Theorizing Populism: Typologies, Discourses, and Inequality.

Chair: Aras Köksal, Sociology, University of Minnesota.

The Structure of Populist Sentiment by Howard Lavine, Political Science and Wendy Rahn, Political Science, University of Minnesota.

Using conceptual, empirical, and historical work on the nature of populist attitudes in mass publics, we propose that populist attitudes in U.S. comprise three distinct dimensions: people-centrism, representational failure, and beliefs in the popular sovereignty of the people. These dimensions correspond to answers to four related questions: Is there an American people? Does it have the capacity to make wise political decisions? Does the political elite adequately represent the American people And should the American people rule directly? To overcome the existing limitations in both the breadth and measurement reliability of popular populist attitude scales, we propose several new survey questions to better measure the three dimensions of support for populism. We conducted two original surveys to test the adequacy of these new items using confirmatory factor analysis and IRT. We then link the three dimensions of populist attitudes to a variety of outcome measures including political preferences and their structure, support for political figures and institutions (including the main contenders for the Democratic party nomination for president, President Trump, Congress and state legislatures), interest in politics, and participation in social and political arenas.

The Political Psychology of Inequality and Why It Matters for Populism by Alina Oxendine, Political Science, Hamline University.

Integrating research from political science, psychology and related fields, this paper analyzes the complex web of relationships and pathways connecting economicinequality to populism. It presents an original theoretical framework for understanding populist support, which distinguishes between levels of analysis and considers how economic and cultural influences interact (rather than placing them at odds). It also emphasizes the important distinction between reality and perception and its role in understanding how citizens react differently to the same macro-level trends and environmental threats.

Careful analysis of existing scholarship suggests that economic stratification exerts an indirect influence on populist support. Inequality likely shapes populist beliefs through macro-level mediators like economic dysfunction, rising political polarization, and a decline in the quality of government. Also, several potential individual-level influences mediate the relationship, including heightened sense of intergroup threat, politicaldistrust, status anxiety, and perceptions of system unfairness. This paper’s theoretical framework also explores how community environment and relevant personality characteristics like right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) may moderate important associations.

Marx America Gramsci Again: Understanding Trumpism through Bonapartism and Caesarism by Jeremy Meckler, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire Karl Marx uses the concept of “Bonapartism” to explain the popular appeal of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, emphasizing the farcical connection between Louis-Napoleon and his famous uncle. Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci reformulates this concept as “Caesarism” to describe Benito Mussolini’s rise to power, linking Mussolini’s regressive utopianism directly to the Roman Empire and emphasizing the mythic nature of such rhetorical strategies. Gramsci complicates and expands Marx's Bonapartism, making it more useful for understanding Trumpism's rhetorical strategy. "Make America Great Again'' calls for a return to a mythic glory based on nostalgia for something that never existed, and the events of January 6 demonstrate how this ideology can be weaponized. (The resemblance between the January 6 Insurrection and the Coup of 18 Brumaire is striking.) Through a close reading of Marx and Gramsci’s formulations, this paper develops a structural understanding of Trumpism and its threat to American Democracy.

Race Politics from Obama to Trump.

Chair: Rose Brewer, African American & African Studies, University of Minnesota.

Interrogating White Racial Politics, Right & Left: Trump, Warren and the Native Origins Controversy by Enid Logan, Sociology and African American & African Studies, University of Minnesota.

This paper analyzes the political conflict between President Trump and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, over her claims of indigenous ancestry. The controversy, I argue, provides a window into several different dimensions of the U.S. racial landscape at this time, refracted through the lens of electoral politics. We see here a clear example of racial politics in the time of Trump, in which the president seeks to crush his political opposition through a strategic mobilization of whiteness. We also see, more broadly, the mobilization of two different, competing white racial projects, as both Trump and Warren seek to harness, bend, and manipulate the meaning of indigeneity in the pursuit of racialized political and personal ends. This controversy clearly illustrates one of the key themes I am developing in much of my writing and teaching on race at this time: that the U.S. as a whole, and whites in particular, are no longer primarily “colorblind” (or seeking to be), but rather tend to be acutely, and purposively conscious of race; that this new, more overt racial consciousness is bifurcated in two opposing directions: social-justice oriented anti-racism and resurgent exclusivist white nationalism and that thus it is important to think about whiteness and white identities as differentiated by political identification (as well as by gender, sexualities, and social class). As a corollary to this, I argue that it is possible to identify distinct and competing white racial projects (Omi & Winant 1994) in the political sphere at this time, with different “uses” of race for each “side.” Lastly, I argue, the case at hand particularly demonstrates the importance of critically interrogating the dynamics of race and the construction of white identities among white liberals as well as whites on the right.

