There can sometimes be a tendency to treat imperialism and authoritarianism as fundamentally an issue of geopolitical ‘camps’ or poles of a compass (‘north’, ‘south’, ‘east’, ‘west’). This tendency crosses the political spectrum, a feature of the Biden administration’s ‘Summit for Democracy’ as much as it is the ‘campism’ of parts of the political left. A genuine progressive internationalism that protects universal human rights becomes far harder with this approach, driving a dangerous logic of the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’. Analytically, it obscures the pronounced trends to fragmentation and transactional deal-making among states, which often lack clear ideological fault lines, that is part of the global constellation of authoritarianism today.

To mark the publication of the latest issue of Red Pepper magazine and its special section on ‘Imperialism today’, this panel discussion will offer reflections on the nature of contemporary imperialism and authoritarianism, how it should be critiqued and the challenges this poses to the development of progressive strategies based on the principles of fundamental rights for all.

Meet the Speakers

Elia J. Ayoub is a post-doctoral researcher, writer, journalist and a founding member of “The Fire These Times” podcast and From The Periphery Media Collective. His work focuses on authoritarianism, hauntology, the far right, conspiracy theories as well as alternative futurisms and the climate crisis. He writes for 972Mag, Al Jazeera, and Lausan Collective among others in addition to being an editor at Shado Mag. He writes a newsletter at hauntologies.net and can be found on Bluesky, Mastodon and Instagram.

Gerry Hart is a member Red Pepper’s editorial team based in the Northeast of England. He has also been published in Tribune and Huck magazine

Seema Syeda  is a campaigner and researcher. She leads the anti-Islamophobia project at Another Europe Is Possible, an alliance of progressives and leftwingers fighting the politics of Brexit. Seema has a legal background and is a trained a barrister. She also has a degree in History and a Masters in World History from the University of Cambridge, where she studied colonialism and anticolonial political thought. She is interested in the politics of liberation and the dismantling of racial capitalism. She is a member of the UNITE trade union.

Yulia Yurchenko (@YPYurchenko) is Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at the Department of Economics and International Business and a researcher at the Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability Institute, University of Greenwich, UK. She is the author of Ukraine and the Empire of Capital (Pluto, 2017) and a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.

Meet the Chair

Luke Cooper (@lukecooper100) is Associate Professorial Research Fellow in International Relations and the Director of PeaceRep's Ukraine programme, based at the Conflict and Civicness Research Group in LSE IDEAS, the LSE's in-house foreign policy think tank. He has written extensively on nationalism, authoritarianism and the theory of uneven and combined development, and is the author of Authoritarian Contagion; the Global Threat to Democracy (Bristol University Press, 2021).

The event is co-hosted by the LSE Conflict and Civicness Research Group and Red Pepper magazine, in partnership with the civil society organisation, Another Europe Is Possible.