Augusta DellÕOmo: Welcome to Right Rising a podcast from the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. I'm your host Augusta DellÕOmo. Today I'm joined by Dr. Christi van der Westhuizen an Associate Professor at the Center for the Advancement of Non-racialism and Democracy at Nelson Mandela University, Dr. Shona Hunter, a reader at the Carnegie School of Education attached to the Center for Race, Education ,and Decoloniality at Leeds Beckett University, and rejoined by Dr. Ashley Mathias. And they're here with us today to talk about their new book, Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness. Christi, Shona, and Ashley, thank you all so much for being here.

CvdW: Yeah, great to be with you.

SH/AM: Thank you for having us.

AD: So for many of our listeners, they may not be familiar with what exactly is critical studies in whiteness. So I'd like to start off the podcast, if you could tell us tell our audience a little bit about the book, why you took up this topic? What is critical whiteness studies? And what kind of approaches are the is the book really drawing on?

SH: Okay, then. So I'll kick off here, I suppose. So Christi and I see the handbook as quite a unique intervention into this kind of interdisciplinary field of critical whiteness studies. So it's been going and kind of lots of iterations really, since the kind of early 80s, I suppose people kind of position the first wave. So sometimes people talk about this in terms of waves. And I suppose in essence, it's trying to understand whiteness as a manifestation of power, I suppose that would be from, from the perspective, certainly of the handbook. But um, but it started off in its first iterations, as this kind of the first wave, a historical materialist kind of analysis of labor relations, and the construction of ethnic identities in the US, it then moved through to kind of another wave that was looking at identities. And then finally, we've got the later kind of waves that are looking at, I suppose, the discourses around kind of whiteness, and how it works as a discursive, or significatory of set practices. And then we come in this sort of stage where we're really interested in looking at the relationship between whiteness and power. And so we're drawing on all of those different waves of scholarship. But in essence, it's really trying to understand how whiteness works, how it frames our world, how it frames our kind of social understandings. And by our I suppose I'm kind of highlighting this the globality of the approach that many folks in critical whiteness studies have been developing, but in particular, the, that Christi and I were keen to develop in the context of the handbook, because in the context of kind of global coloniality whiteness is that key orientation to power, I suppose. 

CvdW: I can add that. So for us, it was important as Shona was saying, you know, given this emphasis on the global coloniality of whiteness, it was important for us then, to bring scholars in who are differently situated, because you do find in the normative sort of field of critical whiteness studies, that the debate is very much dominated from the global north, and particularly Anglo environments. And so it's even interesting to me, I've noticed with I've been to two critical whiteness studies, conferences in Germany, for example, and even the Germans prefer to rather look at Anglo context. And now they're looking at European contexts. That's quite an interesting phenomenon that so we wanted to bring in different scholars that are not necessarily even associated with critical whiteness studies. And that's why we also highlighting that with the with the title of the book, making it critical studies in whiteness, because we were trying to open up the field, bring in different voices, scholars situated in the Global South, specifically, we've got a number of scholars from from Africa, from South Africa, from Zimbabwe, we've got a number of scholars, writing from India, and reflecting on on whiteness in the Global North. We've got an also as I say, black scholars, scholars of color, and they also bring in Japan for example, Scandinavia, and so forth, to really just widen the lens and and to challenge some of the received wisdoms that you've got in critical whiteness studies. And yeah, so I think that got about thirty authors are contributed so So so it's really like throwing throwing the net wide, theoretically conceptually, but also in terms of of, of the vantage points and the locations from which scholars are situated.

