Michael Goodhart | Human Rights and Resurgent Fascism | Philosophy Speaker Series

Abstract: The revival of fascism across the world today capitalizes on the failure of liberal democracy and cosmopolitan human rights as programs for human liberation. Fascists make that failure the foundation of their chauvinistic and repressive politics of patriarchal ethno-nationalism. Liberals’ efforts to defend these failed paradigms only highlight their inadequacies, strengthening fascism’s popular appeal. Does this mean that democracy and human rights are exhausted? To answer that question requires clarity about the nature of fascism and about how and why liberal democracy and cosmopolitan human rights failed: only with such clarity can we identify and cultivate alternative practices whose emancipatory promise offers a bulwark against the tide of resurgent fascism.

Michael Goodhart is Professor of Political Science and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also Professor (by courtesy) of Philosophy. Michael Goodhart's core research interests include democracy, human rights, (in)justice, and emancipatory political struggles.