23.10.25, 19:30, Sinan Çankaya, The fascist boomerang: on violence, dehumanisation and the crisis of democracy

We are still living in colonial times. That old order has not disappeared, but has changed form. Behind our democratic, liberal façade lies a pecking order that still determines which lives count and which can be destroyed.

While our leaders undermine international law and remain complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people, the question arises: what does that do to us? What does it say about our society, our institutions?

Aimé Césaire wrote about how the dehumanisation that is accepted elsewhere inevitably returns to us. He called this the “colonial boomerang”. Writer and anthropologist Sinan Çankaya already sees this spiral of violence, for example in the ways in which freedom and security are discussed in Europe. Politicians in the Netherlands and Flanders repeatedly fuel fascist energies. In his lecture, Çankaya analyses the temptation of racial and sexual spectres in uncertain times.

How do you remain human when violence looms? How do we save democracy when its foundations are being eroded from within? And above all: are we prepared to pay the price of resistance?

After the lecture, Sinan Çankaya will be in conversation with journalist Samira Bendadi.

Previous communications stated that the title of the lecture would be “Guilt and shame as social wounds”, but the speaker has since changed the title and content to “The fascist boomerang: on violence, dehumanisation and the crisis of democracy”.

• Sinan Çankaya is an anthropologist and writer. He obtained his doctorate with a study on diversity within the Dutch police force and researched ethnic profiling in the Netherlands. He has written essays on identity and exclusion for De Correspondent. His book Mijn ontelbare identiteiten (My Countless Identities, 2023) was awarded the Jan Hanlo Essay Prize Groot, the Sociologische Bril (Sociological Perspective) and the E. du Perron Prize. His latest book, “Galmende geschiedenissen” (2025), is about who is allowed to speak and who is silenced, about which dead we remember and which stories we bury deeper. He wrote the introduction to the Dutch edition of Edward Said's Orientalism and is a university teacher at VU Amsterdam.
• Samira Bendadi is a journalist at MO* and has worked for both radio and television in the past. Her expertise lies mainly in the field of migration and citizenship. In addition to her focus on migration in Belgium, she has produced numerous reports in various countries in North Africa and the Middle East. In recent years, she has focused in particular on the situation in Libya and Sudan.
  
  Her journalistic work is always based on a human rights perspective. Whether it concerns in-depth reports, analytical contributions or interviews with writers and artists, both in Belgium and Europe or the Arab world, the political context and its impact on human rights are always central to her approach. Bendadi is the author of Dolle Amina’s. Feminisme in de Arabische Wereld (2008). In 2019, she was co-curator and co-author of the book Textiel in Verzet (Textiles in Resistance), a publication accompanying the exhibition of the same name on textiles, migration and resistance, commissioned by the Fashion Museum (MoMU).

This lecture will be in Dutch.

This lecture is part of the Dark Nights series at the GUM Forum. More information about accessibility can be found on their website. A sign language interpreter will be present for this lecture. If you have any further questions about accessibility facilities, please contact the organisers: anais.vanertvelde@hogent.be. Questions can also be asked at the reception desk on site.