Other Upcoming Events

Below is a list of upcoming events related to the Beyond Truth and Lies project:

Seminar to share work in progress

The project Beyond Truth and Lies: Conspiracy Theories, Post-truth and the Conditions of Public Debate will organize an in-person seminar on 2 September 2025, 16h15 – 18h00 on Lund University's campus. Before this event we will circulate an article draft by Aaron James Goldman, a member of the project team. The event will not offer a hybrid Zoom attendance option. Afterwards, the attendees are welcome to join Aaron at Lundabryggeriets Ölkällare. Please email Aaron at aaron.goldman [at] ctr.lu.se by 20 August 2025 if you are interested to attend the event and post-seminar, so he can plan to distribute the article draft and plan to reserve enough seats.

Working title of paper: Kayfabe Making, Kayfabe Breaking: Trump, Authenticity, and the Politics of Unmasking

Abstract: In this seminar we will discuss a draft article by Aaron James Goldman, in which he proposes an explanation for Donald Trump’s political popularity that draws from political science, performance theory, and the study of religion. Goldman turns to historian of religions J. Z. Smith, political scientist David Moon, and media theorist Sharon Mazer to argue that Trump’s support was gathered in part as a result of his deft performance of kayfabe, a feature of some entertainment genres – most notably American professional wrestling, but also reality television and other spectacular performance – in which actors and audience mutually pretend to believe in the spontaneity and unscripted-ness of scripted performance. By engaging in tactics borrowed from his time with American professional wrestling, Trump completed a shift in the genre of televised American electoral politics from the kayfabe of reasoned debate to the kayfabe of spectacle. Much as in the case of the reenactment of mythic narratives in the performance of religious rituals in front of audiences, we must, following Smith and Moon, presume that Trump’s initial supporters were not simply tricked but instead were actively intellectually and emotionally engaged in his political performances, using them as occasions to interrogate the limits of their political situation. This process tapped into growing distrust in the US electoral system and highlighted a discrepancy between the performance of authenticity by establishment politicians and that of his own bombastic political style, appealing to one segment of the American public’s perceived disenfranchisement by established institutions by unmasking those institutions’ representatives on the stage of American electoral politics.

You can also find on our website a list of upcoming Populism and Religion seminars and a list of past events related to the project.