Hello, and welcome
to Right Rising, the official podcast
of the Far Right Analysis Network. I'm
your host, Alexander Reed Ross, and
today I am thrilled to be here with
Beatriz López-Buarque. Dr. Buarque is a
political scientist and a fellow at the
Interdisciplinary Social Science School at London
School of Economics. So, welcome to the pod, Dr. Buarque. thank you so much for
having me yeah i was looking forward for
this moment yeah same here it's been
it's been a long time that we've been trying
to uh work out the dates and everything
and it's great that we can finally make
it happen yeah so um you've been you were
you were part of the original car group
and you know we all kind of a lot of us
floated over into this fran network and uh
you know a lot has happened since then i
think that was maybe like five or six years
ago so um uh it's cool that i think you finished
your dissertation and you're doing a
lot of teaching and public speaking and
all of that kind of stuff so it's it's
been it's been part of part of the rewarding
thing of remaining in this network has
been to see you know colleagues continue to
succeed and it's great to touch base with
you yeah many things change but it's good
that we remain connected I agree so I first
wanted to compliment you on your exciting
use of psychoanalytical theory to develop
some essential themes in the field of right
-wing studies because that's something that
we don't see that much of and it's
really fun to explore. It's really an
interesting field and it's kind of neglected in
my opinion. So your recent article Algorithms
at Your Service is about the 2024 anti
-migrant riots in England. Can you discuss for
some context, the riots that happened and
the methodology that you use to understand
social media's role. Yeah, sure. So
these riots, they happened in the
summer of 2024. And to many
researchers, it was considered the
worst far right riot since the
Second World War. And And the thing
is that everything started with a horrifying stabbing of three
girls in Southport. And immediately
after this attack, we had some fake news
about the identity of the perpetrator
of the attack. And these fake news
started, like, spread very rapidly across
different digital platforms. People
started using telegram and also acts to
mobilize violent action, to come after
muslins, to come after hotels, allegedly
housing asylum seekers. And all of a
sudden, many British towns and
cities, they were with these outbursts
of violence. and when we had these
riots what really captured my attention
is that much of the coverage was focused
on the relationship between fake news and
violence as if fake news were like the main
motivator of the violence but deep inside
I was thinking that it was not really just
fake news there was like these xenophobic
islamophobic sentiments they were already
around for I would say like decades and
so what I decided and other a few researchers
were also looking at the role played by
conspiracy theories disinformation campaigns
because they noticed some accounts
weaponizing information. So I decided to delve
into this, to delve into the role played by
visual representations of racist conspiracy
theories, such as the Great Replacement and
the White Genocide. And I explored two
main hypotheses here. First, that digital
platforms such as X amplified these visual
representations of racist conspiracy
theories at a different speed in comparison
to other content and at a different
scale. And the other hypothesis was that these
visual representations, they were really
appealing to violence because the Great
Replacement and the white genocide are two
conspiracy theories that are often used
as a justification for white supremacist
terrorist attacks. So it is already
well documented the relationship between
these conspiracy theories and violence and the
methodology that i used was basically
the methodology that i designed for my uh
doctoral studies which i call multimodal
critical effect discourse analysis that
integrates quantitative analysis into discourse
analysis so at first We ran a regression
between the total number of views and
the total number of likes, comments, and
shares of this post featuring visual
representations of racist conspiracy theories
on two X accounts, Europe Invasion and
Britain First. First, the European invasion
was already well -known at that moment
because it was already engaged in
disinformation campaigns. And the second part
of the methodology was to really engage with
psychoanalysis and explore some of the
fantasies conveyed through these images.
and we managed to confirm the two
hypotheses it was very interesting actually
to see that x amplified that visual representation
post featuring visual representations
of racist conspiracy theories they
were amplified about 30 percent more than
the other content and those post
featuring images created with generative AI tools,
their amplification was even more
disproportionate. They were reaching like
millions of views. And by focusing
on these specific images created
with generative AI, it was very
interesting, Alex, to see the role of
algorithmic bias, which is often
overlooked in our field. And in my view, So
this is actually one of the most nocive
sides of artificial intelligence, because
we're talking here about stereotypical
representations of Muslims and black people
that have been so present in Western
culture that they remain unnoticed when it
comes to content moderation. And people
don't even get shocked anymore because they
became normalized. And that's why they
are so harmful. so yeah in a nutshell
these were like the main findings
and the methodology that i used for this
uh research project yeah that's so weird
that so many people were so excited to
be sharing these ai images um as
though they were real but as though they
could enable this fantasy you know i
don't know but uh you understand the riots
as enabling and fulfilling this kind
of social fantasy of the englishman right
this kind of god -ordained crusader
against the victimization of pure english
women so this sort of you know the knight
in shining armor chivalrous sort of old
fantasy that you like you said is like as
old as england so how is this
fantasy conveyed on social media and
how is it understood or recognized
by those who adopt it what are the
kind of tropes you know that you see in
the ai video or uh images and the kind
of myth being spun. Yeah, the tropes are
so like common that I think that's precisely
the most nocive part of this content,
because precisely because they have been
so normalized, people don't even pay
attention. So it is as if their invisibility
made this content particularly harmful.