SH: Would it be okay for me to just kind of riff off that a little bit? Because I think one of the things that's really important to recognize is this anti-essentialist position, that really radically anti-essentialist position that we're developing throughout the handbook. And so for us, that that means that we're really unpacking the way in which whiteness doesn't exist in an object as an object in and of itself. It's not the property of people, but it gets attached to live bodies. And so the kinds of sorts of theoretical interventions which work throughout the book really are trying to push the onto-epistemic dimension of whiteness, and really, very much linked to strands and decolonial kind of theorizing. And so I think this the globality, as well as the global kind of positionings, and the extensions of the temporal and the geographical, or the temporal and the spatial dimensions of whiteness, as an orientation to power as a practice of power, it's also important to kind of think about how that relates to how whiteness actually gets produced as a material aspect of the world. And so again, thinking about Ashley's chapter, Ashley can talk about it, I'm sure in great detail. But um, but this is one of the things that certainly, for me, connects me to to kind of Ashley's chapter, because of the relationships of that work, to my own work in relation to the construction of the British welfare state. But I'll kind of leave that for a minute and give Ashley a chance to say something, but can I just finish up with how I got into this, and then and then we can kind of move through. 

So I think that is quite important, actually, for me is that one of the things that obviously, my background is policy studies. So I'm a kind of very bizarre Policy Studies cut scholar, I think, for anybody who sits within any of those related fields. But um, but so for me, this issue of whiteness is actually central to policy scholarship, because of the interest in that sort of scholarship about understanding power and power formations, whether they be kind of the material practices of institutions, the construction of nations, all of this sort of stuff. And so it really is a way of, for me, understanding the culture, the unspoken cultural dynamics of the politics of producing nations. And so one of the kind of the way that I got into this work is kind of because of that interest. And then I suppose the development of that analysis for me was was, was kind of executed, I suppose, and the conversations and the broader dimensions of that were developed for me through through the bringing together of the Whitespaces Research Network, which has started in 2019, which is still kind of going now. So that's like 12, 13 years later. So that started off really as an intervention in Policy Studies, bringing in disciplinary kind of debates from all sorts of other contexts. I think it was, I think we've got 17 disciplines and 23 countries, or maybe the other way round, I can't remember which 23 countries 17 disciplines, so really, to kind of have conversations and innovate knowledge around how institutional spaces work. Yeah, so that was really important for me. And I think that is something that we that I would hope is kind of taken out of the handbook in the future, also. 

AD: That's incredibly exciting. And as someone who works on this, and I'm really struck by the global element of this project, that I'm really excited to get my hands on it and see all of the different approaches that are in the book. So just to shift for our audience that's really interested in sort of the rise of the radical right in our current moment, how do you all see your work on whiteness, intersecting with the radical right, both historically, and in our contemporary period of resurgence?

SH: So for me, I suppose it's, I don't know whether this is gonna sound ridiculous, but a left field intervention on the right. In that, I suppose for me the I'm interested in establishing and understanding the continuities between what we see as mainstream state-making practices and radical right politics, I suppose although I wouldn't see that as necessarily my area. My area is around this mainstream state-building what we see as liberal state formations. And so my work over the years my kind of personal work as well as the work of the network, but has really been about understanding the continuities between what we see as liberal state formations, often we imagine them to be quite benevolent state formations, particularly those like in the British example, IÕll come on to the down side, but in the British example, have a have a very well constituted welfare state. So but of course, I'm interested or not, of course, but for from my point of view, it's an obvious relationship between welfare state building, and coloniality. And so for me, really, nation state, the nation state building, which was part of the state formation of the British liberal kind of welfare state, is actually constitutive of the White nation, not national formation. And so we can see other kinds of examples, which of course, are related to the British context, talks about the Australian state in similar kind of terms, actually, and of course, the Australian kind of state formation context was influenced by British coloniality, you know, so. So, for me, it's a mainstream manifestation of radical right politics that intersect around eugenics around cisheteropatriarchal family orders, and how those are actually produced and constituted through welfare state practices, and actually how those state practices are kind of the central raison d'etre of the state that that is then engaging itself in these extractive processes in other parts of the world in order to bolster the material aspects of the state that are needed for that sorts for the protection of whiteness. So it's a form of white protectionism, liberal state formations, really, that are executed via coloniality. So that's how I would say that, but I know that's very different than, you know, the ways in which we understand the specifics of the radical right, you know, so, yeah, so that's, that's me, I think.

