Far Right Rising: Lessons from Europe for 2024 U.S. Elections
Virtual Briefing Series
Wednesday, October 9, 2024 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM ET
The rise of far-right parties in Europe has sparked a transformative wave in the political landscape, challenging democratic norms and prompting a reflection on the future of democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. As France and Germany undergo this shift, some argue the U.S. may already be there, with the far-right’s rise within the Republican Party and fringe ideas becoming mainstream, raising the question of what connection exists, if any, between the growth of the far-right on both sides of the Atlantic. This panel will delve into the factors fueling the far-right’s ascent in Europe, explore its potential influence on the upcoming U.S. elections, and examine the broader implications for transatlantic relations and foreign policy.
Join us on Wednesday, October 9th from 12 – 1 PM for a discussion on these issues with Dr. Hans Kundnani, Visiting Fellow at the Remarque Institute at New York University; Jeremy Shapiro, Research Director of the European Council on Foreign Relation; and Tara Varma, Visiting Fellow in the Center of the United States and Europe at Brookings Institution.
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SPEAKERS:
Hans Kundnani
Hans Kundnani is a visiting fellow at the Remarque Institute at New York University and an Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop fellow. He was previously the director of the Europe programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, a senior Transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, D.C., and research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is also an associate fellow at the Institute for German Studies at Birmingham University and teaches at the Collège d’Europe in Natolin, Poland.
Hans is the author of three books: Eurowhiteness. Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (London: Hurst, 2023); The Paradox of German Power (London/New York: Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2014), which has been translated into German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish; and Utopia or Auschwitz. Germany’s 1968 Generation and the Holocaust (London/New York: Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2009). He studied German and philosophy at Oxford University and journalism at Columbia University in New York, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
Jeremy Shapiro
Jeremy Shapiro is the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. His areas of focus include US foreign policy and transatlantic relations. Shapiro was previously a fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, where he edited the Foreign Policy program’s blog Order from Chaos. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, where he advised the secretary of state on U.S. policy in North Africa and the Levant. He was also the senior advisor to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon, providing strategic guidance on a wide variety of U.S.-European foreign policy issues.
Tara Varma
Tara Varma is a visiting fellow in the Center of the United States and Europe at Brookings. Her research focus includes current French security proposals in the European framework, as well as ongoing efforts to materialize European sovereignty in traditional and non-traditional security fields. Varma is also interested in the growing nexus between domestic and foreign policies inside the European Union, and in Indo-Pacific security and the role Europeans could play in it. Until December 2022, she was a senior policy fellow and the head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, where she followed French foreign policy and European and Asian security developments. In 2022, she was part of the working group on the French European Council presidency, set up by the French Foreign Ministry, which led to the publication of a report entitled “A Europe for Today and Tomorrow: Sovereignty, Solidarity, Shared Identity.” The report included a number of recommendations on how to strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy and how to bridge the gap between France’s ambitions for Europe and a form of “soft Euroskepticism” borne by a growing part of the French population. In November 2023, Varma was awarded the honor of Knight of the National Order of Merit of France.
Varma’s recent publications include “‘We lost an opportunity to listen to you’: Why Macron is embracing Eastern Europe,” “Unrest in France challenges Macron’s ambitions,” and “Macron Put the Spotlight on Europe’s Disjointed China Policy” (with Sophia Besch). She has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Le Monde, and more, appears regularly on France24, and is a frequent guest on the Center for a New American Security’s “Brussels Sprouts” podcast. Varma has previously worked and lived in Shanghai, London, New Delhi, and Paris. She has a master’s degree in international relations from Sciences Po Lille (2011) and a Masters of Science in international politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) (2011), with a focus on Asian politics and Indian and Chinese foreign policies
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