So the tropes here that I saw was like
associations between black individuals, particularly
black men with criminality, with
disorder, muslins portrayed as sexual
predators. So surrounding, posing a threat to
white British women. And another fantasy
that was very prominent is this fantasy of the
white hero. the white heroic warrior, as if
white men were, white European men, were
entitled to take violent action, to restore
order, to save their homeland, to save the
so-called, the perceived sacred body of white
European women. So these fantasies, they were
very, very prominent, and we could see this
constructed in different ways through videos
showing bleeding white men as if they
were giving their blood to save Britain from
the so-called invaders, invasors. um and then
genitive ai created images they showed very
um how can i say very strong white men there
always as if they were like a role model hero
and uh several boats behind this white hero
who was there standing to save england and
another one that comes to mind was these
genitive AI-created images that resembles
one of these promotional material produced for
movies like Avengers. So opposing a white man, Christian, to a black Muslim and
surrounded by other Muslims and with the
parliament in flames. so it is as if there
was only one single hero there standing
against all the others pure evil guys so it
was very like and and it's very interesting i
think it's fascinating something here alex
that when we talk about these images
people people know that these images are not
real they they they have the aesthetics of memes
so why exactly are they engaging with
this And I think that the why really has to
do with this fantasy of the white hero,
this fantasy of saving their homeland, because
these images, they serve as instruments
to fantasize violence. so even these people
if these people cannot go to the street
and like physically attack muslims by
sharing these images it is as if they were
saying oh we support these we are the heroes
these people should not be here so yeah
again it goes back to the sort of fantasy
world of the online space i think to
some degree i mean a lot of people who share
these kinds of memes probably would go
out into the streets if they had the chance
or what have you. But particularly, and when you think about it, the riot is the ultimate non-individualized
context, at least as it's framed
sort of sociologically over the last couple
hundred years, I guess. The riot is
considered like a mass phenomenon, a collective
action, or like Kinetti, like the the
herd you know the violent herd um and often
with the connotations like race riots and
anti-semitic pogroms and that kind of thing
so to stage it as like the one individual
standing against the horde is to invert the
concept or the context and um and and arrive
at a position of dignity for what is
otherwise morally considered unjustifiable
within civil society. To have a riot in
England, you know, in a monarchy, a
parliamentary monarchy, right? It's not
considered a great thing, you know, for a
patriot to actually do. so they're inverting
it in order to make it blend in with the
myth and the lore uh that sort of england
proceeds from almost um it's a pale and
genetic thing right um so i want to like this
also makes me think a lot about the flag of
saint george and how it's used especially you
said something really interesting that it's
invisibility almost sort of grants it
power and and um uh pervasion it makes it
spread uh uh much easier i don't remember exactly
what you said i wish i had written it down
but um the flag of saint george is a really
good example of this right because it's sort
of considered england before the union
right it's like more english than the union
jack or whatever and um it is sort of has a
cross what's that and it has a cross and it
as a cross yeah so can you talk a little bit
about how the i don't know i don't know if
you've written about this or thought about
i'm sure you've thought about it a lot but for
a while i think the flag of saint george
was being used as a white supremacist white
nationalist signifier is that a similar
case of like this is such a common thing
you know that it can spread so easily
I think that the weaponization of the
flag can be attributed in largely part to
this intersection of white supremacy
and Christianity. And this mindset,
this appeal to the crusade. This is very
interesting because these conspiracy theories,
both the Great Replacement and the
white genocide, they appeal to this crusading
mentality. So it is as if on a fantasy
level, they were activating these individuals
as heroes who should go on a crusade to
save their people. So it's a very, very
strong appeal, almost as if they were
literally chosen by God. And this happens on
an unconscious level. Some people, they really project heroes
consciously. And these, I would
say that they are like the white supremacists,
the ones that to like verbally express
this. But we have many individuals who
engage on a similar level, but without like
making it explicit, because it is really
in the unconscious. They feel it is a
matter of feeling. And I think that when
I was getting ready for this interview,
I saw some of your comments, and I don't
