The Long Arc of Fascism
The Long Arc of Fascism
About the event
Join UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice and SFU’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies on April 18–19, 2025 for a first-of-its-kind, community-facing teach-in. Through discussions with scholars, activists, and artists, this teach-in connects histories of colonialism, capitalism, and climate crisis to build collective resistance in this critical moment.
The lands we are gathering on during this event are unceded, meaning never surrendered to the crown, and non-treaty, meaning the lands were stolen from the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. These lands were stripped of sovereignty and colonially labelled today as “Vancouver.”
Just four years ago, the presence of unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School led to a cascade of pledges for a true reckoning with Canada’s foundational genocide.
Today, the forces of denialism are surging, the far right is marching, and “reconciliation” is marshalled by governments primarily as a license for more resource extraction.
The U.S. President, meanwhile, speaks of “Manifest Destiny” – from Greenland to Mars – and Israel continues its genocidal violence against Palestinians in the name of “Western Civilization.”
How do we understand our moment of political whiplash? What are the connections between contemporary fascist expressions and the stolen lands on which we stand? Are these separate historical chapters, or are we in what Alberto Toscano has termed "Late Fascism”? Where do “post-human” technologies fit in? Is it all linked to the deepening climate crisis?
And most importantly: how do we organize for futures rooted in the cherishing of life?
These are a few of the questions that UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice and SFU’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies have set out to tackle in a first-of-its kind, community-facing teach-in on the long arc of fascism, co-chaired by Naomi Klein and Adel Iskandar.
The Vancouver area is home to extraordinary scholarship rooted in anticolonial and antifascist traditions, as well as to organizations with long histories of standing up to the machineries of mass death and dispossession. On April 18 and 19, 2025 we will put our minds and hearts together and, with the help of local artists and a couple of special out-of-town guests, fortify ourselves for this dizzying moment.
“That we gather in this time of catastrophe, matters. That we speak in this time of catastrophe, matters.”
— Christina Sharpe, Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World (Duke University Press, 2025).