CvdW: Yeah. So and so it's interesting to contrast with South Africa. And that's why we've actually found a very productive, Shona and I, you know, be engaging with one another from very different contexts. And that's in that sense, because if you look at at South Africa, you you have a situation where, you know, historically, you see the rise of Afrikaner nationalism in the early 20th century, as a as a particular form of white supremacism. And in my own work, I've written a monograph came out in 2007, called White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party, which are basically, I use the opportunity to trace this history back to the actually late 19th century, but really, you see this rise of Afrikaner nationalism, early 20th century really gaining pace, and, and in that sense, but what you have is a, quite a quite an explicit white project to gain the upper hand in South Africa. So very different to the liberal experience, I would say, in in, in Britain, and of course, what's interesting then, for me, it's really useful to use to look at whiteness. And it does not not only useful, but also necessary to look at whiteness in the plural. So to understand Afrikaner nationalism as a reaction to British imperialism, which, which I understand is as English nationalism writ large, really, so we have South Africa or the territory that's now known as South Africa being colonized by Britain, we have a South African war between 1899 and 1992 Afrikaner nationalism, rising as a reaction to to British imperialism. And, you know, literally, you have this white supremacist embarking on a project to try and race start control, through gaining access to the privileges and protections of, of whiteness, and, but But interestingly, trying to do it through kind of a paradoxical hanging or clinging on to a particular form of ethnicity. So that's why it's quite useful to bring it ethnicity. And you know, a lot of studies work and we understand Englishness, of course, as a as a form of ethnicity and you know how to British imperialism, this was, you have this kind of projection of of Englishness across the globe. But of course, the English don't understand themselves as, as ethnic, they see everybody else as ethnic. So, so it says ethnicity that seeks to place other ethnicities. And in this interplay of ethnicities and the competitive situation that arises in South Africa, you have these multiple whitenesses basically vying for power. And, and what we one of the things that we do in the book is that we, we actually challenge in our chapter, this conceptual mind, so, critical whiteness studies, which is the what we call the invisibility-ignorance-innocence triad. So, this idea that whiteness is always invisible, it projects itself as ignorant and on the bias of them before as as innocent. And if you look at South African whiteness of Afrikaner whiteness of course, you see that they were long periods when this is definitely not an invisiblized whiteness. So this, in fact, is why this was very much declaring itself because very much declaring people racialized as white as superior, in in very explicit ways. Because you've got board signboard sending people, you can enter here, but you can't intervene, you can sit here, but you can't sit there. And it's not only saying so called non-Europeans as the first term that was used or natives, and later on the terms change to, to blacks, to nonwhites, and so forth. But you also have whites only your first Europeans only then whites only, and so forth. So it's a it's a very noticeable if you can't miss it, it's quite an explicit whiteness. And so therefore, we are actually argue that the invisibility proposition isn't true, isn't always true, sometimes true, but not always true. And perhaps in your kind of British context, mostly true, but but if you look at other locales, then then suddenly so in terms of, of location in terms over a time, why this actually shifts it adapt itself all the time, and it becomes actually sometimes hypervisiblized.

And that's it's a very interesting interplay, then with blackness which is sometimes invisiblized, and other times hypervisiblized. So the the, all these interactions that are happening, and, and for me, it was very useful to try and make sense of that. And in what you see is what you know, as Afrikaners reach a predominantly middle class status in the 1960s, you actually see more and more how the Afrikaner nationalist establishments started to shift towards wanting to almost disappear into this normalized whiteness of Anglo whiteness. So there's globalized and your whiteness, wanting to disappear into that. So you see kind of a reformism starting, and that's actually the shift of the Afrikaner establishment, to a more liberal position, which is a position that seeks invisiblize itself actually, to move away from that, that explicit kind of of claiming of, of white supremacy to do the more invisiblized, normalized forms. And then ultimately, now again, shifting to a more to this, so you see the radical right, taking shape in South Africa, again, in ways and are now shifting, again, now to more explicit form of whiteness. So it's very, very interesting to see over time, that's why it helps to historicize, but also to bring in that spatial dimension.

