An International Conference convening at Park Campus, The University of Northampton

KEYNOTING: Professor Leonard Weinberg, Dr Martin Durham, and Leonard Zeskind.

2012 is the 50th anniversary of the ‘Cotswold Agreement’ and the corresponding establishment of the World Union of National Socialists under the leadership of the UK’s Colin Jordan and the USA’s George Lincoln Rockwell. Since then, numerous examples of postwar fascist ‘internationalism’ are demonstrated by the interrelated development of British and American far-right ideology, culture, aesthetics and practices – found to represent, in the words of Leonard Weinberg, a leading scholar on this neglected subject, a tightly-knit ‘cultural and political affinity between right-wing extremist groups on both sides of the Atlantic, together with an increasing exchange of ideas, perspectives, forms of organization’ and more. Ranging from music and dress to shared political agendas and strategies, these ‘affinities’ will be expansively traced in this two-day international conference, to be hosted by the University of Northampton’s Radicalism and New Media Research Group (www.radicalism-new-media.org) on 13 and 14 September 2012.

Thematic considerations can include the following:

- The Cotswold agreement and the World Union of National Socialists since 1962;
- Transatlantic Aesthetics- the import/export of far-right dress, music and culture more generally;
- Anglo-American uses of US free speech laws (especially the recent Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle case and the implications for online extremism);
- From the Defenders of the American Constitution (DAC) and the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL) to the EDL’s links with the SIOA; and other links between Anglo-American far-right movements;
- Anglo-American neo-Nazism
- Protestant Christianity and the Anglo-American far-right;
- Conspiracy theories, militias and changing scapegoats (e.g. from antisemitism to ‘Islamophobia’)
- Anglo-American ideologues and lone-wolf terrorism since 1982;
- Holocaust denial;
- Other thematic strands to be confirmed

Call for papers deadline: 30 April 2012. Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words to the conference organisers: Anton Shekhovtsov (anton.shekhovtsov@gmail.com); Trev Preston (trev.preston@northampton.ac.uk), or to Laurence Elliott (laurenceelliott87@gmail.com). A full conference programme and schedule will be released over May 2012 on www.radiclalism-new-media and cross posted as widely as possible.