 Thank you. And then really interesting thumbnail sketch, you managed to get 100 years of history of far-right extremism in Canada in one slide. So kudos to you for doing that, but a great kind of overview, top-line overview of that really interesting evolution in all the different kind of phases that this movement went through in Canada. Next, let's turn if you could disable your screen sharing, and then if we could have Dr. Valdez, I'm sorry, I know you have slides as well. And so if you want to present your slides, then sir, over to you. Thank you. Okay. Can you hear me well? We can. Hello. It's nice to be with you and to share with such distinguished academic colleagues this panel about nationalism in the Americas, likely the Mexican, the US, and the Canadian case. Since you understood that we were well to discuss nationalism, then I concentrated myself in trying to discuss from a show of different tendencies that picture the current government of Mexico as opposed to the US government of the United States, particularly the Trump current. So my research right now is going on discussing and researching on the roots of nationalism in Mexico in the form of the current government, which is a populist government as opposed to Trumpism. So what I'm trying to do in this presentation is to show you how the so-called populist international work, and at the same time how these tendencies alienate in a way with what the Mexican government is like in this very moment. So to understand a current populist nationalist tendencies in Mexico and the US, there is a conjunction of various elements that come together. And these features are shared by both AMLO, AMLO is the President of Mexico, President López Obrador and Trump, and some other leaderships around the world, like Hungary, Orbanist, the President, Poland, Turkey, et cetera, manage the polity. So the first feature that defines the nationalist populism tendencies that prevailed right now in the Mexican reality is authoritarianism. Authoritarianism as a negation of complexity, authoritarianism as a frame of mind, authoritarianism in which not left wing nor neither left wing or nor right wing are some how important in terms of defining policies. And authoritarianism is also, I should try to show in my research that need the people who will promote the riot or launch the coup. As examples of this is the 2006 in Mexico, when López Obrador, the current president of Mexico, captured for a month reform at the most central avenue in Mexico City downtown. And in this framework, the January 6th of 2021, when Trump organizes a coup against the capital of in Washington DC. This movement is an ideological and ideological movement, ideological movement. So there are only ideological tendencies, in my opinion, no more than that. But not an ideological system as such. There are not a set of ideas, no systemic ideology, not ideological nature, but illiberal tendencies in the construction of an idea of regime, extremist impulses against democracy. Actually, the commitment of this government or these or these movements or these nationalist movements is to destroy democracy and to destroy the institutions that stand democracy like. And a tendency to create constitutional crisis, which both President López Obrador and Mexico and Trump have been able to organize throughout the time. Reactionary pragmatism, regression in this is the name of the game is what I think. But this reactionary pragmatism is everything, but it has everything to do with the past, but nothing with the future. The use of propaganda, the expense of social and the social and the polity, the use of propaganda at the expense of policy and the polity. On the other hand, there is a polarization taking place. There is an underestimation of every uncomfortable actor, the exercise of lying as a method towards the distortion of reality whatsoever, taking things to the tolerable limit. Alternative reality, nothing is as they, the others say, and divided society into meaning splitting the consensus of society into. And last but not least, extreme nationalism, which consists in having positions very much to do with primitive sovereignism. Also, the driving of nationalism as a negation of democracy, putting democracy in recession, as Thomas Wolfe did say, said in one of his latest books, appeal to the masses and the people as bridges to achieve objectives and the construction of an alternative version of society, a non civil society, but a manipulable society. Yes, the construction of an autocracy, a non democratic means of political interaction. So here we are witnessing a movement in which history is seen as a revenge. There is some doubts whether Trump represents Jackson's traditions, Jackson populist traditions in the form of a new populism. And I'm still in a way, the way how the Lopes over represents very much what it can we consider the post revolutionary regimes in the 30s and 40s in Mexico, especially right now with the electric reform, electricity reform, and the energy reform, which is changing the rules of the game, especially with him, the new treaty we have with the United States and Canada. So as you can see, I didn't point to conservatives, Mexico as such, we can discuss that later if you like to. But what I wanted to do is to just to discuss some of the most important features that define nationalist populism in Mexico, and that these these features picture very much what the government in Mexico is like in this very moment. So we can discuss conservatism, we don't have a conservative movement as such. In Mexico, we have a conservative party, which is on the right, the one, but not necessarily a movement like Trump, like Trump's movement in the United States or the Cuckoo's clan, or anything like that