The return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan occurred at about the same time that virulent antidemocratic pro-Trump mobs attacked the United States capitol on January 6, 2021, and hostile new right-wing anti-immigrant politics surfaced throughout Europe from Hungary to Poland. Even Denmark was not spared. It is the thesis of this lecture that the global rise of right-wing religious neo-nationalism is not a coincidence. It is part of a thirty-year assault on secular nationalism that is related to globalization and the erosion of secular national identities. Often religious affiliations and justifications buttress these anti-secular neo-nationalists. Though ideologically anti-global, these movements are themselves a part of the dynamics of globalization that is transforming the world. 

Mark Juergensmeyer is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Global Studies, Sociology, and affiliate of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the founding director of the Global and International Studies Program and the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South Asian religion and politics, and has published more than three hundred articles and thirty books.