SH: Can I just very briefly say in relation to that, so I really like the way ChristiÕs kind of described it all. And it is, I think, a strength of the analysis. And for me, it's the issue of the co-constitutive nature of all of these things, which again, comes out in Ashley's chapter for me, because that you can't have I mean, it sounds ridiculous, in a way, you can't have the right without the left or the you know, you can't have the best forms the good forms of whiteness, which, of course, is how the British state constructs itself, very ridiculously for many of us, but without these other spoiled forms of whiteness, and so it really is that co-content and I would say a multiply-constitutive nature of all of these things. So this triadic kind of relation that ChristiÕs talking about there is is really important in relation to that, I think.

AD: No, absolutely. And it's really I think it's really important for our listeners who most of the time what we do is, you know, is a an episode that focuses on one particular aspect of the radical right in a specific context, whether it's a small contemporary moment or historical past or a particular phenomenon. So, it's really helpful to put all of this in a global context and really get a sense of something like invisibility, right, that it doesn't look the same in every place, and that sometimes that holds up and sometimes it doesn't. And even in specific locales, that relationship can really evolve and when whiteness chooses to be invisible, and when it doesn't, is really important. So just to focus a little bit in on perhaps the the nuts and bolts of the book, part two of the book, Conspiracies: Ideologies, Reinforcing Whiteness, perhaps most directly addresses radical right movements. What are some of the areas that these chapters cover? And what other sections or chapters of the book Shona and Christi do you think might have particular resonance for our audience, which is not only academics and policymakers, but just interested observers of the radical right in our current moment?

CvdW: so, so, this particular section Augusta, as you say, called Conspiracies: Ideologies, Reinforcing Whiteness is trying to make sense those ideologies that basically conspire to, to reproduce whiteness, to strengthen whiteness, to at times, hide whiteness, to act as vehicles for whiteness, and so forth and so on to normalize whiteness. So, so we look at a number of ideologies nationalism, of course, anti-feminism, neo-fascism, of course in Ashley's chapter post-feminism liberalism, socialism, Zionism, Zionism. Nationalism, of course, to be a quite a typical vehicle for for whiteness and and I think when we thinking of the radical right, of course, we be frequently think of these white supremacist forms of nationalism that are mobilized by people in the inner radical, right. And so what we trying to do is to to understand, you know, how these these when it comes to nationalism, you know, what's also what is the point when nationalism it turns into a neo-fascism? You know, what's, what's the point? Because it's actually it's quite interesting when you study populism. And you get to these different versions of populism and so forth, when when there's that moment when populism or a populist nationalism actually spills over into a form of fascism or neo-fascism. And, and that's yeah, so that's, that's, those are the kinds of questions that we're trying to tackle. 

We have a very interesting chapter from Sitara Thobani, for example, where she's looking at Trumpist white nationalism, and sheÕs just looking at Hindu people in the diaspora, and how they actually resonate and and identify with Trumpist white nationalism. And you you actually have a very specific moments of collaboration, political collaborations, actually, between your your your Trumpist in the States, and and Hindus in the in the diaspora. So you see this kind of meeting of, of minds between the Hindu nationalists and American white nationalists, which, you know, it's a fascinating chapter, and it shows you also, how whiteness can be mobilized by people who are not racialized as white, but we're actually racialized as other to whiteness. And then, of course, I'll leave Ashley to save a lot of words about their chapter because it's, it is it's a, it's a, it's a very, it's a fascinating chapter in terms of showing us you know, how mutable also fascist whiteness is we think of that as whiteness is quite a crude in your face kind of model that would be fine. I mean, I think politically, it is. It's a it's quite an astute form, before we get there, so we've got Kendra Marston who talks about the British Royal Family and we know, you know, if you just look at popular media, you know, the royalists and all of that, and she's looking at how Megan Markel has become this object of hatred. And it's particularly actually because the British Royal Family is projected, as the sign of whiteness and the sign of white Britishness and that Britishness is impossible, if not white, and how, and also actually looking at social media specifically and how these discourses are projected through through social media, to communicate this, this essentialist is understanding of Britishness as essentially white. what so and that's, that's a wonderful chapter discerning.

