International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies | IRGAC

SELF-HELP’S AUTHORITARIAN EDGE

In Perspective The explosive growth of social media self-help culture promises quick solutions to intimate crises, from restoring “feminine energy” to reclaiming “masculine power.” Yet beneath its language of empowerment lies a deeper political logic. As neoliberal societies produce a growing “care deficit,” self-help influencers transform insecurity into a market while promoting survivalist individualism, gender essentialism, and authoritarian fantasies of control that increasingly echo the moral agendas of contemporary far-right politics.

By Ülker Sözen

Late fascism as a mode of crisis management: An Interview with Şebnem Oğuz

Şebnem Oğuz examines late fascism as a contemporary mode of crisis management, distinct not only from neoliberal authoritarianism and right-wing populism but also from classical fascism. How does capitalist crisis reorganize the state around war, racialized violence, and coercive accumulation? And what does this mean for anti-fascist struggle in Turkey?

By Melehat Kutun and Ali Yalçın Göymen

Latin America

Venezuela and the ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Military Intervention and Imperial Fascism

In Perspective The U.S. military intervention in Venezuela signals a renewed phase of imperial escalation in what is understood as the Western Hemisphere. Framed through the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” it reveals the convergence of geopolitical domination, extractivist interests, and the authoritarian restructuring of U.S. power into a project of imperial fascism.

From Estallido to Far-Right Restoration: How Chile's Democratic Moment Turned Authoritarian

In Perspective In just six years, Chile underwent a dramatic political reversal: from the 2019 uprising demanding progressive reforms and deeper democracy to the rise of far-right leader José Antonio Kast. This analysis traces how a moment of democratic possibility gave way to authoritarian nostalgia.

By Luciano Santander Hoces

Road to Fascization: Crisis of Social Cohesion, Alienation, and the Search for Alternatives

Theory & Research The current crisis is creating political conditions in which states are losing their ability to manage internal societal contradictions. The consequences of the crisis of neoliberalism, which has severed social bonds, have evolved into a broader crisis that is causing modern societies to lose their social cohesion, and their ability to politically organise to find adequate responses to the crisis itself.

By Ali Yalçın Göymen

Right-Wing Feminists

Interview Melina Vázquez and Carolina Spataro explore a new type of right-wing libertarian feminism, distinct not only from left-wing feminism but also from classical liberal feminism and right-wing conservatism. Who are these libertarian feminists and why do they think feminism has more to do with Javier Milei than with socialism?

By Paülah Nurit Shabel

The looming AI-powered cultural revolution

In Perspective Institutions of culture and knowledge are facing an existential threat from an AI-powered assault. But interpretative entities such as universities, courts, and digital platforms are not only tools of domination, but also key terrains of struggle. As algorithmic bombardment threatens to disintegrate the common sense, we have to expand the commons of sense.

By Maziar Samiee

Calls

From (Individual) Fears to (Collective) Cares

Theory & Research Neoliberalism has dismantled the social structures that offered security and orientation to life. The far right successfully channels the resulting fears and anxieties towards purist, social Darwinist fantasies. Politics of care stands as a defiant response to that. In an era defined by uncertainty and precarity, care emerges as survival, resistance, and imagination. Care is a counter-normative project: sustaining and (re)generating social life while embracing contradiction and resisting the demands for purity.

By Firoozeh Farvardin and Gustavo Robles

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