The University of East London's CMRB (Centre for research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging) is pleased to announce the following seminar:
Secessionism, Separatism and Survivalism in America: Racism and White Supremacy in Times of Perceived Crisis
This seminar will take place in EB G.06, Docklands Campus, UEL, E16 2RD
http://www.uel.ac.uk/about/campuses/docklands/
Monday 2nd March 2014, 4–6pm
The event is free but space is limited so please reserve a place at
aaronwinter.eventbrite.co.uk
Abstract: Just prior to, and following, the election of Obama for a second term in 2011/12, there were widespread reports of far-right activists stating their intention to leave the United States as exiles, secede from it or create their own nation out of fear of the alleged threat he poses to white Christian America. In addition to such secessionism and separatism, there has also been a rise in far and more 'mainstream' right-wing survivalism (which emerged in the context of Obama's first election and the economic crisis). Yet, this far-right secessionism, separatism and survivalism, as well as race-based anti-government enmity, have their origins in the post-civil rights 1970s, as responses to the effects of the perceived loss of white supremacy brought about by Civil Rights. Corresponding to this, it was a period that also saw a transformation of far-right racism, from that which asserted and assumed white supremacy and hegemony over African-Americans and the nation to those that asserted and assumed white victimhood and persecution by a federal government that abandoned them. This paper will trace the history of white secessionism, separatism and survivalism, as well as corresponding responses on the far and mainstream right to whiteness 'in crisis' in the post-civil rights era. I argue that they both emerge (and converge) as responses to social, political and economic 'crisis points' that encourage or exacerbate right wing fears about the state of the nation and racial anxieties (albeit ones based on more structural political and economic issues), including not only civil rights and Obama, but Vietnam, the cold war, oil and farm crises, and 9/11.
Dr Aaron Winter is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of East London. His research is on organised racism, right-wing extremism and terrorism. He is co-editor of Discourses and Practices of Terrorism: Interrogating Terror (Routledge, Critical Terrorism Studies, 2010) and Reflexivity in Criminological Research Experiences with the Powerful and the Powerless (Palgrave, 2014), and co-convenor of the British Sociological Association's (BSA) Race and Ethnicity Study Group.
For more info on CMRB: uel.ac.uk/cmrb
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