remember the sentence that you used, but
I fully agree that races, we still have
racism, we still have xenophobia, we still
have Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, all these discriminatory
ideologies, because they offer some
enjoyment. people enjoy engaging with these
ideologies because on an unconscious level they
it is as if they were making them feel special
so it is as if like oh my gosh we are so
superior so better than the others that they
are trying to destroy us they are trying
they're coming here invading our country and
we really need to get together because
they're coming after us because we are the best
so it is really it really has an effective
component there that unfortunately is still
very overlooked in our in our field right
that's why i was really excited to read your
work um you write about um identities right so
you're talking about this sort of christian
western crusader particularly the english
nationalist right um and uh kind of going
back to like georgic nationalism of like
slaying the dragon and you know like ancient sort
of myths so you know your work develops a
theory where the desire to complete or fulfill
identities amounts to something called
surplus jouissance uh which i think means joy in
french um yeah yeah can you elaborate a
little bit on jouissance and why a kind of ego
fantasy would activate it yeah i'll try to
make sense of these inaccessible terms
so yes to sense means enjoyment and in lacanian
psychoanalysis we have this concept of surplus
to a sense which basically means like
fullness so it is as if unconsciously we had
some fullness as object of desire but we are
constantly looking for this fullness and this
fantasy that at some point we will reach
this fullness keep us engaged with the pursuit
because we enjoy these like we enjoy this
repeated act of missing our object of desire
i know when i say this is very abstract but
i'll give an example and it will make sense
for instance when we are engaging with
instagram we consciously know that it's impossible
to watch everything that is there on
instagram we know and we may also consciously
consciously know that we are there like
wasting time we could do other things but we're
still there why because we enjoy we enjoy
these unconscious like fantasy of reaching some
fullness of reaching like reading assessing
everything that we can a similar dynamics
operates for instance with our engagement with knowledge, for instance. Why do we keep reading? Why do we keep studying? Because deep inside
we have this fantasy that at some point
we will become the master, we will become
super knowledgeable. It's impossible to
achieve this fullness. But the desire to
get closer keeps us in the pursuit
of this fullness. Now, how is this
linked to racists? Because fear is a
racist and identity. It is linked through a concept that
Dijek developed. We have other frameworks,
but I like this concept developed by
Dijek that is called Chat of Enjoyment.
so the jack explains racism and xenophobia
through this framework saying that why do
some individuals they they express strong
xenophobic and racist sentiment and racist
sentiments they express this because they
unconsciously perceive black individuals
and migrants as enjoying something
that they should not be enjoying that was not
supposed to be theirs so then they engage
with racism and xenophobia because
it is as if it was like a mechanism
of defense to try to reclaim this
enjoyment that should not be on the
hands of the others and um and i think that
if we look at racism and xenophobia and
islamophobia through this perspective i
think many things start to make sense because
it is really on in the unconscious It's
really about these fantasies that somebody
is reaching some fullness that should
not be theirs. And then there is this pursuit
for this fullness. And conspiracy theories
come in the middle because they serve
as a refuge. because conspiracy theories
they project these fantasies showing white
european particularly men as entitled to the
fullness did i make sense i think so yeah
so i think i i um i i shared this article
with you by brian hughes about conspiracy
theories where he argues that conspiracy
theories try to draw people away from the
sort of symbolic realm identified with the
father and like structure and order and pull
them back to this kind of pre-edible sense of
unity with the mother where you have this
feeling of unitary sovereignty and power
and you know there's nothing else to be kind
of jealous of you're going into this state
of satisfaction and wholeness right and
hold yes exactly so it seems like you guys
are kind of saying something very similar
it's very interesting uh how this sort of adds up
in the psychoanalytical way um but uh so
just to sort of try to see if I have it
kind of right. So it seems like the memes
that you looked at that show white women being
scandalized by brown and black men are not
about rescuing the women from that paradigm,
but kind of replacing the brown and black
bodies with white ones. In other words,
the reactionary male fantasy, the white male
fantasy here, is that the non-whites have
unmitigated access to women's bodies while
the white men don't so in essence the far
