Aurelien Mondon

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzh.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 24, 2024 at 09:58 UTC

this took a long time. I'm so happy to share my latest paper in @risjnl.bsky.social, looking at racial entanglement, masculinism, and gendered East/West binaries in global reactionary discourse (via another look at Chinese anti-baizuo discourse).
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 18, 2024 at 17:49 UTC

New article out with @franamery.bsky.social

Beyond the huge amount of pain it has caused, transphobia has been a particularly insidious gateway towards far right politics for many and has played a crucial role in their mainstreaming

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:37 UTC

New article on the roots of the mainstreaming of far right politics:

Really existing liberalism, the bulwark fantasy, and the enabling of reactionary, far right politics

Open access in Constellations

🧵1/

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 12:15 UTC

Thanks! Glad you found it interesting even though it is not the cheeriest read!

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:40 UTC

This article feels like a logical conclusion to 15 years of research on the mainstreaming of far right politics and forms the basis of my new research project For now, this article is open access and I hope you find it interesting. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! 11/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:40 UTC

Finally, I conclude with a grim yet hopeful assessment of the current predicament and the urgent need to think democracy beyond the liberal hegemony 10/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:39 UTC

I then turn to the crumbling of the liberal fantasy and the necessity for the liberal elite of creating and hyping an illiberal other on the (far) right to strengthen the liberal hegemony leading to the mainstreaming of reaction 9/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:39 UTC

To illustrate what has become a precarious position, where the rights of many are increasingly denied, threatened, or removed, I briefly outline the construction of the liberal fantasy and counterpose it with really existing liberalism's failure to live by its own ideals 8/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:39 UTC

My aim is thus to tease out whether what we are seeing is the rise of “illiberalism” and/or “populism” against liberalism, or whether liberalism always held “illiberal” tendencies at its core and can therefore act as an enabler 7/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:38 UTC

This would mean facing the failings of liberalism itself and restarting history. Yet at present, we seem stuck in a cycle where all we can be given as an alternative to a deeply dysfunctional and disliked status quo are reactionary politics taking us back, rather than forward 6/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:38 UTC

Addressing such shortcomings would mean that if we were to be serious about democracy, solutions would have to be found elsewhere than in fantasized visions of the past or blamed on others for stealing our enjoyment of liberal democracy 5/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:38 UTC

Such fantasies have led Western democracies to a situation where full-fledged reaction is at the gates of power, and yet where there is still no appetite to face the possibility that really existing liberalism4 has been a more or less active enabler rather than a bulwark 4/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:38 UTC

WW2 conveniently wiped the slate clean for the liberal elite, as if they had had no involvement in genocidal projects or are not continuing to benefit from the exploitation and/or exclusion of certain communities on the basis of (biological) race, gender, ability, or class 3/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:37 UTC

The "bulwark" narrative, born out of the Second World War and the defeat of fascism and Nazism, is based on a simplistic, mythologizing reading of history, which conveniently eschews the well-documented ambivalence of “the West” toward reactionary politics 2/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 12, 2024 at 06:37 UTC

New article on the roots of the mainstreaming of far right politics:

Really existing liberalism, the bulwark fantasy, and the enabling of reactionary, far right politics

Open access in Constellations

🧵1/

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 11, 2024 at 16:59 UTC

Très honoré de publier mon premier article en français en si bonne compagnie dans ce dossier spécial de la revue POLI sur Une République « exceptionnelle » ? Régime de valeurs, démocratie et autoritarisme

Merci à Marion Dalibert et Keivan Djavadzadeh!

polirevue.wordpress.com/numero-17-un...

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 11, 2024 at 16:59 UTC

Nouvelle publication (en français!):

Conceptualiser la République réactionnaire : entre hype populiste, racisme libéral et normalisation du discours d’extrême droite

t.co/lBEdxlGNVc

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 10, 2024 at 07:23 UTC

Trying to fight the far right on its turf and outflank it has NEVER worked It's been tried many times for decades now and all it has done is mainstream its ideas further and legitimised its presence Mainstream elites are enablers of far right politics and they fully know it

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 08, 2024 at 09:58 UTC

100%

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 08, 2024 at 08:28 UTC

Judging by @techwontsave.us's latest podcast on this, I don't think he will be taking anyone there any time soon!