We also have the provocations section, the provocations section is when we we actually get into some of the divides and the dilemmas of critical whiteness studies. And we also return to normative critical whiteness studies. The wonderful chapter by Amanpreet Ahluwalia and we also look at, the advantages of different vantage points. For example, we've got an African philosopher, Bernard Matolino, originally from Zimbabwe today in South Africa, you know, honestly asking questions like, Is it possible to suspend whiteness, you know, from an epistemological point of view when you when you are a philosopher, and he points to these very fascinating contradictions in the development of African philosophy, for example, but Philip W. Gray has a chapter on the alt-right. And this also links to me quite nicely with Ashley's chapter. They alt-Right politics can be very easily dismissed. But it's for me, it's a very interesting later day development, kind of incorporating neoliberal dimensions, and, and, and definitely fascist dimensions and so forth. But and then what Philip Gray is looking at is how it brings on board and actually appropriates the black feminist principle of intersectionality, in terms of, of creating a new kind of politics, and that ultimately, bolsters a very, very reactionary form of whiteness. And in that also, in that same section, we've got Colleen E. Boucher and Cheryl E. Matias who writes about what I call an emboldened whiteness, and that actually brings us to, because if you think about your liberal form of whiteness is this form, that that seeks to disappear itself it does this disappearing trick, and it's, and it's difficult to pin down what you now see, because a very, I think we should, we should give credit to the incredible courage that thereÕs been in anti-racism and anti-colonial movements over the past 400 years that have actually brought whiteness on the, onto the backfoot people that say, you know, I do a lot of public engagement and media engagement, and it will be what are the things are exactly the same, that things are not exactly the same.

You actually have at this point in time, you're actually seeing a, a whiteness that is very much on the backfoot. That's, that's adopting a defensive posture. That's why it's actually coming out fighting. That's why it's becoming more explicit. That's why it's becoming visibilized in this white supremacist forms in the in the alt-Right form, and so on and Boucher and Matias actually talks about it as this emboldened whiteness, and they analyze it as an evolutionary reversion, because in a sense of me now, seeing as a reversion, what we're now seeing is a reversion to to that kind of white supremacism that you saw with the, you know, in the late 19th century in the States, I would say that the kind of backlash that is that you saw there, if you think of the lynching movement, and so on. And if you look at violence in the United States against against African Americans, and other stigmatized groupings, and and also, if I'm looking at South African context, of course, you're looking at, you know, basically 1920s, 1930s, 1940s And then, of course, you know, the fascism of the 30s and 40s. And so on further, it further emboldening this, this whiteness. And that's why they, they analyze it as Boucher and Matias a, as an evolutionary theory, because it's, you can even analyze it over time, and you still resize it, and you can actually see how it more so adapts itself to historical conditions to try and reassert itself.

SH: Yeah. And I mean, throughout the rest of the book, I think just, you know, there's so many different chapters that speak to different aspects of this continuity, you know, so. So I think the other sections also in the other kind of authors are still worth a look, I would say. They're more or less explicit kind of engagements, you know, throughout.

AD: Absolutely. And then this is one of the great things about an edited volume is it allows you to really come in from so many different perspectives. And you can really focus on the parts that are really relevant for your work, if you're an academic, if you're just an interested reader, you can hone in on these different elements or you can do what I plan to do, which is get it and just sit with it and read it cover to cover so I wanted to switch over to Ashley and hear a little bit about her chapter in the book, which we've mentioned a few times. And it's called Ò#TradCulture: Reproducing Whiteness and Neo-Fascism Through Gendered Discourse Online.Ó

