Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter: Reactionary Democracy

Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter discuss their book Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream with Chris Richardson. Aurelien Mondon is a Senior Lecturer in politics at the University of Bath. His research focuses predominantly on the impact of racism and populism on liberal democracies and the mainstreaming of far right politics through elite discourse. His first book, The Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right in France and Australia: A Populist Hegemony?, was published in 2013 and he recently co-edited After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, racism and free speech published with Zed. His new book Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream, co-written with Aaron Winter, is now out with Verso.

Aaron Winter is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of East London. His research is on the far-right with a focus on racism, mainstreaming and violence. He is co-editor of Discourses and Practices of Terrorism: Interrogating Terror (Routledge 2010), Historical Perspectives on Organised Crime and Terrorism (Routledge 2018) and Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method and Practice (Routledge 2020), and co-author with Aurelien Mondon, of Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream (Verso 2020). He has also published in the journals Ethnic and Racial Studies, Identities and Sociological Research Online, and been interviewed by NBC, BBC, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, Vice and Wired. He currently an associate editor of Identities and co-editor of the Manchester University Press (MUP) book series Racism, Resistance and Social Change.