Experiences from the recent surge of right-wing politics in the US, Europe and Russia, confirm a familiar pattern where right-wing intellectuals help authoritarian mobilization by the staging of “culture wars”. The interwar years offer an irresistible field of comparison for commentators reflecting on the challenges and dangers to democracy in the contemporary world.
Indeed, in Scandinavian intellectual historiography, the 1930s have long been known as “the age of the culture wars”, when writers and intellectuals of the right and left fought it out in aggressive debates over gender, religion, race, sexuality and immigration. Major topics were censorship and the freedom of speech, with right-wing intellectuals routinely claiming that they were being denied a platform by mainstream liberal media. Meanwhile, democracy seemed to be on the defensive internationally, with authoritarianism and autocracy spreading and war looming.
The renewed threat of authoritarianism makes it especially important to generate knowledge on how intellectual and civic freedoms were defended, lost, and regained in the 1930s and ‘40s, on the way from culture wars to real wars.
Stay tuned – full program will follow.
The conference is arranged by OsloMet and the Words and Violence research consortium (site.nord.no), cofounded by Nord University, The Norwegian Research Council and partners.
Further insights into the conference theme and call for contributions
This transdisciplinary conference will examine the relation of writers and intellectuals to extreme politics, historically and today. It actually takes a certain type of intellectual firmness to bring democracy down, which is why “populism” finds its most dangerous forms when it is voiced by eloquent intellectuals.
Censorship, freedom of speech and “cancel culture”
We invite contributions dealing with censorship, freedom of speech and “cancel culture”, especially from a historical perspective.
The conference encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration between intellectual historians, scholars of literature, philosophers and social scientists concerning the dynamics of rhetoric and political thought in modern society.
Bringing ideology back in means to study it in new ways, focusing not only on the lone professor or artist, but on the cognitive powers of tropes of speech and the spread of new rhetoric between various domains in society, the role of think tanks or various media platforms. Intellectuals exercise influence in specific technological and institutional contexts.
Conspiracy theory and media change
We invite contributions on conspiracy theory and media change. Today there is much research on the social media, the internet, and the conspiracy mindset. But the interwar years were also an age when conspiracy theories influenced politics, in a rapidly changing media environment. The antisemitic fantasies of Hitlerism and the paranoia of Stalinism were not more anchored in reality than the fantasies of QAnon, and they were in some cases spread by intellectuals.
The controversies concerning the trustworthiness of professional journalism invites historical comparison. Thus, the contemporary concept of “fake news” is eerily similar to the way in which interwar right-wingers would deride journalism as “Lügenpresse”.
Transitory justice in the cultural domain
A final theme of the meeting is transitory justice in the cultural domain. Cultural autonomy is essential to liberal democracy; how did the transition from dictatorship and occupation to cultural autonomy and liberal democracy take place? What purges, trials, and tribunals among intellectuals occurred and did they help the transition from wartime occupation and dictatorship back to liberal democracy?
Confirmed Keynotes
- Jeroen Dewulf, Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies at the UC Berkeley Department of German (german.berkeley.edu): “Literature as Resistance. Dutch Clandestine Literature during the Nazi Occupation (1940-1945)”
- Jan Mervart, Head of the Department for the Study of Modern Czech Philosophy (mcf.flu.cas.cz): “The Written Word as a Weapon: Anti-Nazi Resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Formation of Modern Czech National Identity”
- Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen, Professor of Intellectual History , Nord University, Bodø (noird.no): "Occupying art: Fascists, resistants and “degenerates” in the Norwegian field of visual art 1940-45.
- Anika Seeman, Associate Professor, Modern European History, University of Bergen (uib.no): "Transitional justice and the Quislings. Comparative perspectives on the legal and moral reckoning in Norway"
- Ivana Perica, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin (zfl-berlin.org): "Politics, Literature and Tertium Datur: Socialist Central Europe, 1928–1968", based on her book by the same name (bloomsbury.com).
- Pål Csaszni Halvorsen, Associate Professor, Oslo Metropolitan University: "Literary Treason: On the investigation of writers in the purges after WWII in Norway"
Submission
Abstracts of 250 words should be submitted by email to the program commitee (see details below) along with a bio of no more than 150 words, with the subject heading “Authoritarianism and culture”.
Abstract should be sent no later than February 1st 2026.
Presenters selected for the conference will be invited to give a 25-minute presentation.
Program committee
- Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen: kjetil.jakobsen@nord.no
- Pål Csaszni Halvorsen: pal.c.halvorsen@oslomet.no
