitles

Film screening and discussion organised by Monika Schoop (Leuphana, LIAS Faculty Fellow)
Panelists: Abdulla Özkan (survivor, witness), Karmen Frankl (Initiative “Keupstraße ist überall“)
Moderator: Monika Schoop 
The documentary tells the story of the nail bomb attack in front of a Turkish hairdressing salon in Cologne's Keupstraße on 9 June 2004, focusing on the consequences for the victims and their relatives, who were placed under general suspicion for years. Based on interrogation protocols the film reconstructs police investigations, revealing that the victims were the primary suspects for the police. A xenophobic motive was largely ignored. Only years later, the attack was attributed to a Neo-Nazi terror network, the so-called National Socialist Underground (NSU).
The film The Barber and the Bomb impressively depicts how deeply the bomb attack, and the subsequent suspicions affected life in the Cologne district of Mülheim. The film opens a new discussion on the issue of structural racism in Germany by looking at the perspective of those affected.