Bryan Fanning

Professor of migration and social policy at University College Dublin. Author of Three Roads to the Welfare State: Liberalism, Social Democracy and Christian Democracy, published by Policy Press (2021).

Articles

Cover for: People like us

Many of the early twentieth-century champions of eugenics were social democrats and feminists. All shared a belief that science and technocracy could re-engineer society for the better. Attempts to institutionalize eugenics coincided with the emergence of welfare states and infrastructure to monitor the ‘feebleminded’.

Cover for: Slaves to a myth

The ‘Irish slaves meme’– assertions that Irish immigrants to the US were once slaves – has been mobilized by the alt-right to promote a white nationalist agenda based on claims of victimhood. Yet its popularity cannot simply be blamed on the online propaganda of white supremacist groups, argues Bryan Fanning.