RADIKAAL is a DIY podcast about the radical aspects of music, politics, and sports. Each episode, host Cas Mudde interviews one guest about a specific topic for about 30 minutes. Guests include academics, athletes, journalists, musicians, and politicians. In short, this is a podcast about fascists, punks, and ultras.
cas, right, great.
Listeners of RADIKAAL that love the show mention:My guests today are the political science power couple Maria Sobolewska and Rob Ford, who are both Professor of Political Science at the University of Manchester in the UK. Maria works on the political integration and representation of ethnic minorities in Britain and abroad as well as on public perceptions of ethnicity, immigrants, and integration. Rob works broadly in the areas of public opinion, electoral choice, and party politics. Together they published the book Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics with Cambridge University Press in 2020, which won the prestigious WJM Mackenzie Prize of the Political Studies Association. You can follow Maria Sobolewska on Twitter at @ProfSobolewska and Rob Ford at @robfordmancs.
Ever since President Biden referred to “MAGA Republicans” as “semi-fascists”, the previously shunned F-word has become the omnipresent. At the same time, Christian nationalism has also become broadly used. Today, I will talk about fascism in general, and its relationship to Christianity in particular, which Richard Steigmann-Gall. Richard is an Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, former Director of the Jewish Studies Program, and a specialist of historical fascism, in particular its relationship to Christianity. In 2003, he published The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 with Cambridge University Press. In the past years he has also explored fascism and religion in the contemporary period, including in the US. The perfect guest, therefore, to explore these current debates. You can follow Richard Steigmann-Gall on Twitter at @Notorious_RSG.
My guest today, for this ninth episode in the Special Election Series, and the first covering a non-European election, is Malu Gatto. Malu is an Associate Professor of Latin American Politics at the Institute of the Americas at University College London. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her work explores questions about political behavior, representation, policy-making, and gender and politics with a regional focus on Latin America, especially Brazil. Today, we will discuss the context, results, and consequences of the Brazilian presidential elections, which were held on October 2nd and 30th this year. You can follow her on Twitter at @MaluGatto.
My guest today is Kim Lane Scheppele. Kim is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her work focuses on the intersection of constitutional and international law, particularly in constitutional systems under stress. After 1989, she studied the emergence of constitutional law in Hungary and Russia, living in both places for extended periods. Over the last decade, she has become one of the most prominent and insightful critics of Viktor Orbán's rule in Hungary. Today, we will talk about democratic erosion, EU laxness, and the Frankenstate. You can follow Kim Lane Scheppele on Twitter at @KimLaneLaw.
My guest today is Tessel Middag. Tessel is a professional soccer player for Rangers FC in Glasgow, Scotland, as well as an international for the Dutch women national team. She studied history at the University of Amsterdam, where she also researched the history of women soccer in the Netherlands. In 2017 she was the first Dutch player to join the NGO Common Goal. Today we will talk about politics and women soccer. You can follow Tessel Middag on both Instagram and Twitter at @tesselmiddag.
My guest today, for this eight episode in the Special Election Series, is Giulia Sandri. Giulia is an Associate Professor of Political Science at ESPOL at the Catholic University of Lille in France. Her main research interests are digital politics, comparative politics, quality of democracy and political behavior. She has also written extensively on Italian electoral and party politics. Notably, she co-edited the special issue “Politics in Italy 2022: The Year of Mario Draghi” for the journal Contemporary Italian Politics. Today, we will discuss the context, results, and consequences of the Italian parliamentary elections that were held on September 25. You can follow Giulia Sandri on Twitter at @SandriGiulia.
My guest today is Elizaveta Gaufman. Lisa is Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics in the Department of European Languages and Politics of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the exploration of verbal and visual enemy images through big data analysis. Lisa has worked a lot on nationalism and security in the post-Soviet space, including in Russia and Ukraine, and is currently involved in collaborative research on music and politics in Russia, which will be the main topic of this conversation. You can follow Lisa Gaufman on Twitter at @Lisas_Research.
My guest today, for this seventh episode in the Special Election Series, is Nicholas Aylott. Nick is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Södertörn University in Sweden. His main academic interests are in comparative European politics, in particular political parties. Today, we will discuss the context, results, and consequences of the Swedish parliamentary elections that were held on September 11. You can find more information about Nichols Aylott on, or perhaps better through, his rather minimalistic webpage at www.nicholasaylott.net and you can follow him on Twitter at @nicholasaylott.
