Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Figure 1: The depiction of the Overton Window shifting to the far-right, mainstreaming U.S. far-right extremism The politics of my research work empowers marginalized voices, challenges colonial and extractive orders, and enacts global justice, naturally situated within the progressive imaginations of politics. This research notes the global pattern of the rise of the far-right, organized around political processes designed to entrench the extreme marginalization of those at the margins. I watch with alarm and deep concern as I observe the digital ecosystem in Aotearoa New Zealand, the increasing presence of U.S. far-right discourse in this ecosystem, the political mainstreaming of the U.S. far-right, and the uptake into policy infrastructures the articulations that mimic the U.S. far-right. Based on this observation and in the context of the present politics of global uncertainty, I am compelled to notice the crucial necessity to preserve the political space of the center right as a n...

(Image courtesy: UNRWA) I have, through analysis of the rhetorical strategies deployed by the Free Speech Union, demonstrated the ways in which the Union serves as an astroturf, pushing the discursive window in Aotearoa toward the far-right while simultaneously continually working to shut down the discursive spaces at/from the margins. One of the key architects of the FSU is the Zionist Dane Giraud, along with David Cumin of Israel Institute of New Zealand.  I have argued elsewhere that the Islamophobia that drives far-right Zionism creates a conceptual register around free speech, organizing the communicative infrastructure around Islamophobic speech that forms a critical resource in the dehumanization of Palestinians and the Palestinian struggle. In response to my persistent show of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle that is emergent from my personal, political, and academic commitments to decolonization and building Global South knowledge systems, Giraud has launched a ca...

When Jimmy Kimmel was yanked off the air after his jokes cut too close to Trump, it was more than a media dust-up. It was a glimpse of how repression operates in our time. Not through tanks in the streets, but through FCC warnings, affiliate pullouts, and boardroom panic.  This is the quiet suffocation of speech—where free expression survives only for those willing to keep the powerful comfortable. But here’s the part the censors never count on: repression doesn’t end the story. It sparks the next chapter—resistance.  Within hours, Stephen Colbert declared, “Tonight we are all Jimmy Kimmel,” weaving solidarity into satire. Seth Meyers and Jon Stewart sharpened their monologues into shields of mockery. Fans filled the streets of Burbank and Hollywood chanting for a host they’d never met but whose words mirrored their own frustrations. Even Barack Obama, Angelina Jolie, and Mark Ruffalo added their voices—not as celebrities above the fray, but as citizens refusing silence. Th...

Figure 1: Stephen Miller at the Charlie Kirk funeral (from  Stephen Miller Laces Into 'Enemies' at Charlie Kirk Memorial ) In State Farm Stadium's shadow, under the same lights raining down upon Super Bowls and spectacles of empire, tens of thousands gathered on September 21, 2025, for Charlie Kirk's funeral. It was promoted as a funeral. It was, in fact, a resurrection ritual. The 31-year-old Turning Point USA co-founder who had been just gunned down at a Utah campus rally a few days earlier was reborn in that instant—not as victim, but as martyr. Red, white, and blue flags waved in the air. Faces equated grief with grievance. And the choreography of the event enacted what it was actually about: a fascist liturgy, consecrating Kirk as saint and warrior in a holy war for the nation's soul. A Rally in Disguise as a Eulogy It wasn't jus another service. With the Department of Homeland Security numbering it alongside the Super Bowl, TSA checkpoints and federal agen...

Within the dark shadows of the global margins negotiating the impact of the global ascent of the authoritarian populisms—felt on the streets of Gaza drenched in blood, the Fortress Europe seeks to safeguard from the brown masses, and the echo chambers of the American red states ruled by algorithms of repression—there is a profound irony.  The same power that the left professes to eliminate continues to propel us toward fascism, not despite our resistance, but due to it. As a scholar who has studies the ways in which colonized and precarized speaking subjects resound within decolonial praxis, I have often argued that communication is the flesh of hegemony. But during this era of global disintegration, it is the left's quietism—the deliberate evasion of whiteness, white fragility, and white supremacy—that fails to preempt the fascist flowers from filling up the soil.  It is not a question of abstention; it is a feature of communication inequality, a refusal to name the normative...

In the hallowed halls of academia and the echo chambers of progressive activism, the left loves to preach about decolonization. We wave banners of solidarity, chant mantras of equity, and perform our anti-racist rituals with the fervor of converts.  But peel back the performative skin, and what do you find? A festering wound of whiteness – a structural hypocrisy that co-opts the language of the oppressed while systematically erasing the very voices it claims to amplify. The erasure is complete through the language games of civility and appeal to the white majority.  Bring up whiteness and risk becoming a pariah. Risk being lectured how you are going to lose out on the white mainstream of the Left, or worse, trigger a backlash from the center and center-right. The codes of whiteness are carefully crafted to silence any conversation on whiteness, the hegemonic values of white culture--individualization, property ownership, extraction, competition--that shape the driving forces o...

The U.S. MAGA  far right's playbook enters New Zealand politics out in the open. When I made a straightforward fact-based statement that Charlie Kirk is a white supremacist far-right activist, I did not anticipate it being the target of an organized disinformation campaign. But what followed revealed something quite sinister about how far-right tactics have entered New Zealand's mainstream politics. Let me set clearly what actually happened—and why it concerns us all. In the rest of the post, I will analyze the anatomy of far-right disinformation and its networks of travel from the Trump MAGA ecosystem to Aotearoa New Zealand. What I Actually Said My initial tweet was straightforward: "Charlie Kirk is a white supremacist far right figure" and that attempting to pay homage to him in New Zealand's Parliament revealed "who is backing the far right in NZ mainstream politics." This was not hyperbole. This was based on documented fact from such trusted sources...

Figure 1: In Aotearoa New Zealand, the far-right Destiny Church memorializing Kirk The killing of Charlie Kirk has quickly become more than a personal tragedy. For the American far right, it is an opportunity: a way to reframe Kirk as a conservative and free speech martyr.  It is not sorrow—it is tactics. Tactics to accelerate the communicative inversion that constructs free speech as an instrument of authoritarian control. And it is measurably dangerous to democracy. By placing Kirk in the category of a fallen hero, the far-right discursive infrastructure is attempting to whitewash his record and conceal the truth regarding the ideas for which he advocated. The communicative construction of Kirk as a free speech hero is an instrument for mainstreaming the deplorable hate-filled white supremacist ideology of the far-right. To accept that account without challenge is to make extremism more mainstream and perhaps sow it more firmly in our political culture. The Reality of Kirk's Rhe...

Note: At the onset of this blogpost, I express a sense of profound sadness in witnessing the violent attack on Charlie Kirk, the message that sends for political culture, and the broader culture of violence we witness in the U.S. This violence has become an infrastructure of U.S. culture, replete with an aggressive gun culture (school shootings, attacks on public spaces), attacks on politicians, and deep polarization brought about through disinformation weaponized on digital platforms. In the analysis that follows, I have attempted to offer contextual analysis rather than lifted quotes and also linked to the show materials for the readers to follow. I have over the last two years Chaired the Taskforce commissioned by the National Communication Association on Threats to Academic Freedom and Tenure.  As part of the work, our taskforce has documented systemic patterns of attacks on academic freedom and tenure. One of the key players in this organized attack on teachers, researchers, a...