right are jealous of the non-white man's
perceived boundless jouissance while their
own enjoyment is always frustratingly partial
is that right like they they wanna they
want the access to women that they think the
other has yeah it's it's at the core of uh
of these um gender and racial issues surrounding
um these ideologies it is really at the
core they really um they project themselves
as the as the ones who should have like
full access to the bodies of white european
women but something but we must make a
distinction here because when we talk about it's
very interesting this we need to distinguish
the value attributed to the bodies of white
European women and the bodies of non-white,
non-European women because it's very
interesting that white European men, they project
themselves as entitled to the body of women
regardless of race and ethnicity but But
the bodies of white European women is perceived
as sacred, because it is their wombs that
will give birth to the next generation of
leaders, whereas the bodies of non-white, non
-European women is perceived as disposable,
just for entertainment. right right okay yeah
i wonder how that tracks with because
there's this projection of sacredness on the
white woman but and how does that track with
the kind of ultra misogynistic patriarchy
right so it seems to me like the white
woman is only sacred in relation to the other
and once you take the other and replace
with the fully satisfied white male the
sacredness of the white woman diminishes as
she becomes his object in a sense i don't
know if i understood well i don't know what
i'm saying at all so i'm just saying i'm
saying like it's sacred i think alex sorry
I think that's the misogynist framework is
focused on feminists. So when white
European women are not conforming to this
ideal of femininity, then they become
problematic and then, yes, they
channel hate. Because if they are conforming
to the ideal of femininity, then
they are sacred. yeah which is is like
an impossible ideal again so we're talking
about identity and it fulfills yes we're
talking about fullness again yeah yeah yeah
exactly neither so neither are really
fulfillable like this kind of like chivalrous
heroic white man nor the sacred you know white
woman they're both ideals that contribute
and drive this anger and violence exactly
exactly i think i get it now yeah and they
keep trapped into this cycle because they
don't have awareness about this we don't
talk about this and we also don't have like
a coordinated effort to challenge these uh
stereotypical representations of men and women
of migrants muslims uh on a societal level
yeah so this question is complicated because
i'm not defining any of these terms
and they're kind of being left open which
is kind of my fault but uh They're controversial
terms. So you talk about, you write
about paranoia and narcissism playing important
roles in the process of jouissance that
motivates xenophobia. In a sense, you're
kind of saying that for racists and
ultra-nationalists, xenophobia feels
good, right? Yes. I think that
we touched upon this slightly when we said that
racism and xenophobia, Islamophobia, they
are based on this enjoyment. People are
racist and xenophobic, Islamophobic because they
enjoy projecting their resentment, their
grievances towards the other who is perceived
to be enjoying something that was not supposed
to be theirs when it comes to these
terms paranoia and narcissism i would be
careful to associate these terms with my work
first because paranoia pretty much similar
to hofstether i'm not using the term paranoia
in clinical terms in clinical in the
clinical sense and Lacan himself said that all
human beings we have some paranoic dimension it
is part of our nature because this paranoic
dimension is part of our construction of
subjectivity what we have are degrees of
this paranoic dimension and if they get
extreme yes we can have psychosis which is a
clinical condition but i'm not talking about this
pathological state and narcissism is some
is a concept that i really didn't engage with
in my work i mentioned this because the
literature on conspiracy theories part of the
literature acknowledges the relationship
between conspiracy theories and conspiracy
mindset and narcissism but it's not really
really part of my work yeah got it i i
think narcissism kind of fascinating one
because you have the freudian definition
which i think was the over evaluation
of uh sexual uh ability i think that's
how he defined it in in um one of those
essays that he wrote um but uh it also i
think kind of can be interpreted in keeping
with this whole kind of structure of
identity and subjectivity yeah yeah you know
so this is kind of a fruitful domain
i think to to include i think you it's
one it's like in one sentence in one of
your papers so this is like this is very
like i'm like back in grad school right
now i'm like a grad student like um can
i ask you a 20 minute long question please
dr oh oh my gosh yes jesus christ all right all right so you
have another recent article and i think
your dissertation kind of does this as well
It's like putting post-Marxists and
autonomous Marxists into conversation together,
right? So there's a lot to unpack here.