My guest today is Luisa Turbino Torres. Luisa is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Center for Women, Gender & Sexuality at Florida Atlantic University. Earlier this year she defended her PhD thesis, entitled “The Politics of Being a Soccer Fan: An Ethnographic Perspective on Feminist Action Around Soccer in Brazil”, at the University of Delaware. Today, we will talk about gender and soccer fandom in Brazil. You can follow Luisa Turbino Torres on Twitter at @turbinotorres.
My guest today is Christophe Jaffrelot, a CERI-CNRS Senior Research Fellow who teaches in three different schools at Sciences Po in Paris. He is a world-leading scholar of Indian politics, from its foreign policy to its political sociology. In 2020, he was elected president of the French Association of Political Science (AFSP), and last year, he published the incredibly detailed but still very readable book Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy with Princeton University Press. Today, we will speak about this terrifying study of contemporary India. You can follow Christophe Jaffrelot on Twitter at @jaffrelotc.
My guest today is Dana El Kurd, an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Richmond in Virginia, who works on authoritarian regimes in the Arab world, state-society relations in these countries, and the impact of international intervention. In 2020, she published the book Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine with Oxford University Press. Today, we will speak about authoritarianism in the Arab world as well as Palestinian opposition to both Israeli occupation and Palestinian authoritarianism. You can follow Dana El Kurd on Twitter at @DanaElKurd.
My guest today is Philip Gorski. Phil is a Professor of Sociology at Yale University, where he is currently also Chair of the Department of Sociology, and Co-Director of Yale's Center for Comparative Research. He is a comparative-historical sociologist with strong interests in theory and methods and in modern and early modern Europe. Much of his work has been on the sociology of religion, including in the US, which includes his new book, co-authored with Samuel Perry of the University of Oklahoma, entitled The Flag and The Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, published by Oxford University Press earlier this year. It is an excellent yet terrifying short read and will be the main topic of our conversation. You can follow Phil Gorski on Twitter at @GorskiPhilip.
My guest today is Ellen van Damme. Ellen has a BA, MA, and PhD in Criminology from the KU Leuven in Belgium, as well as an MA in Conflict and Development from Ghent University in Belgium and has just finished a Fulbright Post-Doc at the Center for the Study of International Migration at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her PhD research concerned the role of women in and around gangs in Honduras, Central America, for which she did extensive field work between 2017 and 2020. Today we will talk about gangs in Central America, the role of gender, and the relationship to immigration. You can follow Ellen van Damme on Twitter at @EllenEvd.
My guest today is Aurelien Mondon, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies at Bath University in the United Kingdom. He has been studying the far right in Europe and beyond for over a decade now, focusing in particular on its mainstreaming, and engaging critically with both the scholarship and its terminology, in particular the term populism. Aurelien is a frequent commentator on the far right in the media and blogs on the topic on Medium. His most recent book, published together with his longtime collaborator Aaron Winter, is called Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream, which was published by Verso in 2020. You can follow Aurelien Mondon on Twitter at @aurelmondon.
My guest today is Melanie Schiller, an Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Popular Music at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research combines critical theory, cultural studies, and media studies and focuses particularly on the relationship between popular music and nationalism and populism. In 2018 she published Soundtracking Germany: Popular Music and National Identity with Rowman & Littlefield. Currently, Melanie is part of a collaborative international research project on “Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe, 2018-2022”. You can follow Melanie Schiller on Twitter at @Mel_Schiller.
My guest today is Lenka Bustikova, currently an Associate Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University who will soon join St. Anthony's College at the Oxford University, as Associate Professor in European Union and Comparative East European Politics. Her research focuses on party politics, democratic decay, ethnicity, and clientelism, with special reference to Eastern Europe. She is the author of the awards-winning book Extreme Reactions: Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Lenka is currently working on a new book project about the social origins of illiberalism, exploring the relationship between ‘uncivil society' and political radicalization in Eastern Europe. You can follow Lenka Bustikova on Twitter at @LBustikova.
