Racial Nationalism, Genocide and Security
- 6 hour course by Martin Shaw (IBEI-University of Sussex- University of Roehampton)
- June 28 & 29 (10:00 - 13:00h CEST)
- Format: online
What is the role of racism in nationalist politics and mass violence? This provocative short course, dealing with theoretical, historical and topical concerns, brings together some of the latest arguments in genocide research with contemporary research on racial nationalism and the right, to address this question.
The first session will discuss a major new study, The Problems of Genocide, in which Dirk Moses (senior editor of the Journal of Genocide Research) argues that rather than racial hatred - such as Nazi antisemitism - the pursuit of ‘permanent security’ is the main driver of violence against populations and this concept should even displace ‘genocide’. In this session, Martin Shaw (the author of What is Genocide? and other books on the subject), will introduce and evaluate Moses’ argument, in a wide-ranging critical introduction to the state of genocide studies.
The second session will introduce Shaw’s own forthcoming book Strategic Hostility, which makes a parallel argument that politically significant racism in contemporary Western democracies (discussed mainly through the case of Brexit) is not driven by hatred as such, but orchestrates hostility against immigrants for strategic electoral ends.