Racing Away: The Racial Attitudes of Obama-to Trump Voters in 2016 by Ryan Jerome LeCount, Sociology, Hamline University.

Since the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election, both commentators and scholars have sought to characterize the factors that accounted for this outcome. While much public commentary was aimed at a debate about whether racial or economic factors animated Trump voters in general, much less attention has been paid to the much smaller subset: those who voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. In many cases, however, those who privilege economic factors as a way of explaining Trump’s victory point to the very existence of these Obama-Trump voters as a falsification of the view that racism instead played a primary role. In order to further adjudicate this debate, this project uses multiple samples of nationally representative polling data and context-level implicit attitudes directy compare the racial attitudes of the Obama-Trump voters to consistent Democratic voter. Both individual Obama-Trump “switchers” and counties that switched were significantly more racially conservative on both implicit and explicit measures, even after controlling for economic and demographic factors.

Back to the Future?: Fundamental Federalism, Voter Suppression, and the Shelby v. Holder Decision by Adrienne Jones, Political Science, Morehouse College.

The issue addressed in this article is the jurisprudence of Chief Justice John Roberts in the Shelby v. Holder(2013) decision which gutted the VRA. Roberts held that Section 4 of the VRA is unconstitutional and by doing so rendered the most potent tool of the Act, the Section 5 preclearance provision, defunct. It was clear at the time of the decision that voting rights were under attack by GOP led states and it was well known that there has been a long history of voter suppression in the United States.

This paper asks why would Chief Justice Roberts would hold that Congress did not have the power to reauthorize the VRA in 2006? Justice Roberts must have known that his decision would undermine the VRA. he was aware that voter ID and similar laws were being passed in Republican led states, he approved a voter ID law as constitutional in Crawford v. Marion County (2008). Furthermore, the legislation was supported by a voluminous congressional record that arguably satisfied the law in City of Boerne v. Flores (1997) which provided the Congressional requirements to pass prophylactic legislation. Roberts disregarded this precedent and decided Shelby based on precedent in North Austin Municipal District No.1 v. Holder (2009) and on the theory that sovereign states deserve to be treated equally. He argued that the law was valid in 1966 whenSouth Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966) was decided but that today conditions had improved, in large part because of the VRA, and therefore that the Section 4 formula was invalid.

Was Roberts’ decision purely ideological/political? Was John Roberts naïve? Did he have a unique mission to end civil rights legislation from a colorblind perspective? Is he a racist, indifferent or historically ignorant? Or, does John Roberts have a particular jurisprudence on the issue of federalism/state sovereignty that he applied in MUD and Shelby that resulted in his decision? To answer this question this article reviews Justice Roberts prior legal decisions, and writing to determine whether Roberts state sovereignty jurisprudence is applied similarly across his decisions applying federal legislation and in cases where state action is challenged on a constitutional basis.

Answers to these questions will provide information useful to understanding how to enact constitutional voter protection legislation that is resistant to challenge at the national and state level in response to current voter suppression legislation being proposed in GOP controlled states nationwide.

Three-Fifths: Challenging Recent Racial Revisionist Argument by, Rober Brown, Political Science, Spelman College.

During our current time, the nation’s history has been a very contentious topic, especially concerning the reliance upon enslaved Africans in the nation’s development. The contention over this historical topic has been especially apparent in the conservative response to the New York Times’ 1619 Project in 2019, which has significantly educated the general public about American slavery. While the development of the nation’s economy is perhaps more readily known by Americans, I argue that there are important aspects of the nation’s political development that are connected to race and the nation’s experience with slavery: 1) the development of the ideal of American equality; 2) the growth and development of some American states; 3) the development of the Constitution; 4) the development of the political parties; and 5) the development of suffrage rights in American history.

