A voter-backed radical nationalism has taken root not only in Europe but in many parts of the world. Against the backdrop of the global breakdown of international law, large-scale mobilisations of violence against minorities, the politicisation of universities, corporate campaigns against climate science, and tech oligarchs tightening their control over surveillance systems and algorithmically curated information flows, a growing number of people have begun to ask whether parts of the West are currently witnessing the return of fascism.
What speaks in favour of this interpretation? What speaks against it? And how do today’s fascist forms and expressions differ from those of the past?
Participants:
Lea Ypi, Professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics and author of, among other works, Free (2021) and Indignity (Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2025).
Agri Ismaïl, critic and author of Hyper (Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2023).
From the Sakli(g)t book festival 2026. Sakli(g)t is organised by Rikstolvan in collaboration with the Institute for Futures Studies and Linnaeus University, with support from the Swedish Arts Council, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, the Natur & Kultur Foundation, and the Swedish Academy.
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7 Sept 2026
Instrumentalism Regarding the Justification of Democracy with Dick Arneson
The instrumentalism of the title says roughly that the form of governance that would be feasibly best in any circumstances is any one whose establishment and operation would bring about consequences morally no worse than those of any other that might instead be put in place. I stipulate that the consequences to be assessed exclude any possible noninstrumental value that attaches to all members of the society having an equal vote or equal opportunity for political influence (EOPI). This allows, components of democratic institutions such as protection of freedom of speech and association do have such value that weighs on the scales. Authoritarians favoring nondemocracy might be reasonable liberals, social democrats, or conservatives. Does instrumentalism favor democracy always or almost always in our time? The stipulated exclusion is incorrect if all having equal vote or EOPI really in themselves have noninstrumental value. This exclusion applies only to political power, not power generally, but might be supported by a general claim: The distribution of power over others is normatively neutral in itself and matters only insofar as it gives rise to good or bad consequences. No person has a moral claim to power over others except on the basis, that person’s having the power will be fair in its effects on those affected. The discussion surveys relevant arguments advanced by Niko Kolodny, Daniel Viehoff, and Jeremy Waldron.
Research seminar with Richard Arneson, distinguished Professor of Philosophy at University of California, San Diego. He is a holder of Valtz Family Chair in Philosophy. Arneson received his PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. His work focuses on theories of social justice, as well as normative ethics including applied ethics topics.
28 May 2026
Exploitation & Time - Future Generations, Social Roles and Structural Injustice, with Nicola Mulkeen
This paper presents a chapter from the draft manuscript entitled Exploitation & Time and asks whether and how future generations can be exploited given that they do not yet exist and cannot interact with us. It argues that existing accounts of exploitation struggle with this problem because they rely on interaction reciprocity counterfactual comparisons or collective generational agency all of which break down across time. In response the paper develops a structural role-based model of intergenerational exploitation that shifts the focus away from generations as homogeneous moral agents and toward enduring social roles authorised and sustained by state and institutional frameworks. On this view exploitation across non overlapping generations occurs when earlier generations design and entrench roles such as creditor, regulator, policymaker, corporate executive or caregiver in ways that systematically position future individuals in structurally vulnerable roles from which value can be extracted. Future people are therefore often exploited not by the dead but by their own contemporaries who inherit and occupy these empowered roles. The model avoids the non-identity problem by locating injustice in the structure of roles rather than in welfare comparisons allows for fine grained attribution of moral responsibility within generations and captures the uneven impacts of exploitation across different future groups. The paper illustrates the account through cases involving climate policy, resource extraction, public debt, and unpaid care work and concludes that protecting future generations requires institutional reform aimed at dismantling exploitative roles before they are inherited.Research seminar with Nicola Mulkeen. Nicola is a Lecturer in Political Philosophy at Newcastle University. Her research interests are in contemporary political philosophy. At the moment, her focus is primarily on intergenerational justice. She is currently working on two book projects one entitled Exploitation & Time which develops an account of how exploitation is reproduced over time and across age groups including between present and future generations and a second on climate debt and future debt relations. Alongside her academic work, Nicola collaborates with Save the Children on research policy and impact concerning children in future generations. Prior to joining Newcastle University, she was a Teaching Fellow in PAIS at the University of Warwick and a Lecturer in Political Philosophy at the University of Manchester. Recently, she has held visiting positions at the University of Oxford and the University of Gothenburg.
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Victor Galaz
Lea Ypi
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Anandi Hattiangadi
Per Molander
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