that resembles the new right, the new right in Mexico, Mexico, there is not such a thing happening. But what is happening in this very moment is we have a conservative populist nationalist movement, government which is the that is going backwards instead of going onwards. Thank you. Hi, Dr. Valdez, Valdez, thank you so much for that really interesting perspective from from Mexico. And you already pointed out some some notable differences between sort of trends here in the US and Canada. But with that, let me turn next to Dr. Stern here at the University of Michigan. And Dr. Stern, you know, I don't believe you have a presentation, but you have some formal remarks. So please love to hear from you right now. Great, thank you. Thank you for the invitation. So I really took up the the your request to think about drivers, historical drivers. So I have three of those to share with you today that we can reflect on. I think you'll see some similarities with the Canadian case. These are three different and overlapping chronologies and factors of nationalist extremism. One is longer term and two are shorter term. So the place to start is that the United States has a long history and indeed was founded on white supremacy. Much of the country's history has involved struggles to include anyone other than white property men since the 1816, since the 17th and 18th century. And we know that the expansion of citizenship and belonging has often come due to legal challenges and decisions, usually driven by social activism. And that that has resulted in a kind of checker board guaranteeing of rights and protections. It isn't the unfilled promise, right of the United States against the backdrop of the of white supremacy. So an example of this would be the 14th Amendment, which emerged in the uneasy reconsolidation of the National Union after the Civil War and expanded access to rights and protections. And then when that has happened, there's we've often seen a backlash. So in that context, we saw the emergence of the first version of the Ku Klux Klan in the wake of the Civil War and reconstruction in the 1870s. There also was backlash in the 1950s and 60s against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and decisions like Brown versus Board of Education, where we saw citizen councils in the south, but not exclusively in the south that fought tooth and nail racial integration, often supported by local sheriffs, you know, and their, you know, and their batons and their, you know, vicious dogs. And you can remember some of those photos, right from the 1960s in the US. So that is, I think, really important to recognize that is the kind of broad historical backdrop. And against this, we can trace some heightened waves of what we can call nationalist extremism. I'm kind of using the term far right extremism in the 1920s with the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s with Aryan nation and the emergence of kind of a new set of neo-nazi parties, and more recently in the 21st century. And for this most recent and ongoing wave, which is what I'll focus most of my remarks on for the remainder, is what scholar Cass Maudet calls the fourth wave of the far right. So to do that, I think it's really important to stop and look at the year 2008. And that is kind of a important pivot date for understanding where we are now. So first of all, first off, it's no coincidence that the term alt right was coined that year in 2008 by white nationalist Richard Spencer. He shortened the term from alternative right, a proposed political strategy put forth by right wing philosopher named Paul Gottlieb in a talk he gave to the Minkin Club in Baltimore, Maryland. Gottlieb was drawing from Patrick Buchanan so called Paleo conservative movement and wanted to chart a new path that veered away from the Republican Party, which he viewed and many on the far right view today as being completely sold out, sold out to the liberal agenda made up of quote unquote cucks, which is a word you may have heard on the right and capitulated to the mainstream agenda. The alt right rejected the Republican Party and wanted to chart a new course aligned with the kind of third way of thinking, which was popular with fascists in the mid 20th century. So this kind of alternate course or this third way, you know, this isn't the first time that it's happened, it was happening in the late, the first decade of the 21st century, you know, in the form of the alt right. The term started gain traction slowly, but by the early 2010s had become the name for a big tent of anti feminists and misogynists, neo Nazis, white nationalists, and more and more whites who felt victimized by changing American society. Also in 2008, that was the year in which the economic recession hit resulting in the shuttering of many factories, and in the eyes of some the final blow to the white middle and working class American dream. This also we should know it was the year in which Barack Obama was elected, which prompted a massive spike in gun sales, which we typically see, you know, around the time of presidential elections. In 2008, it was by those who, you know, first and foremost thought this meant that racial civil war was coming and or their second amendment rights were soon going to be taken away from them by the government who was going to intrude on them, and, you know, take away their rights. So those are some, you know, if we're looking at where we are now in 2021, the term alt right has kind of fallen out of fashion. We have this kind of what akin to the speaker from Canada was saying, you know, this fragmented distributed set of actors who have managed to create a lot of change in the cultural sphere, and to some extent are connected to specific groups and organizations