Abstract

In this second and final instalment of a two-part series on Social Movements, Extremism  and Violence, Irm Haleem seeks to clarify the meaning of the terms ‘the left’, ‘left-leaning’, ‘far left’, ‘the right’, ‘right-leaning’, and ‘far right’ as they appear in scholarly analysis and in the narratives of the groups and movements themselves, through the prism of conceptual analysis and actual examples. This webinar is organized in four sections. Section One introduces the conceptual meaning of the Left and the Right by situating it on the Left-Right political spectrum and by outlining the meaning of the Left and the Right in (a) universal terms and (b) in specific American terms. Section Two tackles the meaning of the Far Left versus the Far Right by outlining the universal differences and similarities between the two with reference to their aims (differences) and methods (similarities). Section Three takes a closer look at the Far Left as an ideological movement with reference to specific examples of left-wing extremism, terrorism, and revolution. And finally, Section Four takes a closer look at the Far Right as an ideological movement with reference to specific examples of right-wing extremism, terrorism, and revolution.

Speaker

Irm Haleem is an Assistant Professor in the Strategic Studies programme at S. Rajaratnam School of International Affairs, Nanyang Technological University. Her research and publications are interdisciplinary, focusing primarily on Political Philosophy (notions of freedom), but also on normative Philosophy (ethics) and Sociology (social movement theory). Irm Haleem is the author of the book The Essence of Islamist Extremism: Recognition through Violence, Freedom through Death (Routledge 2012; paperback 2014), and the editor and contributing author of the book Normalization of Violence: Conceptual Analysis and Reflections from Asia (Routledge 2020). She is currently finishing another single-authored book, Contradictions of Freedom, which is under contract with Routledge for its Political Philosophy collection and is expected to be published in 2022. Irm Haleem is a recipient of a research grant funded by US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), and the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development (AOARD) in Tokyo (2015-2016), and an invited TEDx speaker at TEDxNTU-2017, where she spoke on ‘Love, Hope, and Human Agency’. In addition to Nanyang Technological University, Haleem has taught at three different American universities: Northeastern University, Seton Hall University, and Princeton University.