'The Undoing': Donald Trump, The January 2021 Capitol Insurrection, and the Rise of Fascism in the US.

Location
Online
Dates
Wednesday 24 February 2021 (16:00-17:30)

SPSC Lecture Series 2020-2021

With speaker Dr Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd

The January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US capitol has been treated by some as a surprising occurrence or political aberration in the context of US history. In this essay, I push back against such interpretations. I contend that we cannot understand the January 6th insurrection without analyzing it within the broader context of Donald Trump’s open attempt to stay in power as US president, irrespective of the official 2020 presidential electoral outcome. I chronicle the general trajectory of the Republican Party and Trump’s 'undoing' of expected electoral norms, including but leading up to and moving beyond to the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection. I explore how the psychological operation of identification undergirds the fascistic leadership style and outcome embodied in Trump and the Republican Party’s enactment of assault on the US political system in order to solidify power.

Biography

Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd, a lawyer and political scientist, is the co-founder of the Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics. She is the author of Gender, Race, and Nationalism in Contemporary Black Politics (Palgrave Macmillan 2007) and of the forthcoming Re-Imagining Black Women: A Critique of Post-Feminist and Post-Racial Melodrama in Culture and Politics (forthcoming NYU Press, April 2020). Her articles have appeared in leading journals such as Feminist Formations;  Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies; The National Political Science Review; Politics & Gender; and Signs