I really fundamentally agree with your
main theses here. So let's just cover
the basics. Can you explain to me the difference
between these two? So I make sure
that I have it. The post-Marxists and
the autonomous Marxists. and what they say
about anti-capitalist movements okay i'll
try to make sense of this because this was
the most complex like and difficult part of
my thesis because i decided to bring
together uh here we are focused on marxist but
in my thesis i bring together marxist lacan
and foucault like people will never be together
but i did it so uh when it comes to
Autonomist Marxists and Post-Marxists, Autonomist
Marxists, their work remains loyal to
this classical Marxist dichotomy between
the capital and the proletariat, but they
perceived the proletariat as autonomous, as
creative, as productive, not as solely react
to capital. That was the main difference
between Autonomist Marxists and the
Classical Marxists. Post-Marxists,
they were slightly different in the sense
that they represent a departure from
this fundamental antagonism between
the capital and the proletariat to
understand the multiple struggles that coexist
within capitalism. And I know that when
I say post-Marxist, we tend to perceive
these as a homogeneous theoretical strand,
but it's really not homogeneous. We have some
clashes among them, and I think that some of
the clashes, they have to do with their
perception of democracy, over the relationship
between capitalism and democracy. Because
those aligned with the work of Laclau and
Shalfa Mufu, they tend to perceive that
capitalism, the struggles that we have within
capitalism will eventually result in a radical
type of democracy. and those more
aligned with the jack and i include
myself here don't really agree with
this because we think and i would i
cannot say for the others but for
instance i think that if we assume that
these multiple antagonisms will
result in radical democracy we
are really like working with the
assumption that capitalism is the only viable
economic system there. We are not open to
other possibilities. And also we are
overlooking the differences among these
antagonist groups. And we are also
overlooking how class issues underpin all
these antagonist groups. So that's why I
don't really like. unless there are
fundamental changes in society and everything
i don't really agree with this thesis of
the radical democracy proposed by post
-marxists but yes these are the main differences
between post-marxist and autonomous marxist
is that clear i think so i i think
like so you have the autonomous marxists who
say that the kind of revolutionary subject
is like very diverse uh and multiple and
so we're no longer kind of focused on the
proletariat or rather expanding concept of
the proletariat to include this kind of
multitude for the post these are the post
-marxists those are the post-marxist okay
autonomous marxists so post-marxists are like
the social movements yes yes yes okay
autonomous marxists are much more still
attached to the critique of capitalism? Yes,
they are much more attached to these
antagonism between capital and the proletariat. Yes. But they perceive the
proletariat not as merely reacting to
capital. They see the proletariat as creative,
as productive. And that's why the main
thesis of autonomous Marxists that precisely
because the proletariat is productive they
will eventually start producing a common
that will eventually lead to the destruction
of capitalism and the rise of what they
call global democracy. So it's very
interesting that both post-Marxists and
autonomous Marxists they see some
positive, amazing thing at the end of the
tunnel. in different ways but they
see i see but the autonomists hang on
to the fundamental antagonism um yeah
yeah and uh the post -marxists see it as a
more kind of constructive movement sort of yeah
yeah post-marxists they don't they don't
revolve around class struggle so they understand
the struggles revolving around race gender
and we have these atomized uh power
struggles coexisting within capitalism got it okay
so you put them in conversation together
what what's the what's the sort of purpose
and and the outcome of of um having them kind
of um um I don't know connected dialoguing
arguing what's the what it what is the what's
the yeah so so I staged a dialogue between
then because I think that both theories
related to democracy proposed by autonomous
Marxist and post-Marxist they have valid points
I just think that they overlooked the
intrinsic relationship between racism and
capitalism. And this is exactly what I tried
to recover through my understanding of the alt
-right as a multitude. So basically what happens
is that autonomous Marxists, their theory
of the multitude says that contemporary
capitalism is based on effective labor so
it is our effects that have been quantified
monetized and people are constantly
encouraged to engage in collaboration to
communicate to produce commonalities and according
to autonomous marxists this thing that
we share in common communication stories
facts i don't know things that we share in common
online for instance would lead to the
emergence of a social body, a creature that
would eventually lead to the downfall
of capitalism, that would project
itself against capitalism. That
is their theory. But then, in my view,
what they forgot is that if we live
in a capitalist system, that people
are constantly encouraged to just
react and share things in common and
everything, but our capitalist system
is sustained by a racist, an anti
-supremacist ideological dimension in an
unconscious level, it means that many
people will start reacting and actually
sharing content that feeds these
unconscious fantasies. And this explains,
for instance, the amplification of conspiracy
theories, because conspiracy theories,
they serve as this refuge. and that is the
theoretical framework that I use, the
dread and refuge that when we had the so
-called refugee crisis we had all these
anxieties about mass immigration so these
migrants are coming here they are changing our
culture they are taking our women they really
pose a threat to our society so there was
these anxieties people were really like There
was a discomfort, but nobody was really
talking about the problems of the neoliberal
capitalist system. No, they were
trying to make sense, but
through narratives that would be
easy to consume. And these narratives
are conspiracy theories, because
conspiracy theories, they offer a sense of
orientation, of explanation, and they activate
these fantasies. these racist fantasies.