Dr. Khadijah Costley White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

White researches race and gender in media, culture, and politics. Her book, The Branding of Right-Wing Activism: The News Media and the Tea Party (Oxford, 2018) examines the rise of the Tea Party in online, print, broadcast, and cable news. She has been a White House intern on the Obama broadcast media team, a National Association of Black Journalists and United Nations fellow, and an assistant producer for Now on PBS (formerly Now with Bill Moyers). She is currently a 2020-2021 Whiting Public Engagement Fellow completing a community media project on lockdown culture in schools.

White's writing and commentary on topics such as race, social movements, news, and politics has appeared in Vice, National Public Radio, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Root, Huffington Post, BBC, Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Quartz, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed, and more. She is also an activist and community organizer, deeply invested in the transformative power of grassroots politics. Through this work, she founded and is the director of a community non-profit, SOMA Justice, which organizes for racial, social, and economic justice in South Orange and Maplewood, NJ.

The European Far-Right in Transatlantic Perspective

organized by the Center for German & European Studies, University of Minnesota

Chair: Joachim Savelsberg, Professor of Sociology and Law, Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair

The European Union, Good News or Bad News for Populism in Europe? by Catherine Guisan, Political Science, University of Minnesota.

The European Parliament has provided an unexpected platform for populist leaders in Western Europe, from Marine Le Pen, France, to Nigel Farage, UK. On the other hand, it has been powerless to hold populist governments in Hungary and Poland to account. Could it have done otherwise? Or could it be argued that, although the European Union has been disparaged as undemocratic, its Parliament has given a more faithful representation of public opinion than some national parliamentarian systems?

Who are ‘The Pure People’? Populist Supporters and the Role of Media in the Populist Imagined Community by Clara Juarez Miro, Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota.

This comparative study across countries and ideologies seeks to understand what is intrinsic to populism. It examines left and right-wing populist supporters in the U.S. and Spain to illuminate the media’s capacity to create, shape, and divide communities. This study explores populist supporters’ collective identification with “the pure people,” their media use to engage with like-minded people, and the needs satisfied through membership in this imagined community. Research on fandom, casual political talk, and the hybrid media system inform an analysis of populist supporters’ interactions in virtual communities and interviews to illuminate the role of community membership in populist movements. This presentation will offer preliminary results.

Between Red and Brown: German Populism and the Appeal to the Past by Paul Petzschmann, European Studies, Carleton College.

In my remarks I will focus on what I think is a neglected aspect in the study of populist parties and movements - the appeal to a “pure” past and its role in the construction of an alternative future. The German case is particularly instructive because of the way several parties have made regionally-based appeals to the past. Both the PDS and the AfD - although nominally on opposite ends of the political spectrum - have drawn on reserves of nostalgia. I will explore how the past can be mobilized for different political purposes in ways that differentiate German populism from other European movements.

A 'Jewish Question 2.0'? Philo/Anti-Semitism and Pro-Israel Politics among the European Far Right by Alejandro Baer, Sociology, Dept. of Sociology, University of Minnesota.

This presentation addresses the shifts and discursive realignments within right-wing populist European parties that have burst onto the political scene over the last decade regarding Jewish communities and the state of Israel. Seeking dissociation with fringe extremist and neo-fascist groups, many ultranationalist platforms have renounced the less socially acceptable identity traits, such as Holocaust denial and the most explicit forms of antisemitism. At the same time, more veiled forms of antisemitism –such as anti-globalist conspiracy theories–, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim rhetoric coexist with the embracement of national Jewish communities as posterchild minorities and the celebration of Israel as a stronghold of civilization against the Islamic world.

Populist Mobilizations, Authoritarian Regimes, and Global Justice

Chair: Tinaz Pavri, Social Sciences and Education, Asian Studies Program, Spelman College.

Populist Rallies in United States: Nostalgia as a Force of State Mobilization by Yagmur Karakaya, Sociology, University of Minnesota and Penny Edgell, Sociology, University of Minnesota.