My guest today is Phillip Ayoub. Phillip is an Associate Professor in the Department of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in California. This Summer he will take up a Professorship in the Department of Political Science at University College London. His research bridges insights from international relations and comparative politics, engaging with literature on transnational politics, gender and politics, norm diffusion, and the study of social movements. He is the author of When States Come Out: Europe's Sexual Minorities and the Politics of Visibility, published by Cambridge University Press in 2016, and co-editor, with David Paternotte, of LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe, published by Palgrave in 2014. You can follow Phillip Ayoub on Twitter at @phillip_ayoub.
My guest today, for this sixth episode in the Special Election Series, which will focus on the 2022 French presidential elections, is Rainbow Murray. Rainbow is a Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London in the UK. She is an expert on representation, political institutions, gender and diversity, with particular expertise in French and British politics. Rainbow is also the Faculty Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Among her many publications are,Gendered Electoral Financing: Money, Power and Representation in Comparative Perspective, co-edited with Ragnhild Muriaas and Vibeke Wang, and published by Routledge in 2019, as well as Parties, Gender Quotas and Candidate Selection in France , published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2010. You can follow Rainbow Murray on Twitter at @rainbowmurray.
My guest today is Charlotte Lysa. Charlotte is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law and the University of Oslo in Norway. Her academic interests include politics and society in the Middle East and North Africa, and in the Arab Gulf monarchies in particular. She is currently working with the project REF-ARAB: Refugees and the Arab Middle East: Protection in States Not Party to the Refugee Convention, where she works on a sub-project on Saudi Arabia, but for her PhD-project she explored how women in Qatar and Saudi Arabia challenged patriarchal structures through playing football, and the social and political significance of the sport. Today, roughly half a year before the start of the 2022 World Cup, we talk about gender, politics, and soccer in Qatar. You can follow Charlotte Lysa on Twitter at @CharlotteLysa.
My guest today is Christopher Ogunmodede. Chris is a foreign policy advisor and associate editor of World Politics Review, who is based in Lagos, Nigeria. He specializes in diplomacy, development and international security, with a particular focus on West Africa and its history, political institutions and foreign relations. His areas of interest include governance, elections, military dictatorships, comparative authoritarianism, trade and regional integration, migration, diasporism and social movements. In addition to being an expert on international affairs and foreign policy, as well as a critical voice on African politics, as well as US and particularly European perception of and policies towards Africa on social and traditional media, Chris is a connoisseur of Afrobeat, which is today's topic of conversation. If you want to keep up to date on Chris Ogunmodede, and his strong opinions on African politics and international soccer, follow him on Twitter at @Illustrious_Cee.
My guest today is my former colleague Zsolt Enyedi. Zsolt is Professor in the Department of Political Science and Senior Researcher at the Democracy Institute of Central European University, which was initially based in Hungary but now primarily operates from Austria. His research focuses both on the role of religion in politics and on party politics. His most recent book, Party System Closure, co-authored with Fernando Casal Bertoa, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. But Zsolt is also an expert on Hungarian politics and was, as Pro-Rector for Hungarian Affairs, very closely involved in the inevitably unsuccessful negotiations between CEU and the Orbán regime. He is therefore the perfect guest for the fifth episode in the Special Elections Series, which focuses on the Hungarian election of May 3, 2022. You can follow Zsolt Enyedi on Twitter at @enyedi_zsolt.
My guest today is Lorenza Antonucci. Lorenza is an Associate Professor and Birmingham Fellow in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Her research and teaching focuses on the impact of European social policies on people's lives, and she is currently leading two major research projects, GIGWELL, about the gig economy, and PRECEDE, about the economic and cultural roots of populism in Europe. You can follow Lorenza Antonucci on Twitter at @SocialLore and find more information on her research projects at www.gigwell.org and www.precede.eu.
My guest today is Kirsten Dyck. Kirsten got her PhD in American Studies from Washington State University in 2012. She taught History, Humanities, Academic Writing, and English as a Foreign Language at James Madison University from 2012 to 2017 after which she joined the Peace Corps and taught English in Poltava, Ukraine. She currently teaches Conversational English and Cross-Cultural Communication at Nanjing Xiaozhuang University in China. In 2016 she published the book Reichsrock: The International Web of White Power and Neo-Nazi Hate Music with Rutgers University Press, which will be the topic of our conversation today. Kirsten Dyck is not on Twitter but she does have a, slightly dormant, account on Instagram at @kirsten_andrea_dyck.
