2020 Joint Conference on Right-Wing Studies and Research on Male Supremacism

Joint Conference on Right-Wing Studies and Research on Male Supremacism

August 3-6, 2020

Sponsored by: The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism

Co-sponsored by: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies.

This virtual conference brought together researchers focused on the right-wing and male supremacism for panels, networking events, training sessions, and keynote speakers.

Full Schedule

Monday, August 3 (optional preconference training on digital security) | 9:00am - 2:00pm 

Tuesday, August 4th

8:30am – 10:10am: Panel Presentations

Targeting “Gender Ideology” and LGBTQ Rights 

Chair: Carol Mason

Panelists:

  1. The many gay agendas: The making and remaking of anti-LGBTQ conspiracies, Evelyn Schlatter, Southern Poverty Law Center
  2. Beyond “Culture War” and Right-Wing Demagoguery: Fifty Shades of Gender and Sexuality between Moral Conservatism and Sex Radicalism, Ying-Chao Kao, Virginia Commonwealth University
  3. Reactionary Populism and Gender: Emergence of Anti-gender Movements in East Central Europe, Mina P. Baginova, Charles University Prague and University College London (UCL)
  4. Gender and the Revival of National Catholicism. A Study of Opposition to Feminism in Spain, Marcel Obst, University of Warwick

10:20am – 12:00pm: Panel Presentations

Women and the Anti-: Abortion, Reproduction, Sexual Harassment, Equal Rights

Chair: Victoria Phillips

Panelists:

  1. Co-Opted Compliance: How Men’s Rights Groups Shape the Meaning of Title IX (1972-2020), Jessica Cabrera, University of California-Irvine
  2. Agitating for theocracy at the local level: The Anti-Abortion Movement Targets North Carolina’s Capital as a ‘Sanctuary for the Unborn, Cloee Cooper, Political Research Associates
  3. The New Pronatalism: Reproductive Health Care from Fascism to Forza Nuova, Diana Garvin, University of Oregon
  4. The Militant Culture of a Female Right-Wing Organization: The Example of Phyllis Schlafly and Eagle Forum, Amelie Ribieras, Pantheon-Sorbonne University

Dr. Crystal Fleming, Revealing White Supremacy

Keynote: Revealing White Supremacy, Dr. Crystal Fleming

Sponsored by: The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism

Co-sponsored by: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, Southern Poverty Law Center.

Dr. Crystal Marie Fleming is an internationally recognized expert on racism and anti-racism who empowers audiences to confront and challenge white supremacy. She is the author of How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy and the Racial Divide and Resurrecting Slavery: Racial Legacies and White Supremacy in France. Dr. Fleming’s talk addresses the urgency of expanding our collective understanding of white supremacy beyond extremism like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Drawing on her expertise and empirical research on white supremacy in the U.S. and Europe, Crystal shows how white supremacy is deeply tied to European colonialism, patriarchy, modern capitalism and the destruction of our ecosystem. 

Wednesday, August 5th

8:30am – 10:10am: Panel Presentations

Masculinities and Mythologies

Chair: Greta Jasser

Panelists:

  1. The Far Right’s Appropriation of Theory, Communication Strategies, Codes and Concepts of Masculinity, Georg Glaeser, University of Cologne
  2. The [Misogynist] Model Minority: MRAsians and Male Supremacist Beliefs in Asian America, Julia DeCook, Loyola University Chicago
  3. Sex, Power, and Body Control: Men’s Rights Leisure Participation and Neoliberal Discourses, Luc S. Cousineau, University of Waterloo
  4. A Pagan Ethic and Sacred masculinity?: Sports Mythologies and Practices Within the Azov Movement in Ukraine, Adrien Nonjon, Research Center Europe-Eurasia (CREE) and National Institute for Oriental Languages and Cultures (INALCO)

10:20am – 12:00pm PT: Panel Presentations

Immigration and Islam in the Right-Wing Imagination

Chair: Jason Luger

Panelists:

  1. Islamophobia and American Right Wing Discourses on the Muslim Subject, Hatem Bazian, Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project
  2. In Bad Faith: Anti-Sharia Laws, the Constitution, and the Limits of Religious Freedom, Isabelle M. Canaan, Columbia Law School
  3. A Comparative Survey of Key Themes in White Supremacist and Anti-Muslim Hate Movement Ideologies, Alejandro J. Beutel/Stephen Piggott, University of Maryland START Center
  4. The Impact of Terrorist Attacks on (Anti-)Refugee Sentiment: Insights from two Natural Experiments, Arun Frey, University of Oxford