AM: Thanks, I guess and thank you so much Shona and Christi such an interesting conversation. So the chapter that I wrote explores how Trad culture works is a useful mediating space for normalizing and softening far right extremist, particularly sort of neo-fascist and white supremacist ideas. So I took an approach to Trad culture that's a bit broader than most people in the study of the radical right, who tend to focus on the kind of extreme influencers in the culture, really trying to understand how this liminal space as borderland between normative and extreme cultures was working from a communicative framework in digital space. So I would say it's important to note that there's multiple strands of Trad culture, there's a sort of red pill strand deriving mostly from Reddit. And for folks interested in that Julia Ebner writes about that, there is the sort of more secular-nationalist strand, which is something that I tend to focus on, because that aligns with my work. And that became highly publicized throughout 2020 in mainstream media, which I talked about in the chapter. And then there's a more religious strand, which overlaps with Hindutva cultures, broadly speaking, and nonwestern culture in a different way. And Eviane Leidig, who also writes about this, and as a former CARR fellow, focuses a bit more on the nonwestern aspects just for folks interested in Trad culture broadly. But all the strands focus on women's role as wives and mothers. And interestingly, in this sort of moment, they frame this through an innate personal desire, and a rejection of feminism. So it's a very sort of Neo-liberalized culture in certain ways. And I work with the theory of Angela McRobbie, and Susan Douglas, so post-feminism and enlightened feminism to kind of talk about how that piece works a little bit. But this culture is, is it's important that it is both has elements that are extremists and elements that are non-extremist, because that allows it to position itself. We talked about how whiteness hides itself, it allows it to position itself as non-extremist broadly speaking, which enables normalization.

AD: Ashley, that's really exciting, especially as someone who I'm not incredibly familiar with, with Trad culture, I am, it's not something that I've looked a great deal into. So I wanted to ask a little bit about, can you give us a sense of how ideas of tradition work in this sort of particular space to circulate whether it's propaganda or narratives between conservative and radical or far right, digital spaces on cultures online?

AM: Definitely. So as I was kind of looking at the online media, right, I study digital cultures and how those media circulate, I started to ask, so whose tradition is this referring to? Because the imagery and the media are really, really white centric, and the majority of the voices and women sharing this are white. So it's clear that the aspirations of Trad culture present a very specific form of white gender nostalgia, you'll see imagery of the 1950s housewife is very popular, or in some cases, the Pioneer Woman, in particular, that pioneer images is popular in Australia, right? So you'll see ethnocentric clothing in some cases in the in Eastern European context, right? So it's a very specific sort of white, gendered nostalgic vision that is aimed at how white women desire to be in this moment. It's highly anti-feminist, right? So they sort of see feminism as having failed them, or at a minimum being complete. And now they can return to this sort of innate desire to mother and be wives typically stay at home mothers. But this idea, I've argued represents a white gendered epistemology or specifically a white feminine epistemology, a way of knowing the world through whiteness and femininity that is very specialized. And it's that epistemological piece that is implicitly embedded with whiteness and femininity, that makes a productive space for a more explicit racist and neo-fascist narratives to come in and be laundered through the culture. Right? So you'll see very explicitly white supremacist, often identitarian is what they call themselves. It's a particular strand of contemporary white supremacism that are influencers within this culture and influencers within this sort of alternative network. And they bridge between the two cultures. So I think the most famous example, which I've written about previously is Lana Lokteff and Ayla Stewart, right. So Ayla Stewart is Wife for a Purpose she identified as a Trad wife, Lana Lokteff identifies as an identitarian. She's part of a large media company with her husband in the space and they would do podcast together all the time. And there's once you start following it, there's our larger network of these women. So certain ideas can get pushed in between the movements and normalize through Trad culture into sort of normative conservative culture in ways that pull conservative culture further to the right.

AD: Ashley it is incredibly fascinating. And this is something this is one of the aspects of your work that I really love is there's you can actually show us what it looks like of how How do things move from sort of extreme spaces to so called mainstream spaces, this is something that we talk a lot about in our current political moment, especially in the United States, the so called mainstreaming effect. And what you do is really show us how this happens, culturally and what this actually looks like. And you can trace that and it's, it's really, it's one of the aspects of your work that I really love. And I wanted to ask, are you seeing any real world sociopolitical outcomes from this particular digital culture in or as to frame in another way - are there ways that politics are capitalizing on these discourses discursive shifts that the sort of online Trad wife culture has been generating?

