21st Century Far Right: new faces, same targets

Please check ticket info for this event below, incl. information about access.

A space to consider how we meet the current challenge of the far right - through class solidarity, clarity of purpose & community building, in part inspired by a piece in Interregnum by Panos Theodoropoulos on The Limits of Organising.

Our panel explores how precarity & capitalism are real sources of discontent and 'free speech' discourse has been wielded to shift the overton window while migrant, refugee & trans lives are weaponised to suit a reactionary narrative.

From culture wars to class war - It’s long past time to dispel the myths & untruths used to mobilise the right and fracture solidarities. Practical, pragmatic and incisive, our panel offers up an evening to galvanise.

Our Speakers:

Talat Yaqoob is a third-sector leader, writer and campaigner, focused on equality issues across politics, public life and the labour market; in particular championing women, communities of colour and migrants. She was the Director of Equate Scotland, co-founder and Chair of the campaign group Women 50:50 and she won the Write to End Violence Against Women Award in 2017 and the Saltire Scotland Outstanding Women of 2018 award. Recently she was part of forming Women Against The Far Right Scotland.

Anshuman Mondal is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of East Anglia. His research focusses on the construction of modern social and political identities, and the cultural politics attendant upon them. A cultural historian of colonial and post-colonial South Asia and the Middle East, he has written extensively on nationalism, communalism and religious politics, and the constitution of a racialized modernity in both global South societies and western liberal democracies. He has published extensively on Islamism, on young British Muslims, on Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh, and also on Brexit. His books on these topics include Nationalism and Post-colonial Identity: Culture and Ideology in India and Egypt (2003), Amitav Ghosh (2007), and Young British Muslim Voices (2008).

Panos Theodoropoulos is a sociologist currently employed as Lecturer in Critical Social Science at the Centre for Public Policy Research in the School of Education, Communication and Society. Outside of academia, he is an editor, author, and founding member of the Interregnum collective, an autonomous platform that aims to make critical theory relevant and accessible. He is also actively involved with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He is the author of The Precarious Migrant Worker.

Our host:

Pavan Mano is a cultural theorist working in contemporary literature and cultural studies. He received his PhD in English Literature & Cultural Studies from King’s College London, and his research engages with critical and literary theory. His first monograph, Straight Nation examines postcolonial nationalism and its intersections with race, gender, and sexuality. Drawing on a range of texts such as political biographies, legal texts, archival records, oral histories and more, the book shows how states can cultivate, fertilize, and propagate ideas of "good" and "bad" members of society.

*Please note that masks will be required at this event (as with all Lighthouse events).

*Accessibility: All events will be professionally filmed & livestreamed. The Roxy is wheelchair accessible (including toilets) and we'll have provisions for neurodivergent guests including stims, quiet space and colour-coded lanyards.

*Events are £5 or free -we completely understand paying for one or two events and then getting free spots for others. The Radical Book Fair is entirely bookshop run and ticket sales are vital to keeping the fair sustainable and paying all our speakers so all support is heartily welcome!

*Featured books: The book & ticket option will select the most recently published book at any given event, if you’re not sure which book you want or don’t want that featured book, then buy a £5 voucher ticket that can be used for any of the books below. There are also DONATION TICKETS which are £10, listed as a 'book', please note these are not redeemable at the fair, and rather a much appreciated contribution to the Fair's running costs,

*If you'd like to help make the book fair accessible to more folks, please consider adding to our pay-it-forward fund HERE.