DemLab Webinar Series: Session 2 – Hegemonic defeatism: How the liberal elite paved the way for the reactionary resurgence
Date: 18 December 2025
Time: 12:00 (GMT+2 / Athens, Greece)
The second session of the new DemLab Webinar Series will be held on 18 December 2025 at 12:00 (GMT+2). We are pleased to welcome Aurelien Mondon from the University of Bath, who will present his research on “Hegemonic defeatism: How the liberal elite paved the way for the reactionary resurgence”.
Emmy Eklundh from Cardiff University will serve as discussant.
The event is free and open to the academic community, but you need to register here: https://authgr.zoom.us/meeting/register/CO1jlEJuSP6lpK-x6cVvAA
Abstract: While Francis Fukuyama’s concept of the end of history has been thoroughly rejected in most serious analysis, including by his own account, it continues to grip much of our political imaginary. Whatever happens in the current state of polycrisis can only be read within the boundaries of the liberal hegemony and its understanding of democracy. Any challenge is read as exceptional, abnormal and ultimately irrelevant. It is through that lens that reactionary ‘shocks’ to the system such as the (re-)election of Donald Trump, the Brexit victory in the UK’s referendum on the EU and the wider rise of the far right and its accession to power in many countries have generally been understood. Far from being analysed as originating from the failure(s) of the liberal hegemony, they have been covered and treated as exceptional and unrelated events. Therefore, despite countless lamenting headlines and articles about the rise of the far right, ‘populism’, ‘polarisation’ and ‘illiberalism’, there has been very little reflection in mainstream elite discourse on the wider implications of the failure of the liberal hegemony. Instead, there was at first a naïve optimism, that liberalism would almost naturally triumph against illiberalism, followed by widespread panic since it has become clear that this is not the case. This context will form the basis of this presentation which will examine the current stage of mainstreaming of far-right, reactionary politics. Rather than focusing on far-right, reactionary actors as is often common, the analysis will highlight the top-down nature of the process of mainstreaming and the role played in particular by ‘really existing liberalism’.
A few words about the speaker: Aurelien Mondon (he/him) is a Professor of Politics at the University of Bath and co-convenor of the Reactionary Politics Research Network. His research focuses predominantly on the mainstreaming of reactionary politics, focusing in particular on the role of elite discourse. His latest book Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream, co-written with Aaron Winter, was published in 2020 with Verso. In 2024, he co-edited The Ethics of Researching the Far Right with Antonia Vaughan, Joan Braune and Meghan Tinsley.