My guest today is Mic Crenshaw. Mic is a hip hop activist, organizer, and MC, who is based in Portland, Oregon. He used to be the front man of Hungry Mob and has since published various CDs, including “Thinking Out Loud” and “Under the Sun”. Before that, Mic was part of an anti-racist skinhead crew in Minneapolis, which was the topic of a recent PBS program, called “The Baldies”. We talk about being a skinhead, about hip hop in the US and Africa, and about Black man in overwhelmingly white cities.
My guest today is Andrew Lawn, a UX writer at Pickatale. He also delivers training courses on “Designing Better Academic Posters” and “Effective Digital Communications” at the University of East Anglia. In his spare time, Andy is Assistant Manager of Norwich United FC U18s and a co-founder of the Norwich City fanzine, Along Come Norwich. Finally, he is the author of ‘We Lose Every Week; The History of Football Chanting', which was published by Ockley Books in 2021. You can follow Andrew Lawn on Twitter at @Andrew_Lawn and learn more about his fanzine at www.alongcomenorwich.com.
My guest is Ildiko Otova, who teaches European Migration Policy at Sofia University. Ildiko holds a PhD in Political sciences from New Bulgarian University and is a laureate of the Mozer Scholarship for excellence in the study of political science and civil courage. She works as researcher in various national and international projects on migration and refugee issues, integration, urban policies and citizenship. She published, with Evelina Staykova, Migration and Populism in Bulgaria with Routledge in 2022. You can follow her on Twitter at @otovaildiko.
My guest today is Kathleen Belew. Kathleen is an assistant professor in history at the University of Chicago – soon to be an associate professor at Northwestern University. In 2019 she published her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, with Harvard University Press, which has become a must-read on the contemporary far right in the US and has made her a much sought-after media guest and public speaker. Last year, together with Ramón Guitiérrez, she published the co-edited volume A Field Guide to White Supremacy with the University of California Press. You can follow her on Twitter at @kathleen_belew.
My guest today is Russ Rankin. Russ is a musician, record producer, hockey scout and writer from Santa Cruz, California. He is best known as the singer of the punk rock bands Good Riddance and Only Crime, but has lend his voice to many other punk bands too. He is also the California scout for the Tri City Americans, a junior hockey team in the Western Hockey League. Russ is also an outspoken voice on many political issues, including animal rights. If you want to keep up to date on the many things Russ Rankin is doing, you can follow him on Twitter at @RussRankinNJD.
My guest today is mi hermano Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. Cristóbal is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Social Science Research Institute at Diego Portales University in Santiago de Chile. He has published extensively on populist and right-wing politics in Europe and particularly Latin America, including, co-edited with Pablo Luna, the prophetic The Resilience of the Latin American Right, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2014; co-authored with me, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press in 2017; and most recently, co-edited with Tim Bale, Riding the Populist Wave: Europe's Mainstream Right in Crisis, published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. In other words, he is the perfect guest for this fifth episode in the Special Election Series of RADIKAAL, which focuses on the Chilean presidential election of November and December 2021.
My guest today is Brenda Elsey. Brenda is a professor of History at Hofstra University on Long Island, New York, and studies the history of popular culture and politics in twentieth century Latin America, with a particular focus on gender and sports. She has written extensively on these issues, in both academic and popular journals and magazines. Among her most relevant books are, Citizens and Sportsmen: Fútbol and Politics in Twentieth Century Chile, published with the University of Texas Press in 2011, and, together with Joshua Nadel, Fubolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America, published by the same press in 2019. Brenda is also one of the co-hosts of Burn It All Down, a self-described “feminist sports podcast”, together with, among others, previous RADIKAAL guest Shireen Ahmed. You can follow Brenda Elsey on Twitter at @Politicultura and Burn It All Down at @BurnItDown.
My guest is Katherine Cramer. Kathy is a Professor of Political Science and the Natalie H. Holton Chair of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Her work focuses on the way people in the United States make sense of politics and their place in it. In 2016 she published The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker with the University of Chicago Press. This excellent book won several awards and has become one of the key texts for people to help understand the Trump phenomenon in the US. You can follow her on Twitter at @KathyJCramer.