“Populism rarely travels alone. It is necessary to identify what it travels with” (Kaltwasser et al. 2017:18) . In the United States, it appears that populism travels with nostalgia, which alludes to and aims to bring back a more ambiguous time, a heyday “when America was great.” The combination of this nostalgia and authoritarian populism is best exemplified at Trump’s election rallies. In this paper we unpack how rallies become a focal point linking populism and nostalgia. We argue that, the end of “greatness” symbolizes the end of an intersection of things: the end of White Christian America, which includes a traditional orientation to gender roles and a taken- for-granted acceptance of both white supremacy and strong black/white racial boundaries; and the intervention of government to shift policy toward expanding equal rights and equal access to public and private resources across lines of gender, race, and immigrant status.

Ousting the Erstwhile Custodians of Discourse by Anuradha Sajjanhar, Sociology, University of Minnesota.

Abstract: Ideological transformation relies deeply on politics, policy and institutions – in particular, on the intersections of knowledge production and dissemination. What kinds of expertise of knowledge do different political projects produce? This paper studies how ideas gain prominence in both political and policy discourse, using the mushrooming of think tanks in India as a focal point. I explore how consensus, contradictions and tensions surface among policymakers and political parties. I argue that two primary arms of governance have emerged in contemporary India - populist politics, which makes economic policy digestible through an appeal to the masses/majority - and technocratic policy, which neutralizes charges of nationalism. As such, I claim that the distinction drawn between social and economic policy, and the ensuing technocratic neutrality of 'post'-ideological economic policy is itself an ideological accomplishment. Using participant observation and over 50 interviews in New Delhi, before and after the BJP’s election victory in 2019, this paper outlines elite modes and processes of legitimating dominant patterns of thought and practice.

Why do Authoritarian Regimes Have Antagonistic Relationships with Academia? Turkey as a Case Study by Nur Adam, University of Minnesota, and Benjamin Toff, Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota.

Forms of “competitive authoritarianism” have emerged in recent decades where populist politicians exploit democratic institutions to corrupt the rule of law and amass growing power. Existing research has largely focused on “arenas of contestation” where authority is directly challenged, including elections and law-making. This study explores the antagonistic relationship between populist regimes and academic institutions. It focuses specifically on Turkey, where the Erdogan regime has exerted increasing control over the education system, instituted purges, and eroded rights. Using an inductive method involving ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with academics who live or have lived in Turkey under the Edrogan regime, this study to the combination of not only the intellectual nature of academic institutions but also their bureaucratic institutional nature as sites for political patronage that results in frequent clashes between academics and forces of repressive political power.

Global Justice and Race: An Appraisal by Oumar Ba, Political Science, Morehouse College.

This article argues that global justice is inherently a racialized discourse and the architecture of international law and justice is entrenched in and perpetuates racialized hierarchies of humanity. Theories of global justice have primarily eschewed race as foundational in the contemporary structures of global inequality, poverty, and violence. A lack of will to theorize global white supremacy contributed to the obfuscation of race as a persistent organizing idea of the global order. Yet, there is a long history of critical scholarship in political theory and international relations that responds to such silences. Beyond the theoretical debates too, current critical scholarship engages the architecture of the international justice system, which rests primarily on legal institutions, that operate in a racialized superstructure.

Race, Representation and Democracy.

Chair: Joseph Peschek, Political Science, Hamline University.

Thinking Outside the (Ballot) Box: Reconceptualizing Political Participation in a Democracy Under Threat by Adam Le, Political Science, University of Minnesota.

Conventional understandings of political participation revolve around interactions with formal institutions at various levels of government. These measures often include voting, contacting representatives, and donating. However, these conceptualizations of political participation are distinctly racialized; resource barriers can prevent individuals from accessing formally recognized arenas of politics. This poses a threat to democracy by ignoring how people interact with the government. As such, what might a more inclusive form of political participation look like? This paper positions the everyday actions of marginalized communities as a possible answer. By more seriously considering democratic action in “informal” institutions, I advance an account of political participation that takes place in more unconventional settings. Though citizens may not engage in what is “formally” politics, they may still regularly be in contact with governmental institutions. Centering the importance of everyday interactions can provide us with a more accurate picture of political participation for traditionally “disenfranchised” communities.

