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Hello and welcome to our monthly series History Behind the Headlines.

In each episode an expert panel will be exploring historical news stories that have caught their eye and the history that will help you make sense of what's going on in the world.

Each month I'll be joined by our two regular panelists.

I'm Hanus Koda, I'm fellow and tutor at St John's College in Oxford and I work on late medieval history.

And I'm Rana Mitter. I'm the ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and I research and teach modern Chinese history.

Hannah and Rana thank you so much as always for being here.

Recent weeks have seen a series of protests and

riots around the UK, fueled in part by online misinformation, but also by far

right groups. To discuss the longer history behind what's happening, I'm

pleased to say that we're joined today by Professor

Nigel Kopsi from Tizad University who specializes in histories of right-wing extremism, fascism and

anti-fascism. Nigel, thank you so much for being here. You're welcome.

There's plenty for us to get into, but Hannah, I believe you wanted to kick off with an example from your field of studies.

Yes, so I work on medieval history, which is full of riots, but not ones that we could describe as right-wing.

So I was thinking about the sorts of comparisons we might draw here and the kinds of question

that these comparisons might raise. I was thinking about the peasants

revolt in 1381, which is a very widespread movement of people utterly fed up with the ways

in which they are being crushed, economically deprived and exploited.

...