Agora
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Gallaher-banner-600x403.png)
In your article “Mainstreaming White Supremacy: A Twitter Analysis of the American 'Alt-Right,’” you discuss White identity politics. Some conservatives reject the notion of identity politics, but the so-called Alt-right…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Onishi-banner-600x403.png)
Thanks for joining us Bradley and congratulations on your book Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next. I want to start with a…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Minkenberg-Vegh-banner-600x403.png)
Thanks for joining us, Michael and Zsuzsanna. I wanted to start with your new book Depleting Democracies: Radical Right Impact on Parties, Policies, and Polities in Eastern Europe. Early on…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Yascha-Mounk-banner-600x403.png)
Yascha Mounk, thank you for joining us. I wanted to begin with Persuasion, your community on Substack. Why do you think it's important to have this defense of free speech…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/van-Dijk-banner-600x403.png)
Teun, thank you very much for joining us. Your work has long been located at the intersection of studying racism, ideology, and discourse. I’d like to start there, as you…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Venizelos-banner-600x403.png)
Giorgos, you have recently published the insightful Populism in Power: Discourse and Performativity in SYRIZA and Donald Trump. As the title suggests, you conceive of populism as “a performative mode…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Brubaker-banner-600x403.png)
Rogers, unlike some scholars of populism, you define populism along two dimensions: the vertical, characterized by inequality between groups, and the horizontal, describing the differences between insiders and outsiders. Can you…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Enyedi-banner-600x403.png)
Zsolt, thank you very much for joining us. You have just published a working paper entitled “Ideologies of Autocratization.” In it, you point to the various ideologies that underlay autocratization…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/James-J-Fahey-banner-1-600x403.png)
James, you’ve made a great contribution to the discourse on populism’s relationship with democracy, noting that the election of populists decreases non-populist voters’ satisfaction with democracy. As you and your…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Vandiver_agora-banner-600x403.png)
In your May 2020 article, “Alt-Virilities: Masculinism, Rhizomatics, and the Contradictions of the American Alt-Right” you discuss the lack of research on masculine elements of fascist movements. What is masculinism…
![Petra Guasti banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Petra-Guasti-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
Petra, you're currently working on a sort of meta-literature review on populism and pandemic, can you give us a 'preview' of what the main findings are? With Mattia Zulianello (University…
![benjamin_teitelbaum_lg-768x484](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/benjamin_teitelbaum_lg-768x484-1-600x403.jpg)
Benjamin, you are an ethnomusicologist by training. How did you move from ethnomusicology to studying the far right and the role of music in far-right culture? Do you think we…
![Charlotte McDonald-Gibson banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Charlotte-McDonald-Gibson-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
Charlotte, you just released your new book, Far Out: Encounters with Extremists, a fascinating dive into the extremist realm. One of the themes that emerges from your encounters is a…
![Natalie Koch banner (1)](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Natalie-Koch-banner-1-600x403-1.jpg)
Natalie, your research on political geographies has brought you closer to the study of authoritarianism and/or illiberalism. In the recent collective volume you edited, Spatializing Authoritarianism, you write about the…
![Philipp Lottholz banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Philipp-Lottholz-banner-600x403.png)
Philipp, you just published Post-Liberal Statebuilding in Central Asia. Imagineries, Discourses, and Practices of Social Ordering. Could you first tell why post-liberalism seems to you the right conceptual framework to…
![Levente Littvay](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Levente-Littvay-1-600x403.jpeg)
Levente, you have been working on populism both in Europe and in the US. Let’s begin with your research on political psychology. You look at the sometimes conspiratorial nature of…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Marc-Lazar-600x403.jpg)
Marc, France has just entered a new political phase, with Emmanuel Macron embarking on his second term in office. But some weeks later he did not succeed to obtain the…
![Jack Bratich](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Jack-Bratich-600x403-1.jpg)
Jack, you just published On Microfascism. Can you begin by giving us a definition of the term? How is it different from previously conceived notions of fascism? Most studies of…
![Halil Yenigun](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Halil-Yenigun-600x403.jpg)
Halil, you have just published a great chapter on Turkey in the Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism. Oftentimes, we tend to use several concepts such as populism, illiberalism, and authoritarianism simultaneously,…
![Vit Hlousek banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Vit-Hlousek-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
Vít, you have been working on political transformations in Central Europe. In Differential Illiberalism: Classifying Illiberal Trends in Central European Party Politics, you explain that each Central European country has…
![Bruno-Tertrais banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Bruno-Tertrais-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
Bruno, you have published The Revenge of History (La revanche de l’histoire), a book devoted to the role of the past in today’s world. Do you see the “return of…
![Zurn Boerzel banner 2](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Zurn-Boerzel-banner-2-600x403-1.jpg)
Tanja and Michael, you work on the liberal script and its contestations. How do you see Russia’s war against Ukraine impacting the field of liberalism? Some, like Francis Fukuyama, seem…
![Seyward Darby banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Seyward-Darby-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
