KNIR Colloquium: “Us versus Them. Exploring Transatlantic Practices of Fascism(s) and Populism(s) from the Margins”

This KNIR Colloquium explores the role of Europe’s fascist and far-right legacies in shaping models of authoritarian government and leadership in a globalised world, where right-wing as well as left-wing populism is on the rise. The focus will be on the way cultural artefacts and practices create and mediate images and narratives of fascism(s) and populism(s) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Both institutionalised and grassroots forms of remediation and memorialisation can contribute to an oppositional and essentialist ‘us’ against ‘them’ logic, which excludes the marginalised Other from the norms and values of the majority group. More specifically, this colloquium aims to question the frameworks of nationalist and populist discourses in the transnational context of increased mobilities and connections between Europe’s centre and the margins of Latin America. To quote Federico Finchelstein, on the necessity to decentre the history of populism and fascism by taking into account its transcontextual – in particular Latin American – connections: “the center can be seen more clearly from the margins” (From Fascism to Populism in History, 2017: 125).