Social Control Goes To The Polls: Racial Threat and White Support for Voter ID Policies by Ryan Jerome LeCount, Sociology, Hamline University.

Over the last 15 years, there has been a substantial increase in regulation and restriction on voting in many parts of the US, including new requirements to present identification in order to vote. While supporters of these policies have generally described them as anti-fraud measures, the evidence suggests that almost no in person voter fraud whatsoever has taken place. Scholars have suggested, instead, that such laws are promoted as an effective means to disproportionately suppress the votes of groups, such as African Americans, who are disinclined to vote for the primarily Republican politicans advocating the policies. Extending the scholarship in the ongoing racialization of US politics, this project examines the role of racial threat in structuring White attitudes about Voter Identification policies. Specifically, by applying Group Threat Theory (Blumer 1958) and using data from a national poll, I show that White voters who live in counties with larger Black populations are more likely to support Voter ID policies, robust to controls.

Untangling the Effects of Race and Legislative Behavior on Constituent Attitudes by Matthew Platt, Political Science, Morehouse College.

Racial gerrymanders in the United States are intended to remedy past democratic deficits where black Americans were systematically excluded from having the opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. The literature on race and representation has paid a fair amount of attention to questions of how a member of Congress's (MC) race impacts how they are perceived by their constituents. There have also been several studies of how an MC's race might be associated with their own legislative behavior. This paper bridges these two areas of focus by examining how black MCs' advocacy for black issues impacts how they are viewed by their constituents. I match MCs' black issue bill sponsorship to constituent opinions in the CCES to more thoroughly untangle whether black constituents' attitudes towards their representatives are driven by a shared racial identity or a shared policy agenda.

White Identity and Black Lives Matter: Amending and Defending Privilege in the Wake of the 2020 Uprising by Geneva Cole, Political Science, University of Chicago.

Whiteness is an increasingly consequential social identification in the United States, but existing work falls short in analyzing variation in how this identity presents and what it means for political engagement and opinions. This paper makes a conceptual contribution by developing a typology of white identification that captures variation across salience of white identity and affect towards whiteness. The resultant four types of white identification—racial agnostics, racial deniers, racial preservationists, and racial reconstructionists—are broad but useful patterns for understanding how white Americans think about racial politics. This paper focuses on attitudes about Black Lives Matter and the 2020 uprising, a particularly rich ground for research as this moment increased salience of white identity nationally and illuminated differences in attitudes about amending or defending white privilege. Using two rounds of in-depth semi-structured interviews from the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in Minnesota from before and after the 2020 uprising, this paper presents evidence for how types of white identification shape attitudes about protests and racial justice initiatives.

Immigration, Right-Wing Populism, and Color-Blind Racism.

Ascendant Fascism: the Politics of Matteo Salvini by Anthony D. Sargenti, World Languages, Literature and Cultures, University of Arkansas, and Anthony Justin Barnum, Sociology and Criminology, University of Arkansas.

The election of an anti-establishment, Italians-first government in February 2018, together with turmoil resulting from Italy’s geographical location as a gatekeeper country, has helped to re-establish and revalidate dominant ideologies that privilege fascist ideals. The hegemonic narrative in nationalist Italian politics revolves around Matteo Salvini. He utilizes demagoguery to get his messages across. His criminalization and demonization of valid asylum seekers create a false, divisive dichotomy that pits Italians against refugees. Salvini weaponizes uncertainty by racketeering a moral panic imbued with xenophobia. He sculpts immigration as an invasion from which Italy must defend itself, calling ships pirates with hostile intentions that want to take over the peninsula. These same asylum seekers are also miraculously responsible for the current Italian economic crisis. Salvini shies away from criticizing white supremacists and organized crime. Quite the contrary: he emboldens both.

The Populist Deception of Neoliberalism: Markets, Mass Violence, and Migration in El Salvador by Patrick McNamara, History, University of Minnesota.

