the Right Archives - Public Seminar

North America

A Martyr and a Meme

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Walter Benjamin’s politics of spectacle should serve as a warning to Trump’s America

September 17, 2025 • by Benjamin Andrew Schupmann

Within minutes of the deadly shot, millions of viewers across the digital public sphere saw right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s last moments in full graphic horror, from multiple angles. Each clip was pared down to shareable content. His death made him at once a martyr and meme. German philosopher Walter Benjamin, writing ...

Democracy

Can Art Reimagine Freedom of Speech?

Curators Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich discuss Studies into Darkness

November 1, 2022 • by Carin Kuoni, Laura Raicovich and Lindsey Scharold

Building up to the Trump presidency in the U.S. and, at the same time, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian regimes in democracies in Europe, Hungary, and Italy years prior to that, it seemed very important to look at the Right and its complete embrace of freedom of speech in ...

Media

Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

Journalism, when done right, should change a person

November 9, 2021 • by John Stoehr

Members of the Washington press corps like to tell a story about the heroes of the Washington press corps “holding power to account.” This seems noble, and it can be, but more often than not, it’s not noble. In practice, what “holding power to account” means is countering the dominance over ...

Europe & Central Asia

Goodbye Merkel, Hello … Who?

The German election and what’s to come

September 29, 2021 • by Nicolas Allié

One thing is clear about the 2021 German election: it is going to be consequential. Long-time chancellor and ostensible champion of democratic values, Angela Merkel, is leaving after 16 years in office. The consequences of this action are still uncertain. Germany’s electoral system is unique. Voters elect representatives to the German parliament, or Bundestag, and they cast two votes. The first is for who will represent ...

Feature

How An Anti-LGBT Agenda Helped Secure Bolsonaro’s Election Victory

What does the election of a right-wing president mean for Brazilian democracy?

November 29, 2018 • by Gustavo Gomes da Costa Santos

This October, Brazilians went to the polls to choose a new president in the most polarized election since the end of military rule in 1985. In a highly fragmented election between 13 candidates, Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), a right-wing retired captain known for his homophobic, racist ...

How An Anti-LGBT Agenda Helped Secure Bolsonaro’s Election Victory

Feature

Trump’s Tariffs, Weight Watchers for Teenagers, Disneyland Workers

Past Present Episode 122

March 17, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Natalia, Neil, and Niki debate President Trump’s proposed tariffs, Weight Watchers’ bid for teenage dieters, and Disneyland’s underpaid workers.

...

Trump’s Tariffs, Weight Watchers for Teenagers, Disneyland Workers

Blue Monday

The Fables of Our Faubus

Jeff Sessions, man of justice

March 12, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington Jefferson Beauregard Sessions has fallen on hard times. A celebrated Alabamian and Man of the South, he came out for Donald Trump long before any other national Republican politician, and then gave up his very ...

Blue Monday

Strange Fruit

An improvisation on race, hybrid identities, and the blues

March 5, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington February was Black History Month. The Republican Party apparently decided to commemorate this by organizing a reception on February 26 to honor Black Republicans. Not invited was Michael Steele, the first African-American to chair the Republican National Committee ...

Blue Monday

Brown and Blue

Further thoughts on gun violence, fascism, and resistance

February 26, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington I’m still moanin’ about the high school massacre in Parkdale, Florida. Moaning, and thinking. About guns, and politics, and history. The massacre was horrendous, but also distinctively compelling, insofar as the extraordinary response of the Marjory Stoneman ...

Feature

How (Not) to React to the Far Right in Germany

On the attempt to respond to the rise of the AfD Party

October 12, 2017 • by Philipp Nielsen

Even though this result was in line with the last pre-election polls, this success has come as a shock to Germany’s other parties. Since the results were announced, the country’s political and journalistic classes have been engaged in a collective soul-searching to account for the AfD’s rise. A good amount ...

Feature

Phyllis Schlafly and Donald Trump: not-so-strange bedfellows

April 18, 2016 • by Claire Potter

Phyllis Schlafly’s conservative manifesto, A Choice, Not an Echo, has a quote on the cover that is as fresh today as when it was first published in May 1964. Under a picture of the author (in perfectly styled hair and two strings of pearls) a caption promises to tell “the ...

Phyllis Schlafly and Donald Trump: not-so-strange bedfellows

Uncategorized

Orbán’s Politics of Fear and Hatred in Hungary

On a European nation’s far-right response to the refugee crisis

December 23, 2015 • by János Kis

Although the position on the migrant issue put forward by the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is morally hard to digest, many people think it is nevertheless the only way to save Europe from the flood of masses that threatens to destabilize the continent. I dispute this ...