So what happens is, instead of
collaboratively engaging in the production of
common narratives that would eventually
come together and create the social being
against capitalism, no, they came
together around these conspiracy theories. And
then we had the emergence of this creature of
the internet called alt-right, and the
alt-right has managed to survive and keep
amplifying discourses, and now they are
amplified, they are mainstreaming,
legitimized, and all that. So I think that
that is the reason why I felt the
need of stage in this dialogue,
because autonomous Marxists, they were
very optimistic. They totally
neglected the racist underpinnings of the
capitalist system. And the post-Marxists,
I actually engaged with the Dijekian
framework, because Dijekian saw this ideological
dimension in the unconscious but jack also didn't
focus on race so that's why i had to
bring these two together i see okay i think i
understand so you have the autonomists and
the post-marxists and both of them see like
during the 90s 80s and 90s uh this kind of
horizon of liberation and democracy uh that's
going to happen in the future like if you look
at empire by negrian heart there's a sense
that neoliberalism is accelerating the
conditions through which the proletariat will
eventually sort of yeah find liberation uh
globally by the class conditions of accumulation
of capital and so on. So you have the,
they're the antagonism between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat or what have you. And on
the other hand, and you're saying that we
didn't see that happen because even though that
acceleration process of accumulation took
place, the proletariat, the base did not come
into did not realize the consciousness of
of its revolutionary subjectivity so that
didn't work and um or it hasn't yet maybe knock
on wood i guess i don't know um and then
the post-marxists were saying like new social
movements are forming and they are going to
propel a more democratic system that is
disconnected from um the class antagonism and
by maybe by delinking from class antagonism
and developing the social movements
they'll be able to um basically overcome
the the the crisis of bourgeoisie and proletariat
and the existence of of class right and
that didn't happen either and part of
reason for that is that they don't recognize
that the class and the other forms of oppression
are linked like capitalism and the other
forms of oppression are linked um and so
you can't just pick capitalism out of
it and now you have zizek who was making
that claim but zizek didn't recognize the
importance of race yeah and you i mean you got
it amazing also i know it's incredible that
i actually was able to put that together
i was able to repeat exactly what you said
worse than you said it but um you know
would you also include like gender and sexual
discrimination uh when you talk about race
or for you is it race and class race and
capital no i also included gender and sexuality
i didn't touch upon a lot but gender
for sure yes yeah yeah okay so i get it and
and this is where so and this is
where i think your analysis is so on point
is that you're saying like we're in like the
upside down of what was being predicted
by the autonomists and the post-Marxists
because we have a situation where we do have a
multitude but it's completely not class
conscious and instead is sort of fragmenting
partly through disinformation and whatever
but it's fragmenting I'm just saying that
myself you didn't say that I'm saying that um
fragmenting into like nationalist movements
that are destroying democracy yeah it is
actually it is actually fragmenting towards
the consolidation of white supremacy and
patriarchy they're going on the opposite
direction so it's not accumulating towards
an internationalist sort of democracy
it's disintegrating yeah yeah yeah yeah
so they were right in a sense of their
analysis of the conditions but they
were overly optimistic that That people
would really abandon the discriminatory and
oppressive frameworks that bring them
jouissance, I guess. Yeah, and I think
that acknowledging the role of the unconscious
is very important, Alex, because let's
stop and think about our capitalist system
for a moment. I really like the concept
of effective capitalism, because right
now, what has been quantified and
monetized are our bodily reactions to the contents
that we see online. And these reactions,
they are based on both conscious and unconscious
elements. So, for instance, if we open
our Instagram feed and we start watching a
video, very often, I would say most of the time,
we don't think why we are watching that
specific video. We're just watching and
enjoying. It's unconscious. But the system is
already monetizing. It doesn't care about
your intention, if you're thinking or
not. just the act of directing our attention
of watching it is already turning that into
profits and that's why i think our capitalist
system nowadays is very nocive because
it is quantifying and monetizing something
that we have no control we may have control
if we raise awareness about these and start
consciously engaging with the platforms but
then it takes a lot of emotional effort
emotional labor is not it's not that easy and
i think that is where it gets very nosive
and that is where this intersection between
capitalism racist fantasies xenophobic
fantasies sexist fantasies they really come into
play because we are talking here about
billions of people reacting to content just
because they are seeking your sense enjoyment
and this enjoyment has become profitable
right yeah so it's almost like yeah yeah
yeah yeah it's like um in the in the 1930s you
couldn't wheat paste a poster on the side
of a building and then get paid five seconds