In this presentation I argue that El Salvador has become a model for a neoliberal future. The dollarization of the Salvadoran economy in 2001, the implementation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2009, and the mass violence created by criminal gangs since 2010 have created the conditions for rampant neoliberalism hidden behind a populist deception. Initiated by right-wing presidents from the Arena Party, continued by former revolutionaries from the FMLN, and now under the guise of a millennial authoritarian, El Salvador offers an omen of a future that should concern us all. The economic, political, and social/cultural features of rampant neoliberalism in El Salvador reveal the threat to democratic processes writ large.

Colorblind Racism in Contemporary Germany: Immigrants, Black Germans and (de)Racialization of the German State by Daniel Williams, Sociology, St. Catherine University.

Colorblind Racism has been identified as a dominant form of contemporary racism by scholars and theorists of race and racism (Bonilla Silva 2014). As a concept, it has been applied almost entirely to the US and Latin American contexts. However, colorblind racism is prevalent in the European context as well, with important differences. In Europe, the practice of erasing race, through the absence of racial statistics, as well as a lack of official and popular recognition of racial diversity is widespread (Simon 2017). This has institutional as well as discursive consequences. In this paper, I examine the way that the denial of race in Germany impacts two racialized populations--new immigrants in Germany’s integration program; and Black Germans, who are native-born citizens. For new immigrants, integration programs target them through texts and narratives which imagine and presume them as particular kinds of subjects. These texts and narratives racialize immigrants by essentializing cultural traits and practices. For Black Germans, the German state’s lack of official counting of racial groups, as well as its history of racially exclusive citizenship laws, transform Black Germans into presumed immigrants in everyday life. Both groups are racialized in ways that reflect European-style colorblind racism. A key concern raised by colorblind racism as a concept is its ability to operate without hindrance within democratic settings and institutions. The legitimacy of immigrant integration programs, as well as the state’s autonomy in whether or not to collect racial statistics, reflect this problem and challenge the possibilities for contesting racism within the German state.

Resistance, Exclusion,Crisis, and the State

The Stable State? Federal Employees’ Responses to Emergent Authoritarianism by Jaime Kucinskas, Sociology, Hamilton College.

While under the Trump administration, critics of the federal civil service were quick to decry it a “deep state” thwarting the President’s agenda, most extant research instead describes the career corps as marked by loyalty to mission, risk aversion, and serial partisanship. Examining the first three years of the Trump Administration, our research asks whether this characterization holds under conditions of budding autocracy and unprecedented efforts to dismantle the administrative state. We find that, despite widespread dissatisfaction with the Trump administration, most career bureaucrats sought to comply with its directives. While civil servants may engage in resistance to a political administration outside of work, their responses at work are circumscribed by what they define as appropriately within the scope of their mandates. Moreover, under the Trump Administration, even previously sanctioned dissent has been perceived as inappropriate resistance, creating barriers to voice and increasing exits. Our research suggests the need to complicate the conceptual difference between “resistance” and “complicity” under threatening changes in leadership. We discuss the implications of our findings.

Relief for the Taxpayers: Taxpayer Populism and the Narrowing of the Public by Brooke Depenbusch, History, Colgate University.

My research examines the history of general relief, programs of public assistance administered and financed by state and local governments. This paper examines the successful organization of grassroots taxpayer associations’ around opposition to relief. From the Second New Deal and over the next three decades, these associations made control over relief a primary objective. Operating locally but confederated nationally, taxpayers’ associations waged a war on welfare that was decades-long and remarkably successful. In mobilizing at the grassroots to exert control over state and local relief programs, taxpayer associations pressed for relief policies that drew solid boundaries around community membership. An effect of their successful mobilization was the implementation of policies that disentitled significant segments of the community from access to public resources and, in so doing, powerfully shored up intersecting hierarchies of race, gender, and class. It was to great effect that taxpayers’ associations stoked right-wing populist resentments against recipients of relief. In the current moment of resurgent right-wing populism, it is particularly important that this history is understood and shared.

A State of Exception: Securitization Theory and the Politics of Crisis Framing by Sutina Chou, Political Science, University of Minnesota.

