Authoritarian and fascist tendencies are currently on the rise in many parts of the world. Consider the US government launching a mass hunt for eleven million illegalized workers and levelling a continuous round of war against the poor, right-wing and anti-migrant politics gaining further strength in most European countries, as well as in various parts of the so called Global South. While these developments cannot be analyzed without attending to their contextual specifics, it becomes clear that the reductive focus on right-wing or authoritarian parties does not help to understand (and struggle against) the current proto-fascist conjuncture of ever-expanding repression and carcerality in societies of aggravated neoliberal crisis. Neither does it unveil the nexus of normalized state racism and right-wing extremism. In this talk, I discuss the current conjuncture of “late fascism” by drawing on black radical and anti-colonial readings of fascism, and its relation to colonialism, capitalism and imperialism. I focus especially on anti-colonial feminist readings and bring these into conversation with contemporary abolitionist thought and practice to sketch out the (im-)possibilities of anti-fascist horizons.

Vanessa E. Thompson ist Associate Professor und Distinguished Professor for Black Studies and Social Justice am Department of Gender Studies an der Queen’s University in Kanada. Zuvor war sie Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Europa-Universität Viadrina und der Goethe-Universität. Sie forscht und lehrt im Bereich der Black Studies und antikolonialen Theorien, mit besonderem Fokus auf Rassismus und staatliche Gewalt, Abolitionismus, Feminismus und soziale Bewegungen. Sie arbeitet mit abolitionistischen Bewegungen in Europa und darüber hinaus. 

Konzept & Organisation
Bianca Prietl, Anna K. Kraft & Jasmin Schmidlin