Female Activists on the Far Right: The „Friendly Face“ of an Illiberal Transformation in the U.S.

But we also have to acknowledge that both prominent individual women and women’s organizations have been instrumental in facilitating the formation of the conservative movement and in spreading often illiberal, white supremacist, anti-feminist, and religious fundamentalist ideas in communities across the U.S. over the past century. Today, they are resurfacing in different forms and spaces – from mostly online tradwife communities to anti-government groups like Moms for Liberty that seek to transform public education. By drawing on wholesome, protective, and caring female and maternal identities, these women activists drive, anchor, and normalize illiberal and reactionary ideas of a hierarchical racialized and gendered social order in the American mainstream.

Prof. Dr. Julia Simon is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bremen and currently a visiting professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on autocratization, (neo)liberal democracy, and the (populist) far right in the transatlantic political space as well as on epistemic polarization and (female) identity-construction as a driver of radicalization.

In English

Location: d.a.i. hall

Admission: free

In cooperation with the Institute of Political Science and the Institute for Research on Far-Right Extremism (IRex)