Democracy is under threat - but who constitutes “democracy,” what exactly is the “threat,” and how should we respond? In “unprecedented" times, how do states structure their responses to crises, and what kinds of justifications do they use to explain their actions? In this exploratory paper, I use securitization theory to explain how crisis framing creates a state of exception that allows “extraordinary measures” to be taken.

‘Outgroups’ in the Russian Empire, the USSR and the Russian Federation: a comparative analysis by Abalian Anna, Ethnic Politics, Saint-Petersburg State University.

The paper deals with the role of outgroups in the state policy during the periods of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Outgroups are understood as social groups with or without formal membership (e.g. citizenship), towards which the majority groups do not feel the sense of identity or belonging. The mechanisms of institutionalizing the alienation boundaries around the certain social group, tools of creating a negative image of outgroups in the society, and maintaining their perception as the internal threat for public consciousness manipulating are revealed. As the most illustrative examples, the Jewish population of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and labor migrants in modern Russia were chosen. The restrictions in such spheres as settlement, employment, health care, and education are considered as key elements of discrimination towards these outgroups.

Criminal Justice, Incarceration, and Democracy

The Carceral State, Racial Capitalism, and the Promise of Abolition Democracy by Nancy Heitzeg Sociology and Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity, St. Catherine University.

This paper explores the current crisis of hyper criminalization, incarceration, and immigrant detention/deportation as a fundamental challenge to U.S. democracy. Citizenship is denied, asylum seekers detained, civil death is enforced, and meaningful participation in civic life – access to employment, education, housing, the vote – is curtailed after sentences are served. Rooted in racial capitalism, our carceral state both creates and reinforces structural inequality and exclusion. This paper also examines the limits of current criminal justice reforms that fail to address structural inequality. Abolition democracy and a growing abolition movement will be presented as an alternative to reliance on policing and punishment.

Locked Up, Locked Out, & Still Fighting: The Continuity of Activism Behind Bars by Britany Gatewood, Center for Educational Opportunity, Albany State University.

Resistance against mass incarceration and the police state by the Black community is a continuation of the historical Black liberation movements. As a society we tend to focus on what's happening in the streets and the visible representatives of the state, police. Interactions with law enforcement is a daily or frequent experience for BIPOC. The Movement for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, Say Her Name, Hands Up Don't Shoot, and many other hashtags and movements are known by the masses. But what happens when people are arrested, convicted, and placed within carceral institutions. Research tends to not view incarcerated persons as political actors during their confinement; however, they continue to resist. This tradition of resistance which is engrained within Black culture does not leave once they are incarcerated. Inside resistance can look very similar to how people resist on the outside; however, there are some techniques that are unique to carceral institutions. As the fight against white supremacy, patriarchy, exploitation, and fascism rages forward, the movements need to include those under direct government control and jurisdiction, physically, emotionally, and mentally. This presentation will speak to the techniques of resistance which are typically employed by incarcerated persons. It will include historic and current political actions from this population, alongside social movements occurring in the wider society. In addition, strategies on bridging the gap between inside and acts outside activists will be presented.

Free Angela? Black Queer Fugitivity and the Politics of In(de)terminable Abolition by Jaeden Johnson, Political Science, Morehouse College.

This essay reads Angela Davis’ political autobiographical account of her experience as a prisoner in the New York Women’s House of Detention as well as her subsequent trial in California with and against her various interviews and lectures on the nature of freedom, resistance, and abolition. In juxtaposing these texts, I demonstrate how Davis’ ironic disavowal of Black queer resistance, or fugitivity, within the Women’s House of Detention –– whereby she acknowledges the culture of her Black queer inmates as offering a necessary defense against terror and repression while simultaneously disparaging it for containing a depoliticizing element of “escapism and fantasy” –– opens out onto a more general ambivalence regarding the possibilities of and for total abolition. I argue that this ambivalence turns upon the irreducibility of anti-Black violence to political or sexual repression, since the institutional logic upon which it proceeds is not that of the prison but of racial slavery, whose indeterminable structure incessantly undercuts the divide between escapist fantasy and abolitionist praxis.

