Abstract

This article examines David Greig’s The Events (2013) and Chris Thorpe’s quasi-verbatim Confirmation (2014), two plays conspicuous for engaging critically and analytically with aspects of extremism motivated by far-right politics. It performs a comparative analysis of both plays and enquires into how each negotiate and interrogate the ideology of the contemporary ethno-nationalist far-right. It offers an interpretation of the plays as urgently topical cultural artefacts that distil the most salient elements of a still inchoate twenty first-century fascism, each engaging with the specific characteristics of extremist racism and anti-liberalism that act as its primary motors in the present political conjuncture in Europe. Furthermore, it also makes the case that the plays can be interpreted in conjunction as offering clear critiques into the way that the contemporary liberal left construes and uses tolerance as a political category, and whether this is an adequate response to twenty-first century fascism.