every time somebody looked at it right so you
know the the framework of of monetization
in experience itself has um has incentivized
um yeah has incentivized i don't know has
incentive unconscious enjoyments to a degree
but there's something more there right there's
like a unconscious enjoyment of things
that are negative that's what i think is
really kind of intense because there are
studies that show that um right-wing like
conservative minded people tend to be more uh
attracted to like negative images so like the
show like um images to people like
flowers and you know a sunny day and then like
a mosquito and then or like something
that's dead or something like that and
actually conservatives will be more interested
in like looking at and dwelling on
the negative images so if it's
incentivized to have negative images
then it will also be activating
a certain aspect of jouissance
right like a certain part of it that can
can be uh tend can tend towards right-wing um
I guess imaginaries and fantasies and that
sort of thing that's interesting I didn't
know that thanks for sharing I'll send you
uh the paper um maybe I can find it anyway
um so you also write with Polina Zavarszynskaya
the wonderful Polina uh who I've
interviewed for I think I've interviewed
Polina for this podcast anyway she's great for
Polydemos which is um run out of uh the
catholic university in milan um by a good
friend of the pod uh valerio alfonso bruno
so that's a wonderful convergence um about
the politics of truth on the far right
so uh last question and thanks for being
so patient with me no thank you for the
interview how so how is truth constructed
on the right and what can be done when
passionately held truths rely on almost rely
almost entirely on fabricated information
yeah i think that i would say that is
in my view the most fascinating part of my
work because that is the moments that I bring
together Dijek, Lacan and Foucault and the
thing is that we have we have this multitude of
people engaging with conspiracy theories to
satisfy their desires and the interesting
thing is that part of the commonality produced
by this multitude is actually these
discourses performed as truth. Conspiracy theories
performed as truth. So I'm really
recovering here this aspect of
autonomous Marxism that the multitude
is productive. But in this case,
the multitude is productive not
only because it is producing
common narratives, but because it is
producing common truths that have
become so widely circulated that
they have started influence
policymaking influence violent action that
they are becoming normalized so from
this perspective if we look at the
so-called truths produced by this
multitude of actors aligned with the
far-right mindset we can see we can
understand very clearly why a conspiracy theory
that use it to be restricted to white
nationalist circles and to white supremacist
manifestos is now a part of political campaigns.
It's now even informing policy agendas,
for instance, when in Brazil, cultural
Marxism was one of the pillars of the government
of Jair Bolsonaro. The great
replacement is now explicitly echoed
in British politics. It's normalized. and this is i think
that is very important for us to talk about
these because these are not harmless
conspiracy theories we already know that they
are dangerous conspiracy theories and when
they acquire this status of truth in my
view they become even more dangerous because
psychologically speaking when we understand
something as truth it tends to motivate
us to take action. I always give
an example. If we were here in
a class, in a room, there was
a fire alarm. How long would
it take for us to leave the building? If we are just there
and there is a fire alarm, we would
discuss and think, oh, is this really, is
this real, is this not? It would take
a few minutes for us to leave the room,
leave the building. But if there was a
fire alarm and the firefighter entered
the room and said, we need to leave, nobody
would think we would leave immediately.
Why? Because the firefighter is the
authority when it comes to fire. When it
comes to truth and scientific truth, the
authority are academics. At least until
now, we remain the authority when it comes
to scientific truth. And the problem is,
one of the problem is that this authority
has been historically associated with the
figure of a white european man and now we have
many white european men producing racist conspiracy
theories homophobic conspiracy theories
as truth engaging with the same manner of
speaking referencing dubious scholarship
publishing books that can be easily accessible
on amazon for instance or even recommended by
google scholar so we have all this system
these apparatus of our discriminatory so
-called truths widely available on the internet
and we even have like foundations of also
promoting this and in my view this is very
serious and that's why i wrote this paper with
polina she looked at content produced by i
think german a german media outlet and i focus
on content produced by alternative patriotic
because interesting alex here in the uk we
have these grassroots organizations
developing curriculums alternative curriculums
with mentions to white genocide cultural marxism
and even like giving advice for for parents
to not enroll their the children in the
schools because the content that the children will
get to their schools is indoctrination
is not good for the family values so we
already have this year and yeah i think this
is this is the trend that is very worrisome
and we just had a workshop on these and
we'll have another one now in september in
italy to also explore this topic within
the European context. That's really interesting.