Populism, Ethno-Nationalism and the Politics of Immigration Enforcement in the United States by Patrisia Macias-Rojas, Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Immigration is at the center of populist politics today, mobilized by both right and left-wing populist politicians such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. What is puzzling is that immigration has not been a central or enduring feature of populist politics, yet in recent times it has become a key issue not only in the US, but globally as well. This paper examines how the issue of immigration figures in left and right-wing populist movements in the US. The findings uncover three types of populist politics that have mobilized the immigration issue—ethnonationalist populism, economic or redistributive populism, and penal populism. The paper discusses the intersection of immigration and populism during the First, Second, and what had been referred to as “The Third Reconstruction” in order to better understand how restrictive forms of populism emerge during periods of democratic opening.

White Racial Identity, Nationalism, and Right Wing Extremism

Chair: Joseph Gerteis, Sociology, University of Minnesota.

White’s Racial Identity Centrality and Social Dominance Orientation Predict Far-Right Extremism by Hui Bai, Psychology, University of Minnesota.

Although White’s racial identity has been traditionally regarded as irrelevant, recent evidence suggests that it is playing an increasingly prominent role in shaping Whites’ social and political opinions. This paper presents evidence from five studies (total White N=7,206) that White American’s racial identity centrality predicts far-right extremism. Furthermore, evidence from two of the studies shows that Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is another robust predictor of far-right extremism, and in most cases, it interacts with White identity such that the effect of White identity is stronger for someone with a high level of SDO. Therefore, evidence show that in the contemporary political era, the effect of White’s racial identity centrality is more relevant than previously thought, and SDO is an important variable that can moderate the effect of White’s racial identity centrality.

The Well Armed (White) Woman: Populist Postfeminism and the Construction of a Gun Rights Regime of (Post) Truth by Bree Trisler, Communication Studies, University of Minnesota.

This paper explores the relationship between cultural populism, post-truth and postfeminism in women’s gun rights discourse. It does so through a case study of The Well Armed Woman (TWAW), a “pro-Second Amendment” organization for (white) women. I argue TWAW’s “populist postfeminism” acts as a thin veil hardly disguising racist, colonialist narratives straight out of the NRA’s playbook. Furthermore, TWAW’s white supremacist politics, rooted in protecting white femininity, are bolstered by the contemporary “post-truth” media and communication environment—enabling the construction and maintenance of a gun rights regime of (post)-truth.” Finally, in bringing two bodies of literature together—feminist communication and critical media studies—I contribute to ongoing efforts to demonstrate the necessity of studying populism and racial nationalism through nuanced media and cultural analysis.

The Supreme Court's Facilitation of White Christian Nationalism by Caroline Mala Corbin, School of Law, University of Miami.

Doug Jager, a band student of Native American ancestry, complained about the Christian prayers at his Georgia public school’s football games. Rather than address his concerns, the school lectured him on Christianity and proposed an alternative that appeared neutral yet would have still resulted in Christian prayers. In striking down the school’s proposal, Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. understood some of the ramifications of state-sponsored Christianity.

Despite Supreme Court rulings limiting Christian invocations at public school events, government-sponsored Christian prayers and Christian symbols remain plentiful and constitutional in the United States. This proliferation of government-sponsored Christianity around the country both reflects and strengthens Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism maintains that the United States is and should be a Christian nation, and Christian nationalism’s defining characteristic is the belief that religious identity and national identity overlap completely. Christian nationalism necessarily implies a hierarchy based on religion, with Christian insiders who are true Americans and non-Christian outsiders who are not. Moreover, studies show that those with strong identification with Christian nationalism have more hostile attitudes towards out-groups, religious and otherwise. That hostility paves the way for hostile public policy. Consequently, Christian nationalism does not simply lead to symbolic exclusion from the community and nation, it may lead to actual exclusion.

Thus, as the sociological evidence establishes, the harm of government-sponsored Christianity is not just offense, but discriminatory attitudes and discriminatory policies. The insight embedded in Establishment Clause doctrine that the government should not favor one religion over others is borne out by contemporary social science. As a result, instead of eviscerating separation of church and state, it ought to be recognized as more important than ever. To access the full paper please click here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3466943.

Economic Populism and White Grievance In the Age of Financialization and Hyperinequality by Karen Ho, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota.