• Thu 13 07 2017 / 7 pm •
Islamophobia and the Political Crisis of the West Arun Kundnani

withARUN KUNDNANI in conversation with STEFAN WEIDNER

Arun Kundnani’s lecture explores the implications of Trump’s victory and the rise of the Far Right in Europe and the US as the symptom of an epochal shift. The era of neoliberalism that began with the election of Thatcher in 1979 has come to an end. The question is what will replace it. So far the Right has done a better job of understanding the crisis and been able to exploit it through new politics of race. Instead of rebelling against the globalization of capital, voters are rebelling against the globalization of labor, finding in the brown immigrant a suitable object of displaced resentment. While liberals continue the Cold War view of racism as a matter of hateful or ignorant individuals, the Right uses race differently: not atavistically but as a flexible means of mobilizing identity to shore up the power of the one per cent of the population that owns the majority of the planet’s wealth. In the US, an additional factor is the way Trump successfully exploited the gap between the violent program of the US global empire and the rhetoric of liberal values. In his lecture, Arun Kundnani addresses these timely topics, asking how we can get beyond their parameters. After his talk Arun Kundnani joins in conversation with Academy member Stefan Weidner.

Venue: Christuskirche, Dorothee-Sölle-Platz 1, 50672 Cologne
Free admission
In English

In cooperation with Christuskirche