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 08, 2024 at 08:11 UTC

Obviously, I'm not an AI expert so basing this on the rabbit hole I went down to trying to understand it and how it applies to/impact on my work as a teacher and researcher

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 08, 2024 at 08:09 UTC

The gutting of arts, humanities and critical social sciences in higher education is so incredibly short-termistic at a time when creative and critical thinking are under threat by the advent of AI and its boring middle of the road mush Then again, maybe that's the point

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 07, 2024 at 12:42 UTC

I also know full well that I'm able to call out this behaviour because I'm in a safe, senior position meaning I don't need to please gatekeepers & don't want to be part of the gang This is precisely why we should expect more from senior colleagues than them closing ranks

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 07, 2024 at 09:04 UTC

This is where the politics of citations are telling as it shows not just power relationships but also epistemologies of ignorance as who we choose not to cite can be as telling as who we choose to cite This is very political and worth paying attention to 4/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 07, 2024 at 09:03 UTC

I am not expecting much better from academia as a whole though While there are some great people there and space for thinking outside of the box, it is ultimately a conservative milieu steeped in entrenched hierarchies, sycophancy and elitism 3/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 07, 2024 at 09:03 UTC

It's not enough to mention critical ideas to be critical and offer a counter argument to our predicament If you refuse to challenge structures of power which have benefitted you and your own role in upholding them through access to public discourse, you're on the wrong side 2/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 07, 2024 at 09:03 UTC

To be entirely honest, I don't really care that the ideas I've helped develop are used without attribution (or that my work is made freely accessible for that matter) What bothers me is for it to be used to defend the status quo while pretending to be critical 1/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 07, 2024 at 07:28 UTC

There is a real irony too as the RN and Bardella in particular continually show their disdain for said mainstream and the media in particular who in response continue largely to cover them in careful, "measured" terms That's the "bulwark" we've been told to rely on 🙄 3/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 07, 2024 at 07:21 UTC

The RN is still a far right party, it is still a threat to many communities and to democracy Its normalisation is not the result of it changing but that of a long process of mainstreaming enabled by mainstream elite 2/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 07, 2024 at 07:21 UTC

Watching the campaign for the European election is a grim spectacle in France There is a sense of resignation that the far right Rassemblement National will win and that doesn't seem to concern many of those covering or opposing it as much as it should 1/

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 04, 2024 at 10:10 UTC

The reluctance not only to research power but to altogether ignore it is one of the most common traits in the field Far right studies is thus just an exercise in voyeurism and distraction as the culprit is the other and those at the sharp end are altogether erased

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 04, 2024 at 10:09 UTC

I always find it fascinating how so much research on the far right focuses on the young, the working class, the 'left behind', women and various other minoritised groups and how little actually pays attention to the support and leadership provided by the white patriarchal elite

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Apr 03, 2024 at 12:06 UTC

Uncritical support for business as usual 'liberal' politics is either based on an incredibly naive assessment of the responsibility of said 'liberal' politics in our current predicament or a convenient ignorance of the benefits one draws from the status quo at the expense of most

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 28, 2024 at 08:56 UTC

It is a very bad article and yet entirely unsurprising

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 28, 2024 at 08:18 UTC

Absolutely

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 28, 2024 at 07:11 UTC

Good morning populist hype!

(If it's "populism" you're worried about in our current context, then you are part of the problem)

theconversation.com/the-word-pop...

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 19, 2024 at 14:39 UTC

If you don't want to be called far right, don't try and censor the media, change your politics as the former really speaks volume about your position...

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 19, 2024 at 14:38 UTC

This is how the far right gets normalised: when those who should hold it to account refuse to name it for what it is and instead take it at its word As an expert on the issue, it is safe to say Reform is far right.

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 15, 2024 at 22:01 UTC

To think reactionary grifters managed to convince most of the mainstream punditry that the (far) right are speaking for the "left behind"...

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 14, 2024 at 15:23 UTC

Surely, this definition of "extremism" applies to most rightwing parties these days...

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 13, 2024 at 09:13 UTC

Indeed! Someone also pointed ironically to the UK being in the EU at the time...

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 13, 2024 at 08:10 UTC

Moral panics 101: Touch on some real issues (economy, healthcare), link them to reactionary talking points (borders, defence, national pride), blame them on minoritised and mostly silenced communities (Muslims trans people), ignore power so as to strengthen the status quo

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social [ View ] Mar 10, 2024 at 19:38 UTC

Despite the noise from the (far) right, it's clear that those who will be targeted by this new definition will most likely be those demanding justice and radical change. As such, reactionaries have nothing to fear since they are the unjust status quo.
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

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