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This is a conversation with Aurelien Mondon, he’s a senior lecturer in politics, languages and international studies at the University of Bath and co-author of the 2020 book “Reactionary Democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream” alongside Aaron Winter. This is episode 82 of The Fire These Times.

Topics Discussed

• How has the far right been mainstreamed? Focus on US, UK and France
• Liberal racism versus illiberal racism
• The far right and why calling them ‘populism’ is problematic
• What is ‘populist hype’ and how can the media be complicit?
• How the ‘working class’ become racialized into the ‘white working class’
• The role of elites in ‘reactionary democracy’
• How our knowledge of the world is constructed
• How the right has asphyxiated the media landscape
• On echo chambers
• The generational divide
• The question of race and ‘populism’
• ‘Populism’ and elections
• The case of France

Books Recommended

• Hatred of Democracy by Jacques Rancière
• Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
• Feminism, Interrupted by Lola Olufemi

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Music by Tarabeat.