related to that, you know, in another driver has been the expansion and availability of social media, which media scholars have shown has provided a haven for extremists to network, disseminate, recruit, and engage in culture change through memification and messaging. So we know, for example, now that Facebook is under heavy scrutiny for doing little to moderate or regulate its platform, which based on its own algorithms has tended to push users to more and more extremist content. And I would remind viewers that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg did not agree to remove or deep platform Holocaust denial until 2019, more than two years after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. And then really over the past year to COVID and reactions to COVID has accelerated extremism through, you know, we've seen this and kind of anti those, you know, who are protesting against public health measures in expressions of vaccine hostility. This has been completely entangled with misinformation, conspiracy theories and anti government actions, and often with the heavy kind of dose of xenophobia attached to it as well. And I would just for those of you who aren't from Michigan, Michigan actually holds, you know, a place in this recent development extremists associated with newly formed militias actually met up at an anti public health rally in the state capital Lansing in the spring of 2020, they met up, they use social media apps to meet up, they used encrypted radio technologies to communicate with each other. And then they went on to formulate a plot to kidnap and assassinate the governor, which was foiled by the FBI in an in a plot that was as misogynistic as it was violent. And really what happened in Lansing we can see is a dry want run to what happened on January 6 that had many of the same components. So I'll just wrap up by noting that although my comments have focused on the US, the fourth wave of the far right is a global phenomenon. There are active in real life and online connections and networks across far right actors and organizations, certainly networked across the US and Europe transatlantically, but as well extending to India, Brazil and other parts of the world. So I'll stop there and I look forward to the conversation. Dr. Stern, thanks so much for those points on the US context, both from the long arc of history and also things more, more recently. And while folks have joined us on screen, develop their questions or comments, let me use the prerogative as the moderator to to build off something, Dr. Stern, you just said and sort of ask our other two discussions as well to comment on that. But if as you said, and other scholars have said that at least elements of this alt-rate or far right movement, again, we always struggle with terminology is becoming or has been for some time a global phenomenon. Is it possible to see more if unity is not the right word, at least more sort of cohesion between these disparate elements, even in the three countries we're talking about today, Mexico, Canada, and the United States? I don't think we are there yet. But again, the global phenomena is sort of shaping everything right now. And there are all these other drivers. I'd be curious to get each of your three perspectives on that. Well, I can, I can start off with the idea of cohesion. So just based on both the researching right of extremism in Canada, as well as extremism in general, including religious extremism, I think because by nature extremists tend to have those radical ideas, and the fact that they don't always give space for opposing ideas, I think cohesion is difficult in extremist movements of any kind. And I think particularly in right-wing extremism, when I was interviewing people in Canada, a sentiment that came up again and again is that the reason that we are different from the left is that we are not sheep. We think for ourselves, you know, we have our mind. So the that's why they fight with each other to as well. So even if there is a leader saying something, they might agree on some things and not on the other. So I think even if they talk about, you know, yes, we agree that Trump is a great leader, we agree that, you know, immigration needs to be stopped in the in Europe. I think it's difficult for them to come together either in political terms or, you know, as a group to actually do something about it, because they just based on the idea of being on the right is about individual liberty a lot and not having other people tell us what to do. So it's difficult that they're going to listen to each other to if they feel one group or one individual is telling them what to do. So I think their fragmentation is kind of built in both because of the reason that extremist movements in general tend to, you know, have difficulty agreeing on things. It's same with religious extremism that is as well. And the fact that they really pride themselves of the idea that we think for ourselves and, you know, we don't tell let other tell us what to do kind of something. Well, yeah, regarding, yeah, thank you very much, professor, regarding Mexico, we don't have an alternate right movement as such as the one that founded Steve Vannon, and that, of course, follow Trump to the presidency. And we don't have an a cuckoo clan like movement in Mexico. We don't have extreme right standings in terms of the political in the political spectrum of Mexico. We have a conservative party, which is called the National Action Party, that it's a party that actually is the center right party. But what we have is a real populist government that has enabled the current regime to move Mexico backwards, to move Mexico backwards instead of looking to the future. And in that sense, I think Mexico