Far-Right, Education and Violence
In the last decade the far-right, associated with white nationalism, identitarian politics, and nativist ideologies, has established itself as a major political force in the West, making substantial electoral gains across Europe, the USA, and Latin America, and coalescing with the populist movements of Trump, Brexit, and Boris Johnson’s 2019 election in the UK. This political shift represents a major new political force in the West that has rolled back the liberal internationalism that developed after WWI and shaped world institutions, globalization, and neoliberalism. It has also impacted upon the democracies of the West. Its historical origins date from the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, and Austria from the 1920s. In broad philosophical terms, the movement can be conceived as a reaction against the rationalism and individualism of liberal democratic societies, and a political revolt based on the philosophies of Nietzsche, Darwin, and Bergson that purportedly embraced irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism. This edited collection of essays by Michael A Peters and Tina Besley, taken from the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory, provides a philosophical discussion of the rise of the far-right and uses it as a canvas to understand the return of fascism, white supremacism, acts of terrorism, and related events, including the refugee crisis, the rise of authoritarian populism, the crisis of international education, and Trump’s ‘end of globalism’.
Michael A. Peters, FRSNZ is Distinguished Professor of Education at Beijing Normal University and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory and the Beijing International Review of Education. His interests are in education, philosophy, and social policy, and he is the author of over 100 books, including The Chinese Dream: Educating the Future (2019), Wittgenstein, Education and Rationality (2020), and Wittgenstein: Antifoundationalism, Technoscience and Education (2020).
Tina Besley
is Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Auckland. She is Founding President of the Association for Visual Pedagogies (AVP) and Immediate Past President of Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). She has published over 12 books and many articles and is deputy editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory,and an associate editor for the Beijing International Review of Education. She works closely with Professor Michael A. Peters and with a wide international network of scholars.