AustLit

The rise in anti-migrant xenophobia, Islamophobia, and so-called populist nationalism in recent years has demonstrated the consequential effects of colonialism, nationalism, and globalisation in our contemporary world. Through the increasing interdependence and accelerating interconnection afforded by global media – especially social media – daily reports of violent conflicts reveal how entire communities and populations continue to be disenfranchised and excluded from the security and belonging that have conventionally been tied to citizenship and territoriality (Razack 2008 ) In particular, non-European migrants, Muslims, Black and Indigenous peoples remain vulnerable to dispossession and death, often at the hands of nation-states that otherwise espouse a commitment to universal values and human rights. Hannah Arendt’s prescient claim in The Origins of Totalitarianism’ that histories of anti-semitism, ‘scientific’ racism, and imperialism contributed to the rise of totalitarianism seems even more relevant today.' (Introduction)