Yeah, some part of me thinks like it's
because there's been a slackening of a
commitment, right, by like institutional authorities
toward the center because of problems
with the kind of normal economic and political
order that they can't really address given
the same sort of positionality and ideology
that they have been using, right? So in
like the post-war era or, you know, the 1950s,
1960s, you had a lot of like liberals who
were also sort of like socially conscious
and would be much more active in trying to
weed out and exclude or marginalize these
types of behaviors and attitudes underlying
conspiracy theories and so forth. but um there
the the problem of i mean i don't want to
be like uh it's all neoliberalism type of
guy you know like uh neoliberalism is responsible
for everything and so on but the problem
of of the accumulation of capital that you
were bringing up before created a crisis of
legitimacy yeah and so the center hasn't
really been able to hold on to its sort of
authority and you have like you're saying a lot
of other people vying for legitimacy who have
the same manner the same look sometimes
right they're still they're like white men
in suits they're supposed to be the ones who
know things and are in charge or whatever yeah
so uh and then they're they're just sort of
instead of instead of addressing the the
real problems they're creating um they're
fabricating a way of gaining power for themselves
right like accruing more and more power
Like, they're exploiting and capitalizing on
the accumulation of capital and throwing
democratic process into authoritarianism. Yeah.
And something that I notice a lot in
academia is another thing is that the intellectual
performance of these individuals projecting
themselves as authoritative actors
when it comes to truth on the internet is slightly
different from the performance that we
have of academics within academia in the sense
that they are really trying to reach out
people on the internet. And they are very
good in adopting this conversational tone
with the public, in the sense that these
so-called academics, but some of them are
really academics, so these individuals
performing conspiracy
theories as truth, they perform
intellectual authority, but they try to
engage in a dialogue with the public. So
they don't remain in what Nietzsche's
called that ivory tower. No,
they're coming down. And this has been one
of my main criticisms in academia, because
many of us have remained there in the ivory
tower. So if we remain there in the ivory
tower, we will never address this problem,
because the public doesn't feel that they
can connect with us. and in my view
this problem will even get even
worse with advances in artificial
intelligence because now what
is the difference between like if we
don't find our authentic voice if we don't
try to come down and really talk
to the public and everything we will
really fall behind and I don't know
what's going to happen but
it won't be good yay that's sad all right
um no but i think i i mean you're uh that's
that's the the correct analysis right the the
artificial intelligence is going to be used
to manufacture uh the same types of
truths right that aren't actually factual and
only speak to narratives that uh empower certain
people over others and by bringing them
this kind of direct shot of of joy enjoyment
of things that are actually quite negative
you know and so um you know as you've shown
artificial intelligence is already being used
to sort of fulfill people's fantasy ego
you know ego ideal or whatever um And it
will continue and it will even take the place
of the one in authority, you know. So as the
central authority of a kind of democratic
administration continues to erode, that
position of authority is going to be replaced
by computers that are seen as sort of
geniuses, but underneath are being fed on you
know uh bias the same matrix of of of weirdly
connected and disjointed facts that produce uh
conspiracy theories yes great synthesis
alex thanks for that thank you so much um
uh dr buarque thank you so much for joining
the podcast really appreciated reading
your work uh do you have any articles that are
are forthcoming anything any books or fun
stuff coming up no not yet Alex I'm I need to
take a break now taking a break all right
good yeah that's good yeah because when I come
back I will I need to write my book and I
need to start the other research project I
have many things to do so right now I'm taking
a break but thank you so much for having
me i really enjoyed this conversation it
was the first time that i had this deep conversation
on my work since my viva examination
so it was really good people are always
like yeah okay no no i appreciate it too that
i i do this to keep my mind active and and
um and also to connect with old friends so uh
i appreciate uh chatting with you and uh your
time and um and all your work thank you
so much it's uh it's a real pleasure thank
you all right this is the podcast of the far
right analysis network right rising i'm your
host alexander ross and this has been dr
beatrice lopez buarque um you can check out
her work as it comes out i can't wait to read
the book and and all the other great stuff
thank you very much thank you all right bye i don't know how to stop the recording there