Appropriation of “left” practices of resistance by the “New Right”?
New Right movements like the Identitarians have learned a lot from left activists. Especially in the use of pop & net culture and in performative activist practices, the media’s attention is garnered by means of interventions. The associated rallying cries are diametrically opposed to those of left emancipatory movements, however. The performative power of hate speech seeks to appropriate left practices of resistance specifically so as to turn them against themselves. Racist and sexist ideologies are provocatively and openly displayed in a media spectacle.
Concrete examples of activism are discussed and analysed for their visual impact in the subsequent workshop for invited guests only. The point is not to provide more space for New Right movements but to structurally compare performative formats and the main differences in terms of content, orientation and type of organisation. The focus of the workshop is to come up with counter-strategies to these new forms of right activism.
is a dramaturg, theatre scholar, performer, ar/ctivist. Active participant in the protests against the conservative/right coalition government in 2000, co-founder of no border no nation – VolxTheaterKarawane (2001–2004), active participant in Refugee Protest Vienna (2012/13) and, since 2014, working for Queer Base, the LGBTIQ welcome and support project at Rosa Lila Villa. Lecturer at the Department of Theater, Film
and Media Studies (University of Vienna) and visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2018/19). In addition, independent theatre and performance work in Vienna (brut) and Mexico, e.g. Fantomas Monster (2016/17), Trans Gender Moves (2014/15), Rebelodrom – NoborderZone (2013). Publication: Possen des Performativen. Theater, Aktivismus und queere Politiken, republicart 7, Vienna, 2008.
b. 1967 in Linz, studied political science at the University of Vienna from 1990 to 2000 and has been active in various autonomous anti-fascist contexts. He has been working in the Department of Right-wing Extremism Research at the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) since 1996. Moreover, Peham is a founding member of Forschungsgruppe
Ideologien und Politiken der Ungleichheit (Research Group for Ideologies and Politics of Inequality). He has been a teacher trainer and a political educator at schools since the mid-1990s. Many publications (including under his pen name Heribert Schiedel) on the topic (e.g. Der rechte Rand. Extremistische Gesinnungen in unserer Gesellschaft, Vienna, 2007; Extreme Rechte in Europa, Vienna, 2011).
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