British Sociological Association (BSA) Annual Conference 2025: Social Transformations Plenary/Keynote:

What can Sociology say about right-wing extremism and the mainstreaming of racism and the far right

Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed a resurgence of an increasingly emboldened and mainstreamed far right in Britain and globally. In response, there has been a groundswell of academic interest and analysis. Despite obvious relevance, sociology has not played a significant role in a field that is dominated by political science, terrorism studies, and preventing/countering violent extremism (P/CVE), as well as their often normative, system-supportive ‘problem solving’ frameworks and assumptions. In this academic context, as in wider society and politics, the far right is often exceptionalised, treated as a proxy for both racism and class inequality, and represented as a primary threat to social relations, the political mainstream, the state and democracy. The far right are rarely treated as part of the mainstream or linked to wider structural and systemic issues and inequalities, notably racism, with which sociology engages, while a focus on the exceptional and extreme distract from and even reinforce these. In this talk, Aaron Winter will examine what sociology in general, and sociology of race and racism in particular, can offer to help us understand the far right and its place and function within white supremacy and racial capitalism, as well as point a way forward to more critical scholarship and radical responses that address not only the far right, but the system that underpins it.