is being in a situation in which the authoritarian government that we are witnessing in this very moment is acting very much against the international interests of Mexico, especially those that have to do with their relationship with the United States. But so what is our light between, for instance, Trump's Trumpism and the government, just individual features, the the characterization of the way how they speak, the narrative, the political narrative, of course, which is not necessarily on the right in the case of Mexico, but is is very much an ideological discourse that but of course, a very important one in terms of trying to recover the national roots of what Mexico was like during the thirties or the forties. But at that right movement, we don't have it here. Perhaps it will be very interesting to have one in Mexico in order to make this research much more fascinating as it is in the case of the United States with Trumpism. But so far, we don't have it. I just wanted to add to this that there are many linkages from my research, especially social media influencers between Canada and the US and a Dean, you've probably seen this in terms of, you know, we know that Gavin McGinnis, you know, started the Proud Boys. We know that one of the Jordan Peterson played a role in popularizing some of the anti trans legislation and, you know, has has very kind of rigid ideas about gender and, you know, and as well as Stefan Malinu and some of these people have been de-platformed. But it's interesting if you one of the, I found that one of the best ways to learn about the far right is to listen to their podcasts, listen to the podcast and read the comments. And in those, you will find the connections. There's actually a big kind of alt writer based in Montreal who you may be aware of. And so, you know, they exchange ideas and I think there's a sense of, you know, for the most part, kind of the angle of phone and the regional proximity, a sense of a shared sense of, you know, kind of white victimization and, you know, being threatened by, you know, these liberal governments that, you know, embrace refugees and have, you know, kind of open immigration policies, which may or may not be true. It's not that that is necessarily the case, but that's how it's being perceived. So I think the Canadian U.S. linkages are really important and the Mexico case is just so interesting because you have kind of a leftist populism, which has reactionary elements that shares seem to share with the more authoritarian. It's like such a grab bag, I guess. And their presidents are only in place for six years, right? And so I think they're term limited. So it'll be interesting to see what happens next, right? Because it's going to have to be someone else. And they'll follow if they'll follow the footsteps or not. That would be a question for Jose, but I want others to ask questions. I'm just fascinated by that. Yeah, thanks, Dr. Stern. So please, for those of you in the audience, either submit a question via chat or use the raised hand function. So Zomar, John or I can see it on the screen. OK, we, John has a question. Yes, I have a question for Professor Valdez. And it's I really appreciated some of the concepts that you that you introduced reactionary pragmatism, for example, or primitive sovereignism. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about what the populist movement that Amlo heads is is reacting to. I mean, for by contrast, Duryodin had had an interesting point in Canada that the groups are highly fragmented, but they're actually quite similar in terms of the types of groups that they demonize, what they point to as threats to sovereignty and cultural identity. In Mexico, what are some of the bogeymen that Amlo is able to point to in order to generate this populist following? Yes, of course, John, thank you very much for the question. Of course, yes. I will be very careful in defining Mexico's government as a leftist government. It's a populist government with not necessarily a main ideology. It's very conservative in many regards, for instance, religion, rights of women, feminism, abortion and the like. So in that sense, I think it's very much on the right. It's a pragmatic, rational pragmatic movement that is responding. What is reacting to? Is reacting, reacting to to the past, basically corruption and the level of corruption in Mexico has been very high. It's actually very high right now is not being overcome with the government, with the current government that is being established in different policies against corruption. Actually, corruption has increased according to international international organizations on this and also is reacting against the lack of the loss, the loss of sovereign sovereignty, which is relative because the independence of Mexico is there. We do have usually a historically an anti-American discourse in order to, of course, to capture the attention of the domestic public in order for the elections and the like. Now the common elections are in 21, in 22, I'm sorry, the next year and the government of Hamlo is actually very much working towards getting as much as possible consensus to his government. But the reaction is sovereignty, corruption and equality, but equality in very abstract terms, equality in very abstract terms because actually we have increased to 10 million new poor population in the country regarding the policies against poverty. So these are some of the features that the movement of Hamlo is reacting to and of course that has created a problem with for the state because we have we have very much a weak state in many ways, in many ways, meaning for instance, our relationship with the United States is weak because the position of Mexico in that regard is very conservative