The Politics of Disconnection

Why do people turn to the past when the future feels unbearable? And why does that turn so often lean authoritarian?

Critical theorist and ‘pyrotechnic thinker’ Dr. Louisa Toxværd Munch has spent her career examining the conditions that let fascism take root – and disconnection is at the heart of it. Nostalgia isn't really about the past, it's what happens when people can no longer imagine a shared future together. Isolation doesn't just make us lonelier, it makes us easier to manipulate, easier to divide, and more susceptible to the manufactured ignorance that authoritarian movements depend on.

Louisa makes the case that the way out is relational, not individual. Critical thinking, resistance cannot be done alone. We build these together - in classrooms, in communities, in (disappearing) third spaces, and in the rooms where people still gather to question power.

*This Salon Talk is part of Brussels Ideas Festival hosted at Full Circle House from 20-22 November 2026.
*Full programme available on https://fullcircle.eu/ideasfestival/
*Weekend or Day pass available
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ABOUT The Speaker

louisa Toxvaerd Munch is a Danish critical theorist, writer, and educator whose work examines nostalgia, historical consciousness, and the political conditions enabling the resurgence of the far right. A PhD researcher and teacher at the University of Warwick, she brings critical theory to a broad public audience through writing, lectures, and social media. Drawing on Arendt, hooks, and Freire, she champions education as a democratic safeguard against manufactured ignorance. She is the author of the forthcoming Glitch: How to Think in a Time of Monsters (Allen Lane/Penguin), which reframes societal breakdowns as sites of resistance and collective agency.