by Jishnu Guha-Majumdar, Queen’s University, Ontario
As protestors stormed the US Capitol in early January, the ensuing spectacle of Jake Angeli – clad in far-right tattoos, American flag face-paint and animal skin – cut a striking image. Here Jishnu Guha-Majumdar takes Angeli’s representation seriously: as the new face of white-supremacy. A force which has always been concerned with dominion of the earth, the designation of proper humans, and an environmentalism destined to exclude.
by Jules Joanne Gleeson
Following our piece last month which argues the UK government has weaponised the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) by failing to act on its public consultation on gender transitioning; here Gleeson reconstructs how the UK got here, analyses the toxic debate we find ourselves immersed within and what needs to be done to productively move forward.
By Chris Griffin, University of Brighton
Last month, the UK government finally published its response to the 2018 public consultation on the Gender Recogniton Act. Trans activists and allies, alongside leading charities, have described the response as ‘lacklustre’ and thoroughly insufficient to support those who are transitioning. Here Chris Griffin goes further and argues that the government’s response has the effect of ‘weaponising’ the law against the movement for trans liberation.
by Jove Jim S. Aguas, Paolo A. Bolaños and Jovito V. Cariño, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines
The Philippine Congress has recently passed a law: the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. Here academics from the University of Santo Tomas’ Department of Philosophy warn of the act’s potential dangers. The current regime now has the capacity, if it so wishes, to implement a permanent state of exception and martial rule without ever naming it as such.
by Annie Whilby, University of Brighton
As Brighton prepares for its second mass demonstration since the death of George Floyd, Annie Whilby argues for the need to demand tangible change when fighting systemic racism to prevent efforts becoming performative.
by Clare Woodford, University of Brighton
During these days of coronavirus lockdown, online discussion abounds as to whether populism, purportedly on the rise before lockdown, will be helped or hindered by the pandemic. But will exclusionary forms of populism and free-market liberalism be the only politically salient choices once the lockdown is over?
by Michele Diana da Luz, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil
As the daily cases of COVID-19 continue to rise in Brazil, Michele Diane da Luz analyses three key moments in the political response to the pandemic that may come to define it in a country with the second highest number cases in the world. She argues that Brazil is facing both an economic and a political crisis in the midst of this health crisis.
by Gustavo Guille, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
In 2019 Argentina elected a coalition government representing left-wing populist movements and traditional labour movements, after years of neoliberal reforms. As the COVID-19 pandemic takes hold, the question of who will pay for the debt incurred to manage the crisis remains unanswered. Gustavo proposes that the recent elections could not be more crucial to any forthcoming answers.
by Wojciech Ufel, University of Wrocław, Poland
Amidst the COVID-19 crisis, the Polish government have engaged biopolitics in order to introduce new paradigms of governing, but with a peculiar twist: doing it not through the state of exception, but by denying it.
by Gökhan Şensönmez, Bilkent University in Turkey.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced numerous states to declare a state of emergency in order to take extra-ordinary measures. Although the list includes advanced capitalist-democratic polities, countries characterized by backsliding democracies and populist-authoritarian leaders such as Brazil and Hungary face the risk of further curtailment of rights and freedoms. On the other hand Turkey, an important member of the same classification, is adapting its ‘ordinary politics’ to its ‘new crisis’.