AM: So I think there's two really big ones one that has been a bit more internationalized or globalized. And one that is a bit more specific to the US culture presently, although some very kind of US centric things have been moving broadly in the digital space lately. So we'll see how that ends up. The first is when we've talked about this before Augusta, so that kind of Save the Children QAMom stuff. So as there's this rising tide of white traditionalism, this idea of motherhood, and motherhood as a mechanism for women's public political voice, right, it spills over into the broader culture. So there's women who may never have heard of Trad culture, but there's this rising tide of this idea of mothers needing to be proactive, and the Save the Children campaign that happened in the summer of 2020. So it was protesting in the US in August, and then it moved globally, throughout Europe. And even further in September of 2020, really, to me are a harbinger of this shift, rightward and women's kind of focus on their children in politics, like as a mode of their public speech, a mode of their public participation. And it's important because that movement is also infiltrated by and touched by far right extremism and other forms of extremism in ways that are concerning. The one that is bit more US centric at the moment and works in a similar way. So again, so women may not know what Trad culture is, but this sort of widening digital culture and online narrative is the anti-critical race theory movement, particularly in K to 12 schools, where critical race theory and Critical Race studies are not generally taught. But it's a mobilizing factor that is a an implicitly white mobilizing factor, drawing from the work of women like Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, and Mothers of Massive Resistance, white women have long had and long taken up political mobilization around protecting whiteness in this way, in school environments in educational environments, because it's a place where white women are not only there, they're empowered to do it in that setting, right through cultures of whiteness. So those are the two kind of areas that I've been looking at in terms of this culture and its impact on shifting the overton window around children in education.

AD: Christi and Shona, I wanted to loop you back in and ask you the same question if you could talk a little bit about the socio political outcomes of the work that you do in the context that you study. And also any ways that you see the migration of the particular kinds of issues with the globalizing nature of the far right. This is something we talked about a lot on the podcast that, obviously we're in a particularly global moment, but far right extremism has always been global. But I'd love to hear a little bit about some of the outcomes that you're seeing in your work and the ways that this is expanding transnationally or perhaps not? 

SH: I come in off the back of what Ashley was just talking about, actually, because there's such great examples of that in the English context, which actually relate to the thrust of my work. So the, you know, thinking about the way online cultures and the rightward shifts of those and the rightward shifts of gender, cultures, women, the family, the centrality of that in political life, you know, we've got the the incredible example of Mumsnet in the English context, which of course, is totally not considered the far right or even, you know, it wouldn't never really construct itself as rightward, but it is totally rooted within the importance of white womanhood for white supremacist, or, or for whiteness as an orientation of power. And as it's hooking into the state, but I always get the years wrong in the US context, but we have exactly the same thing going on in the English context at the moment, you know, with the kind of shifts in the curriculum, and we've actually got another chapter have after having said I wouldn't mention anybody else specifically, but Sherene H. Razack actually uses the school yard and this example of the battle between Christianity and anti-Muslim kind of racism in the context of the US. I mean, she does a huge historical sweep around that, but, but it totally hooks into what, what Ashley was just talking about there and I think the final thing I would say before handing over to Christi, because she's kind of the expert in the far right stuff, definitely. That is not necessarily my bag, but I mean, my interest in care and maternal list politics and the relationship between paternalism and the establishment of the welfare state, which of course, is talked about so much in the US context, because of the of the kind of unusual state format- or the particular state formation within that context, the relationship between women the church charitable kind of context, but um, but the English maternalism and the relationship to paternalism in the English context is absolutely crucial to this to the development of rightward, actually, the right centeredness, if I can say that, I don't know whether I can - of liberalism in the English context. I mean, this is we are essentially a conservative little c and big C, kind of kind of national context, which of course, hooks into to coloniality. So background again. Yeah.

CvdW: Yeah. And I wrote a book called Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa, which basically looks very much what you're talking about, Ashley, I like this idea, of a white woman epistemology, because it is, it's very interesting to see, you know, in a very, very new democracy, you know, if we only transition to democracy in 1994, so you can say, we were very, very new and fledgling, I should add democracy. And you should think that the kinds of possibilities in terms of reimagining yourself your own subjectivity, would be would be endless and should be endless, because it is there's a there's a kind of expansive political kind of terrain that's been open. And then so very powerful discourses that are being mobilized to draw women back in. And and with the demise of Afrikaner nationalism, as we, as we knew it, as it gave rise to apartheid as a as a white supremacist state formation, with the demise of that have gone as we've seen a kind of a fracturing and fragmenting so we want to talk about kind of political mobilization or instrumentalization of these discourses. This in South Africa, what you see is a but what are what are called in this book. ItÕs a neo-Afrikaner enclave nationalism, so you get a kind of a withdrawal into much smaller locals. And in that way, gender becomes a primary relation me because you're trying to reinstate certain hierarchies that are being disturbed by the democratic state. And in that sense, the whole idea with the mother of the nation idea becomes very important. 