In Sisters in Hate, you discuss the “soft power” that women bring to the hate movement. What are the different ways women’s soft power contributes to the hate movement and…
![Rada-Ivekovic](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Rada-Ivekovic-600x403.jpeg)
Rada, you have been an acute observer of our societies’ transformations for decades. I would like to begin our discussion by looking at Russia’s war against Ukraine. How does the…
![Mondon and Winter banner 2](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Mondon-and-Winter-banner-2-600x403.png)
In 2020, you published a reference book, Reactionary Democracy. How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream. Let’s begin by discussing a methodological and epistemological question. In your book,…
![Tomas Gold banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Tomas-Gold-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
You have been working on illiberal movements and populism in Latin America. In your article “The Rise of the Contentious Right,” co-authored with Alejandro Peña, you talk about the ways…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Joshua-A.-Tait-600x403.jpeg)
Joshua, you work on U.S. conservative intellectual traditions. In a recent Twitter thread you offer that the right’s power will remain potent for the next couple decades—at least. Can you…
![Milada Vachudova banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Milada-Vachudova-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
How profoundly is Russia's war against Ukraine transforming Europe? As I write this, it is already the 25th day of Russia's brutal war against Ukraine. The world is admiring the incredible…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ruth-Wodak-600x403.jpeg)
Ruth, you have been working for years on populism from a linguistic and semiotic perspective–an approach that remains under-studied in the global political science-oriented discussions on populism. You recently published…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Andrea-Peto-600x403.jpeg)
Andrea, you have been working for years on gender and populism/illiberalism, and more recently on issues of academic freedom in illiberal environments. Let’s begin with a broad question. In your…
![Steven Livingston banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Steven-Livingston-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
Steven, you have been working for years on media ecosystems and their role in our liberal democracies. You recently co-edited The Disinformation Age in 2019 and are currently leading a…
![Marco Garrido banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Marco-Garrido-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
Marco, in your book The Patchwork City: Class, Space, and Politics in Metro Manila, you discuss how neoliberal reforms have impacted the Philippine middle class and reshaped urban social structures…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Yuval-Shany-and-Mordechai-Kremnitzer-600x403.jpeg)
In a recent article, you compare Israel, Poland, and Hungary, looking at measures directed at limiting the power of the judiciary and civil society. What are the main differences and…
![Lenka Buštíková banner](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Lenka-Bustikova-banner-600x403-1.jpg)
Your book, Extreme Reactions: Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe, seeks to explain why there is strong support in Eastern Europe for radical right parties. Could you expand a little…
![Stijn van Kessel banner (1)](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Stijn-van-Kessel-banner-1-600x403-1.jpg)
Stijn, you work on populism, Euroscepticism, and pro-European activism. Let’s begin by discussing the relationship of populist parties with the European Union. How has Brexit influenced European populists when it came…
![Daniele Albertazzi headshot](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Daniele-Albertazzi-headshot-600x403-1.jpg)
Daniele, you have been working on Italian populist and radical right movements and recently co-authored Populism in Europe: Lessons from Umberto Bossi’s Northern League. Can we begin by discussing what…
![Hilary Silver headshot](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Hilary-Silver-headshot-600x403-1.jpg)
Hilary, you recently published with your Brown University doctoral student, Svenja Kopyciok an article on left-wing xenophobia in Europe and, counter-intuitively, you found a surprisingly large share of those who…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Mabel-M.-Berezin-600x403.jpeg)
Mabel, I would like to begin with a broad question on your global approach, as your work has focused on the link between cultural and political sociology. Your first book…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Emmy-Eklundh-600x403.jpeg)
Emmy, let’s start with a question about the broad conceptual framework on which your work is based, namely the role of emotions in politics and its connection to populism. Could…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anna-Grzymala-Busse-600x403.jpeg)
Anna, you have been working for several years on political parties, political competition, and parties exiting from the communist system. What is the role of ideology in this transformation and…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Reece-Peck-600x403.jpeg)
Reece, you published a few years ago Fox Populism. Branding Conservatism as Working Class, a major piece on research on the transformation of rightist political culture in the US. In…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Armando-Chaguaceda-600x403.jpeg)
Armando, you have been working on democratization; democratic decay, populism and authoritarianism; and the role of global powers such as Russia and China in Latin American politics. Let’s begin with…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/A.-James-McAdams-600x403.jpeg)
Jim, you just edited Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy with Alejandro Castrillon.* Could you tell us the story behind the project and what you were aiming…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Peter-Kreko-600x403.jpeg)
Much of your work has focused on Hungary, particularly on the weakening of democratic values under Viktor Orbán. Your article, Explaining Eastern Europe: Orbán's Laboratory of Illiberalism, makes the claim…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Jurgen-Ruland-600x403.jpeg)
Jürgen, a decade ago you co-authored Give Jesus a Hand! Charismatic Christians: Populist Religion and Politics in the Philippines. A decade later, how has charismatic Christianity evolved in the Philippines?…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Emre-Erdogan-and-Tugce-Ercetin-600x403.jpeg)