12:10pm – 1:20pm: Discussion Session

The Personal Toll from Researching Supremacist, Hateful or Violent Ideologies

IRMS Executive Director Alex DiBranco will facilitate a session discussing the mental and emotional toll of immersion in research that involves processing supremacist, hateful, or violent rhetoric and ideology. DiBranco was interviewed in 2019 an NPR article(link is external) on the toll of reading misogynist rhetoric for research, the lack of support systems for this kind of work in academia, and finding spaces that can provide support and community. Joan Braune will present on Balancing Boundaries, Empathy, and Self/Community Care in Research on the Far-Right. Braune teaches philosophy at Gonzaga University, serves on the International Council of Experts for the Gonzaga Institute for Hate Studies, and has assisted community activist responses in Spokane, Washington to incidents involving fascist and far-right groups. Discussion from researchers about their challenges and strategies in doing this work is encouraged.

1:20pm – 2:30pm: Discussion and Q&A

Best Practices for Research on the Right-Wing and Supremacist Ideologies

Dr. Emily Carian will lead a session geared toward early career researchers discussing best practices for research on the right-wing and supremacist ideologies developed by the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, from building a dissertation committee to conducting interviews with challenging subjects. Carian is an Assistant Professor at California State University, San Bernardino, a co-founder of IRMS, and runs the institute’s mentoring program. ECRs are encouraged to come prepared with questions to ask.

Thursday, August 6th

8:30am – 10:10am: Panel Presentations

Geographies of the Right

Chair: Ida Birkvad

Panelists:

  1. Justice Delayed is Assimilation Denied: Right-wing Terror and Immigrants’ Assimilation in Germany, Sumit S. Deole, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
  2. Right-wing Authoritarianism and the (Sub)urban Fringe / #(Sub)urbanfringe, Jason Luger, Northumbria University
  3. Spatial Heterogeneity in the Intergenerational Persistence of Political Behavior: The Case of Far-Right Support in Germany, Berenike Schott, Columbia University
  4. A Case Study of Adversarial Imaginaries in Canada, Stephen J. Neville, York University

10:20am – 12:00pm: Panel Presentations

Conflicts of Nationalism

Chair: Martina Avanza

Panelists:

  1. From Climate Denialism to Climate Nationalism: Religion, the Right, and Environmental Politics, Matthew Hartman, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
  2. The ‘Right’ Road to Pluralism: Canadian Fascism and the True Origins of Multiculturalism, Bàrbara Molas, York University
  3. America, Look at Spain!: The American Right and Francisco Franco, David Austin Walsh, Princeton University
  4. The Legacy of Golden Dawn: Its Rise and Fall as the Normalization of the Right-wing Politics in Greece, Dimitra Mareta, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

The Far-Right in 2020: Supremacist and Authoritarian Mobilization in the United States and Europe

The Far-Right in 2020: Supremacist and Authoritarian Mobilization in the United States and Europe

August 6, 2020

Speakers: Dr. Terri Givens and Dr. Lawrence Rosenthal

Moderator: Alex DiBranco, IRMS Executive Director

Dr. Terri Givens and Dr. Lawrence Rosenthal speak to present-day white and male supremacist mobilization and discourses on the far-right in the United States and Europe, from the Boogaloo Bois and anti-lockdown protests to misogyny, racism, and anti-Semitism on college campuses. 

Dr Terri Givens is the CEO and Founder of the Center for Higher Education Leadership. She is the author/editor of a many books and articles, including Legislating Equality: The Politics of Antidiscrimination Policy in Europe and Voting Radical Right in Western Europe. Her forthcoming book, Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides, is scheduled for publication in February 2021. Givens has written and given talks on subjects including Trumpism, populism, and centering racism in scholarship on the radical right in Europe. Follow her on Twitter @TerriGivens.

Dr. Lawrence Rosenthal is Chair of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies. He has studied the Right in the United States and in Italy, and has taught at UC Berkeley in the Sociology and Italian Studies Departments and was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Naples. Rosenthal co-edited Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party and The New Nationalism and the First World War and is author of the forthcoming Empire of Resentment: Populism’s Toxic Embrace of Nationalism (New Press) that will be released September 8, 2020. His work has appeared in numerous publications including the Nation, the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Foreign Policy, and many others.

Sponsored by: The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism

Co-sponsored by: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies.

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