So here's the maternalism for you Ð in the Afrikaner volksmoeder. So volksmoeder it also in your German sense of folk. So so the mother, the folks who the mother of the nation imagery that's being reactivated and as I described this kind of a woman, Tradwife as mother model, so, you know, to achieve womanhood, you have to be a wife, you have to be a mother. And it's it's incredibly interesting to see how strongly those discourses are flowing. And and primarily also aimed at at reinstating Afrikaner men have been stigmatized by apartheid that you know, as they were the public face of apartheid, so the Afrikaner masculinity has been under massive pressure. And if we want to look at these these transnational linkages, as well, so it's really interesting to see you've got on the on the Afrikaner right, the white right, again, almost no women, publicly active, back at home, keeping the enclave, cooking and going and keeping the children racist and sexist and homophobic and so forth. And you have the men actually engaging in organizations and connecting creating these transnational connections, even making presentations to the European Union parliament, we've had visits by our white rights organizations to the Trumpist White House and so forth and so on. And as we we see our white right Afrikaner men basically active and making those interconnections quite, quite, quite obvious ways. The whole idea around farm murders that people might have heard of being mobilized. Interesting also then the European white right tried to create this idea to reinforce this idea of the white race, so called Òunder pressure.Ó They are these, these this onslaught on on white people. And using the South African example of so farm murders to justify white right politics actually in Europe and Scandinavia. So it's very interesting to see these interlinkages. And of course, social media integration being absolutely vital.

AD: Christi, Shona, Ashley, thank you all so much for being here. And for our listeners, can you provide the details of how folks can pre order the book if there's any events coming up? And when the book is due out? And also for many of us, can our University Libraries order the book, you know, just to make sure that we're getting it in our shelves? And that way, after we're done reading it, other people can read it, too?

SH: Yeah, sure. So well, you can certainly preorder the book. So you can do that via the Routledge website. So you can go to routledge.com. I don't know whether ChristiÕs got the ISBN to hand but we can pop that in the show notes, you know, and people can just search the title. Definitely get your libraries to, to, to preorder. It is a big tome. And like Christi says it's hugely it's a it's a hefty, there's a hefty price tag too so it is definitely for libraries to kind of think about using course material. There's a great kind of wealth of that, but the will so be open access content. But we just obviously need to wait until that is published. So people will be able to get hold of parts of the book open access, courtesy of Routledge. And if you want to find out about more of that you can just follow you know, Christi and I on social media, you can follow the Whitespaces Twitter and you'll kind of get all sorts of information from all of those. So yeah, and events we will be having a launch event in the new year. So in 2022

CvdW: And if you if you I should add now that if you if you order it now you get a nice, chunky 20% off. I know that sounds a bit too advertorial.

AD: We love discounts. We all love discounts. And everyone knows Ashley's Twitter's she's been on the pod a few times. But Christi and Shona, could you give your social media just for our listeners so they can follow you and get all of your insights all the time.
SH: And so, I'm my personal Twitter's @ Shona Hunter. So S H O N A H U N T E R. And then the whitespace is Twitter is @ spaceswhite. And again, similar to Christi, I've got a personal kind of well, we've got a whitespaces website that's got just piles of information and kind of videos and stuff like that. So anybody who's interested can go there.

CvdW: I'm on @ ChristivdWest Twitter. So at C H R I S TI V D W E S T and from there, you can get the link to my Facebook as well and join me there. 

AD: Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me.

CvdW: Very good to be with you too. Good to meet you, Ashley.

AS: Thank you for having us. 

SH: Thank you. Yes. 

AD: Well, this has been a another episode of Right Rising and we'll see you all next time.