Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a panel discussion among Kathleen Belew, Christian Martin (moderator), Paul Middelhoff, and Cynthia Miller-Idriss on the rise of the far-right in Germany and the U.S.
Far-right, white supremacist groups are on the rise both in Germany and the United States. Perhaps most troubling about this consolidation and fortification of far-right movements in both places, is their proximity to and infiltration of law enforcement and state institutions. In Germany, an elite special forces unit was disbanded after it became clear it had been infiltrated by far-right extremists, and a recent nationwide report found more than 1,400 cases of suspected far-right extremism among security services. In the U.S., law enforcement has actively downplayed domestic terrorist threats, in spite of clear evidence that a majority of terrorist plots in the United States this year were carried out by far-right groups. How did we get here? What factors have contributed to the rise of the far-right? And what might an approach to confronting right-wing extremism – both in the armed forces as well as in the general population – look like in Germany and the United States?
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About the panelists:
Kathleen Belew specializes in the recent history of the United States, examining the long aftermath of warfare. Her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2018, paperback 2019), explores how white power activists wrought a cohesive social movement through a common story about warfare and its weapons, uniforms, and technologies. By uniting previously disparate Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead, and other groups, the movement carried out escalating acts of violence that reached a crescendo in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City. Belew is at work on a forthcoming co-edited collection, Field Guide to the History of Hate(University of California Press, anticipated Spring 2020), as well as a new book on gun violence and the history of the 1990s. Her award-winning teaching centers on the broad themes of history of the present, conservatism, race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war. Belew has held postdoctoral fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2019-20), Northwestern University, and Rutgers University. Her research has received the support of the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, as well as an Albert J. Beveridge and John F. Enders grants for research in Mexico and Nicaragua. She earned her BA in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington in 2005, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities. Her MPhil (2008) and PhD (2011) in American Studies are from Yale University.
Christian Martin (moderator) is a professor of political science at the University of Kiel, Germany. He currently holds the Max Weber Chair in German and European Studies at New York University. Christian Martin studied political science at the University of Konstanz and holds a doctorate from there (2002). He was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz and at the Max-Planck-Institute in Jena (2003–2004). He was an assistant professor at the University of Hamburg (2004–2008) and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University (2008–2011). Christian Martin’s research interests focus on the political conditions and consequences of globalization and regional integration. He has published, inter alia, on the effects of globalization for electoral participation and on the incentive to adopt more proportional voting systems in a highly globalized environment. His current research project is on backlashes against globalization and EU integration, including the electoral success of the far right AfD and the demise of social democracy.
Paul Middelhoff is an investigative reporter and covers national security for DIE ZEIT. He studied journalism at American University in Washington DC and Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and was trained at Henri-Nannen journalism school in Hamburg. Paul has worked as a correspondent for ZEIT ONLINE covering the 2016 US election while being based in Washington D.C. He spent the last three years investigating the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the New Right movement all over Europe. He also co-wrote a best-selling book in which he and his co-author uncover the financial networks, political connections and internal strategies of the German far right. His reporting won the Axel-Springer-Prize in silver and he was voted one of the Top 30 under 30 journalists in Germany by Medium-Magazin.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss is Professor of in the School of Public Affairs and in the School of Education, and runs the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) in the Center for University Excellence (CUE). Before her move into the School of Public Affairs in fall 2020, she was Professor of Education and Sociology at American University. In addition to her primary faculty appointments, Dr. Miller-Idriss is an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Justice, Law and Criminology in the School of Public Affairs. She is also Director of Strategy and Partnerships at the U.K.-based Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right and serves on the international advisory board of the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) in Oslo, Norway. She has spent two decades researching radical and extreme youth culture in Europe and the U.S., most recently through a focus on how clothing, style and symbols act as a gateway into white supremacist extremism. Dr. Miller-Idriss has testified before the U.S. Congress and frequently serves as a keynote speaker and expert panelist on trends in white supremacist extremism to global academic and policy communities as well as staff and representatives in U.S. and international government agencies and embassies. Dr. Miller-Idriss is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six academic books, including Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right, forthcoming from Princeton University Press in fall 2020. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Miller-Idriss writes frequently for the mainstream press on youth radicalization, white supremacist extremism, and education, with recent by-lines at CNN Style, The Guardian, Le Monde, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, and Fortune. Dr. Miller-Idriss appears regularly in the U.S. and European print and broadcast media as an expert source and political commentator, including recent appearances on NBC Evening News, MSNBC, BBC World News, Deutsche Welle, Sky News, France 24, and more. Prior to her arrival at American University in August 2013, Dr. Miller-Idriss served on the faculty of New York University for a decade, and also taught previously at the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. (magna cum laude) in Sociology and German Area Studies from Cornell University.
Attendance information:
To RSVP for this event, please click here. Registration is (as always) free and open to the general public. Only registered attendees will receive Zoom webinar information via email prior to the event. You can download Zoom here.
“The Rise of the Far-Right: A Transatlantic Comparison” is funded by the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).