in many ways. I mean, the position of the policy towards the United States and the relationship with Biden is not necessarily constructive. And so there are many, many faults in this reaction against towards the past. But the most important thing to say here, John, is that Mexico is very much in accusing the past to be responsible for what happens in the present without taking responsibility for actually what is going on right now. Thank you for that response to John's question. All right, we've got about 15 minutes left. So additional questions or comments from the audience. All right, we have a couple hands up. So I will go to Hannah Schechter first and then Christian after that. So Hannah, please. Hi, thank you. My name is Hannah Schechter. I'm a senior at the Ford School right now. I apologize to my camera off my Wi-Fi is a little unstable at the moment. I was wondering in kind of the age of the internet and with social media, if these groups between the countries have learned from each other and from that, what has the response been? So who wants to take a swing at that? I can start again on this one. So yeah, definitely. You know, online they communicate with each other. An example that I would like to give is the yellow vest movement in France, which started as against, you know, more economic terms and, you know, gain carbon tax. But by the time it came to Canada, it started in Alberta at the same in the same scenario, because as some of you already know, Alberta is an all rich province. And there has been a lot of backlash against the liberal Trudeau's government for bringing in carbon tax and saying that they are going to move away from oil and gas sector. So it started there. But the way, you know, so you can see the whole movement and they were using the language of the way the French yellow vest movement was using. But by the time it came local, then it started accommodating, you know, the immigration issue in more racial terms or in more like other ink terms or the idea that some of the protesters showed up protesting against the sex education curriculum in schools saying that it is against our values. So you can see that, you know, the movement that started and how, you know, it moved from all the way from France to Canada, but then it came to Canada, then it adapted in a local flavor. It started in Alberta, then it came all the way to Ontario. So yes, they learn from each other saying, OK, this is how they are protesting in another country. We can maybe use some of that, you know, some of that tactics that are working and then, you know, use it in our case here. And another example that Dr. Stone already mentioned about the proud boys, right? So the founder is of course Canadian. But then again, you know, the fragmentation happened in Canada. The proud boys had different chapters in different provinces, different cities. And, you know, and then they said, OK, this is how it's happening in the US, you know, and so we are going to do some of those things. Then Canadian government put the proud boys on a terrorist entity list earlier this year and now they disband it. And they're like, OK, we're not going to do it. But the proud boys are still active in the US. And some would argue, you know, even though McKinnis is no longer the leader, it's still very active. You already saw their role in January 6th, right? So, yeah, I mean, they learn from each other saying, OK, this is working there. This is not working here. But by the time it comes in a local context, it adapts to, you know, whatever is happening in the local politics as well. Yeah, I would just add two examples to that in terms of how those on the US far right have kind of learned from counterparts in other countries. The first is, you know, the alt-right ideas themselves, many of them are based in mid to late 20th century far right thinking that came out of France and Western Europe. So there was a movement that emerged in really in reaction to the 1968 movements in France called the New Right, the Nouveau Drought in France. And some of the key authors there really were focused on ideas such as heritage, identity, and they wanted to not put so much energy into claiming political power, but to really change culture. So one of the ironies is they love the Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and drew from his ideas of cultural hegemony to create their own kind of concepts of metapolitics and how to kind of shift the cultural, the overtone windows they call it shift culture more in their favor through book clubs and meetings and art and music. And then of course that meshes well with kind of what happens on social media. And the other really interesting case is that over the past 10 years we've seen the emergence and the rise and fall depending on the country that you look at of the identitarian movement that came out of France in 2012 and is really relates to you know this idea of kind of cleaned up, sanitized young hip version of you know extremism, which is xenophobic and has these again these ideas of kind of culture and heritage and nation. And there was an attempt to replicate that in the US in the form of a group called identity Europa, which was hacked by this anti fascist group and all of that you can go and Google it now and find all of their kind of communications that downloaded and zip files. So they for a range of reasons they basically collapsed. They first turned into something called the American identity movement which is really interesting because they had lost the kind of European flavor and become much more of like a guns rights organization and economic protectionism. You know those were some of their key values, but they also folded as well. So it's kind of interesting to see well what