All over the world, we are currently observing deepening crises of liberal democracies and an intensification of authoritarian and neo-fascist tendencies. Emergencies of Authoritarianism is an international and interdisciplinary research project dedicated to deepening our understanding of this contemporary global constellation of authoritarianisms. ‘Emergencies’ implies emergences: It captures the heterogeneous genealogies of authoritarianism both in their spatial specificity and their temporal transformations and shifts. More importantly, ‘Emergencies’ also connect scientific analysis with democratic intervention: An emergency is an urgent situation that demands an immediate response. We therefore strive in to combine scientific analysis with the search for practical perspectives for policy making, alliance building and concrete solidarity.

All over the world, we are currently observing deepening crises of liberal democracies and an intensification of authoritarian and neo-fascist tendencies. Emergencies of Authoritarianism is an international and interdisciplinary research project dedicated to deepening our understanding of this contemporary global constellation of authoritarianisms. ‘Emergencies’ implies emergences: It captures the heterogeneous genealogies of authoritarianism both in their spatial specificity and their temporal transformations and shifts. More importantly, ‘Emergencies’ also connect scientific analysis with democratic intervention: An emergency is an urgent situation that demands an immediate response. We therefore strive in to combine scientific analysis with the search for practical perspectives for policy making, alliance building and concrete solidarity.

December 1, 2025 / 12.30 EST / 6.30 CEST

Fortress Fascism: Border Authoritarianism and Activist Struggles

 

Across the world, border authoritarianism is fueled by racism and anti-immigrant rhetorics: fortification doubles down, whilst immigrants and refugees are scapegoated. Yet, the increasing fortification also reflects deeper fictions. The modern nation-state, born from colonial violence and predicated on exclusion, now creates a breeding ground for fascist ideologies that feed on emotions. This international panel brings together scholars and activists resisting borders across the world to consider anti-fascist strategies in light of the psychic frontiers that borders entrench.
 
An online conversation with Nandita Sharma (activist scholar in the No Borders movement and movements struggling for the Planetary Commons, author of “Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants”), Silky Shah (executive director of Detention Watch Network (US) and author of “Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition”), Mahamat Daoud (Human rights defender and organiser with Refugees in Libya), and Seán Binder (Criminal Lawyer and Ex-Civilian Rescue coordinator). Moderated by Esme Smithson Swain (activist, campaigner with MiGreat (NL), and the Border Violence Monitoring Coordinator for No Name Kitchen).
 
This event is co-organized by Critical Theory Under Pressure and Emergencies of Authoritarianism.
 

 

Dispatches of Authoritarianism

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In the fourth episode of our series “Dispatches of Authoritarianism”, our project member Rosaura Martínez Ruiz elaborates on her concept of Antigonia as a modification and politicization of Freud´s notion of mourning, which enables us to perceive the political claim to mourn put forward by the collectives of buscadoras in Mexico as an anti-authoritarian struggle.

In this episode of Dispatches, Zeynep Gambetti discusses the current situation in Turkey by tracing today’s configuration back to the disruptive rather than soft implementation of neoliberalism. Zeynep Gambetti analyzes the profound transformation of the economy into a market-integrated economy and how political subjectivities have changed alongside the subsequent unfolding of the neoliberal societal transformation.

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Emergency Calls

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In this Emergency Call, we spoke with Gathanga Ndung’u from the Mathare Social Justice Centre – a community initiative working to promote social justice in Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya.

We discussed the colonial and anti-colonial history of Mathare – an informal settlement in Nairobi’s Eastlands – and the powerful organizing that began there and has since spread across the country. Gathanga Ndung’u spoke about the repression and extrajudicial killings in Mathare since 2013/14, and how they have mobilised around socio-ecological justice as a political tool.

The Mathare Social Justice Centre leads a range of campaigns, including against police violence, extrajudicial killings, forced evictions, and gender-based violence. They also organise with domestic workers and for the right to water.

Mission Statement

Authoritarian, right-wing populist, and fascist tendencies are currently gaining strength all over the world. The task is not only to analyze authoritarianism critically, but also to respond to it politically. For this purpose, this project proposes the novel concept of Emergencies of Authoritarianism. Emergencies implies emergences, the development of authoritarian tendencies out of their “normal” latency and enabling conditions. We adopt a critical perspective that analyzes local trajectories in their transversal global entanglements and complex interactions in order to avoid both methodological nationalism and Eurocentric bias. At the same time, emergencies imply urgencies: they demand an immediate response. Authoritarianisms cannot be reduced to past times, nor to distant places, but can emerge, with new victim groups, anywhere.

Over the coming years, the project will organize workshops and conferences at different locations around the globe and present its results in various publication formats. As a transnational network with equal partners from the Global South, we work closely with non-academic actors such as NGOs, cultural institutions, and journalists, using locally generated knowledge to develop robust responses to the threat of authoritarianism.

Emergencies of Authoritarianism is a project of the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP). The ICCTP aims to document and facilitate the new global contours of critical theory today by supporting critical thought both inside and outside the university in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and science and technology studies.

The project team is coordinated by Judith Butler (Berkeley), Robin Celikates (Berlin), Daniel Loick (Amsterdam), and Zeynep Gambetti (Istanbul), and involves Debaditya Bhattacharya (Delhi), Gisela Catanzaro (Buenos Aires), Denise Ferreira Da Silva (New York), Rosaura Martínez (Mexico City), and Eva von Redecker (Berlin). “Emergencies of Authoritarianism” is funded by the VolkswagenStiftung (Germany).

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