Far-right activists as moral subjects

Far-right activists as moral subjects

Speaker | Agnieszka Pasieka

Abstract: Drawing on a long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Italian, Polish, and Hungarian youth far-right militants, in my talk I will discuss the importance of anthropological engagements with the far right. In presenting a few case studies, I will reflect on what insights ethnographic research can offer about why people join far-right movements and why they remain active in them. Next, I will focus on the ethical-moral project the activists claim to pursue, situating it in the broader context of the so-called illiberal turn. Finally, I will discuss the wider implications of this research by discussing what we can learn about political mobilization, and also what such a study tells us about the discipline of anthropology, its strengths and weaknesses.

Agnieszka Pasieka (University of Montreal)

Bio: Agnieszka Pasieka is an assistant professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Montreal. Her work focuses on political mobilization, activism and social movements, and explores how different social actors mobilize to address inequality and power hierarchies and what kind of alternative world they envision. She is the author of ‘Hierarchy and pluralism: living religious difference in Catholic Poland’ (Palgrave 2015) and ‘Living right: far-right youth activists in contemporary Europe’ (Princeton University Press 2024), as well as numerous journal publications on religious pluralism, religious and ethnic minorities, multiculturalism, postsocialist transformation, and, most recently, far-right movements, nationalism and fascism. Her new project tackles the problem of far-right environmental politics.