Masha Gessen and Carolin Emcke

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a brutal outbreak of war in Europe has undermined its imaginaries of peace and freedom and has led to an escalation of bellicose discourse, awakening old fears that had been relegated to Europe’s past. The revival of war has opened up questions in the heart of democratic regimes, urging us to think about the place occupied by hate speech, violence, and the various forms of authoritarianism within and beyond our frontiers. In this situation, how can we keep alive a conversation about the future we would like our societies to have? How differ new and old forms of fascism? What can we learn from the past to confront them?

Masha Gessen, a journalist at The New Yorker who, after decades writing about the dangers of totalitarianism and the political situation in her native Russia, has spent the last few months travelling several times to the area and studying and reporting the Russian invasion. The philosopher and journalist Carolin Emcke, author of Against Hate (in Spanish, Contra el Odio, Taurus, 2018), has covered several wars as well as studying in depth the functioning of hate speech in the western democracies.

This session is possible thanks to the collaboration with the Encuentros de Pamplona 72-22.