Tuğçe and Emre, in your research on populism in Turkey, you insist on the construction of a “we-ness” in order to mobilize voters. In today’s Turkey, who is the “we,” the…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Elzbieta-Korolczuk-600x403.jpeg)
Elżbieta, you have been working on the intersection of gender and politics in Poland. To begin with a broad question, do you see in the rise of right-wing populism—as embodied…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Cynthia-Miller-Idriss-600x403.jpeg)
Cynthia, you have been working on many different aspects of far-right culture, but I would like us to begin with your seminal Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Fabio-de-Sa-e-Silva-600x403.jpeg)
Fabio, you work on the role of lawyers in building illiberalism. We tend to see lawyers as the victims of illiberal governance. Yet in one of your latest articles, “From…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Melani-McAlister-600x403.jpeg)
Melani, in The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals, you invite the reader to move outside of the U.S. case to capture the incredible…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Paris-Aslanidis-600x403.jpeg)
Paris, you have been working on the notion of populism for years, and in a major article, you refute the vision of populism as a (thin) ideology in favor of…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Takis-S.-Pappas-600x403.jpeg)
In your book Populism and Liberal Democracy: A Comparative and Theoretical Analysis (Oxford, 2019), you speak of democratic illiberalism, thereby reversing the terms used in Zakaria’s famous text on illiberal…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Phillip-W.-Gray-600x403.jpeg)
Phillip, in “Revealing the Alt-Right: Exploring Alt-Right History, Thinkers and Ideas for Public Officials,” you discuss how the slow death of “fusional” mainstream conservatism has resulted in the explosion of…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Sean-Hanley-600x403.jpeg)
In your research on Central Europe, you criticized the way in which scholars have assumed, based on rational and historical institutionalist arguments, that the region would democratize. Have we missed…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Jose-Javier-Olivas-Osuna-600x403.jpeg)
Jose Javier, you have been working on Spain and Portugal and on their military culture. I would like to begin our discussion with a broad question on that legacy. Do you…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Pawel-Surowiec-600x403.jpeg)
Paweł, the literature on democratic backsliding tends to underplay the role of media as structurally altering political dynamics. You have been researching the articulation between media and the rise of…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Zsolt-Kortvelyesi-600x403.jpeg)
Zsolt, you recently co-authored a significant article, “The ‘Insecurity Toolbox’ of the Illiberal Regime: Rule by Law and Rule by Exclusion,” that explains the three key securitization mechanisms used by…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Aliaksei-Kazharski-600x403.jpeg)
Aliaksei, you have been working for several years on Slovak populist parties. Can you briefly tell us about their similarities to—and differences from—those in the other Central European countries? Slovakia…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Timea-Drinoczi-and-Agnieszka-Bien-Kacala-600x403.jpeg)
Tímea and Agnieszka, you will soon be publishing Illiberal Constitutionalism in Poland and Hungary: The Deterioration of Democracy, Misuse of Human Rights and Abuse of the Rule of Law (Routledge).…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Mitchell-A.-Orenstein-and-Maria-Snegovaya-600x403.jpeg)
You have been working, both together and individually, on the political economy of populism. Could you tell us why you think this understudied aspect of populism is key to understanding…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Filippo-Costa-Buranelli-600x403.jpeg)
You have been working in the framework of the English School on the transformation of the world order and the structuring of authoritarian and/or illiberal regimes, looking at the case…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Alexandra-Yatsyk-and-Andrey-Makarychev-1-600x403.jpeg)
You have both been working for several years on the concept of biopolitics as applied to Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia. Can we talk about the rise of an…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Christophe-Jaffrelot-600x403.jpeg)
Christophe Jaffrelot on the Transformation of India into an Illiberal Democracy, the Rise of Hindu Nationalism, and Modi’s National-Populism as India’s Upper-Class Counter-Revolution
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Jerome-Jamin-600x403.jpeg)
Jérôme, you worked for a long time on the populist tradition in the United States. Can you tell us its main defining characteristics on the Republican spectrum? There is a…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Samy-Cohen--600x403.jpeg)
Would you qualify Israel as an “illiberal democracy,” i.e., as a country that has functional democratic institutions but where public opinion is shifting toward illiberal values? Israel is a hybrid…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Vaclav-Stetka-and-Sabina-Mihelj-600x403.jpeg)
Václav and Sabina, you run a research project called The Illiberal Turn. As our program is called the Illiberalism Studies Program, I first would like your assessment of the term—adjective…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Colin-Dueck-600x403.jpeg)
Your new book, Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism, defines conservative nationalism as one of the central features of the Republican Party’s culture over decades. Could you briefly summarize for…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Noah-Tucker-600x403.jpeg)
You have been following jihadism for several years, trying to disentangle the personal trajectory of jihadists and our ideological (mis)reading of the reasons for their engagement. Could you tell us…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/David-Lewis-600x403.jpeg)
David, you just published Russia’s New Authoritarianism. Putin and the Politics of Order . You explain that the Russian regime has been articulating a “chaos versus order” narrative as one of its…
![](https://www.illiberalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Cas-Mudde-600x403.jpeg)
Our program uses the term of illiberalism. It defines it as a strain of political culture that, over the past two decades, has emerged in response to liberalism as experienced by various…