what what works and what doesn't work in these different national and regional contexts. Thanks Hannah for the question. So Christian I believe you had a question. I was wondering related with the Mexican case if. Especially how can we interpret states for instance, Brena movement. And Brena movement has anti US members. And on the other hand, I would like how can we interpret states? Claudio X Gonzalez, who is the leader of the C format for Mexico. Who is a libertarian and leadership in Mexico. And finally, how can we interpret that some members of the conservative party had a relationship with Cambridge Analytica? Yeah, well, the partners, you know, had an alliance with Vox. Vox is the extreme right party in Spain. And that was a great mistake. But because with a fraction of senators of the other pan senators in the Senate that decided to sign an agreement with them of collaboration, which was very much criticized by by by their own members, the men with the members of the party. There is a tendency to go to the extreme right, but not in the way how we know the extreme right in the US, or in England, or in Germany, or in France, or in the United States. As far as I can tell, the extreme right here in the US right now is working towards taking away Biden's legitimacy and to block everything that has to do with the agenda, the domestic agenda. Right now, we are witnessing that. But in the case of Mexico, it's not necessarily that. The opposition in Mexico is not as strong as, as it is, as it was to Trump in the case of the United States. Claudio Quis Gonzales, indeed, is a libertarian guy who belongs to the right, but not necessarily the extreme right. I wouldn't agree that he's part of the extreme right. He's very much a conservative. He is very much in support of Mexico, which is a group of opposition against the government, but has not religious roots or has not political extreme political roots as, as for instance, some of the more nas groups that aren't the American, as you say, are very much a conservative in terms of how their relationship with the United States should be driven like. So, um, but I didn't, Christian, I didn't get the, the, the analytical question. Sectors of the Mexican government are of the of the, of the Mexican opposition are close to analytical. It wasn't. So I guess in the book in written by Brittany Nicole Kaiser, she mentioned that some members of the conservative party in Mexico had a relationship with Cambridge Analytica Facebook. Yeah, well, perhaps yes, but I think it's very isolated that relationship is not necessarily a coherent one in terms of groups. There are pictures with members of Cambridge Analytica and Fox, Martha Según and some memberships of the conservative party. Yeah, but you know, folks, the former president of Mexico and Martha Según are not necessarily a force within the party anymore. I wouldn't take that seriously. Yeah, if you, if you tell me that Madero, for instance, or Lily Teyes or any other member of the conservative party currently making politics in Mexico is close to Cambridge Analytica. Then I will be worried, but I don't, I don't, I am not worried at all that Fox and Martha Martína Según are close to conditionally difficult. Thank you, Christian. And thank you for that, Christian. So only have a couple minutes left. So if there is someone who wants to ask another question to our panelists, and we can do sort of a speed round of answers, we have time perhaps for one more question. If not, I am John prepared just to kind of give some closing, closing thoughts. So let me pause for a couple seconds and see if there's another hand up. I don't see one. So why don't I just try to wrap up here and say, first of all, thank you to everyone for spending time out in very busy schedules with us. Really fascinating discussion. And for anyone who takes my classes, they know that when I promote my lecture mature, I actually don't use a lot of words. It's mostly graphics and they all grow. My students grown at that. But if I were to draw a graphic for this conversation, I would say we've got two circles in which there is definitely overlap in terms of history, drivers, evolution of threats between Canada and the United States. It's not a one for one or clearly differences, but I do see a lot of symmetry between the two. That third circle of Mexico, I wouldn't necessarily park in the in the actual first two circles with the United States and Canada. But I also see issues that are getting closer to the same kind of landscape or we're seeing we've seen in Mexico and Canada. And if I were wearing my former intelligence analyst hat in the US government, I would say this is something to be on the lookout for going down the future, the potential for that landscape to continue to shift, where now you have a lot more symmetry and potentially, you know, cohesion that we talked about before across all three countries, which I would argue I just I don't think we have that now, but it this is something to look for in the future. So it'll be fascinating to see where this goes. But thank you again, everyone for giving us a great first session for this series. And John, let me turn it over to you to close us out. Just to echo that, I would thank you so much. Very insightful, great way to start off our series. I'm also very happy that because we've recorded the session that students who had class in our three universities and elsewhere will be able to watch and learn from it as I did. We hope that you will all stay engaged in our in our subsequent events will announce soon. And just thank you again for your for your great range of insights, both empirical and conceptual on this very important topic. So thanks everybody. And we'll look forward to seeing you again soon.