My guest today is Simon Kuper. Simon is a columnist with the Financial Times and an award-winning author on football, or if you will soccer. Among his many excellent books are Football against the Enemy, which won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, Soccernomics (with Stefan Szymanski), and Ajax, the Dutch, the War: Football in Europe during the Second World War. His new book is Barca: The Inside Story of the World's Greatest Football Club, published by Short Books in Europe and as The Barcelona Complex: Lionel Messi and the Making – and Unmaking – of the World's Greatest Soccer Club by Penguin in the US. You can follow him on Twitter at @KuperSimon.
My guest is Toni Haastrup, a Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her research broadly explores the nature of global power hierarchies in knowledge and practice between the Global North and South. She has researched topics such as the African Union, EU relations with Africa, feminist foreign policy, and the women, peace and security agenda. I discuss most of these issues with her in this episode. You can follow Toni on Twitter at @ToniHaastrup.
My guest today is Matt Duss. Matt is the foreign policy advisor of Senator Bernie Sanders and one of the most prominent protagonists of a progressive US foreign policy. Before joining the Sanders team, he was president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress. He tweets at @mattduss.We talk about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US foreign policy establishment, and the challenge of creating a progressive US foreign policy.
My guest today is Amy Erica Smith. Amy is an Associate Professor of Political Science and a Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean's Professor at Iowa State University in the US. In the 2020-22 academic years, she is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. The key focus of her research is, in her own words, how ordinary people understand and engage in politics. Her key topical foci are public opinion and religion and politics and her primary regional expertise is Latin America, in particular Brazil. In 2019 she published Religion and Brazilian Democracy: Mobilizing the People of God with Cambridge University Press, which is also the key focus of this conversation. If you want to know more about Amy Smith, you can check out her website at www.amyericasmith.org and you can also follow her on Twitter at @AmyEricaSmith.
This episode is the third installment of the Special Elections Series and will focus on the German federal election of September 26. My guest is Kai Arzheimer, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Mainz in Germany. Kai is one of the foremost scholars of elections and the far right in Europe, and Germany in particular. He also curates the "The Eclectic, Erratic Bibliography on the Extreme Right in Western Europe". Kai is active all over social media, from Twitter to YouTube.
My guest is my friend Airo Hino. Airo is a Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University in Japan. His main work in on electoral behavior and party politics in Western Europe, on which he has published many articles and books, includingNew Challenger Parties in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, by Routledge in 2012. However, more recently, he has also been working on populism in Japan, which will be topic of our conversation today.
My guest today is my colleague and friend, Anders Ravik Jupskås. Anders is a senior researcher and the deputy director of the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo – where I also hold an affiliation. As probably the foremost scholar of Norwegian party politics, he is the perfect guest for this second Special Election Edition of RADIKAAL, which focuses on the Norwegian election of September, 13, 2021. Anders Jupskås is on Twitter, although reluctantly, where you can follow him at @arjupskas.
My guest today is Marlene Laruelle. Marlene is a Research Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, DC, where she also holds various administrative functions, including Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales in her native France and a prolific writer on Russian and Central Asian history and politics. This year alone she has two new books out: “Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West”, with Cornell University Press, and “Central Peripheries: Nationhood in Central Asia”, with UCL Press.We talk about all things Russia: nationalism, Eurasianism, illiberalism, disinformation, and, of course, Vladimir Putin.
My guest today is Eva Önnudóttir. Eva is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, the country's capitol. Her main work is in the fields of electoral studies and public opinion in Iceland and beyond and she has published several pieces about the so-called “pots and pans protests” in the wake of the economic crisis of 2008-9, which hit Iceland early and hard. We talk about the effect of the Great Recession, Jon Gnarr and the Best Party, and the absence of radic al politics in Iceland.
My guest isNazita Lajevardi, an attorney and political scientist, who is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. Her work focuses primarily on issues related to public opinion and political behavior through the lens of religious and racial identity. She is also a regular public commentator on these issues, including in various US media. In 2020 she published the book “Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia” with Cambridge University Press. Nazita tweets at @nazitalajevardi.
My guest today is Tarek Kahlaoui, an academic and activist who has been involved in student protests in the 1990s and the Arab Spring protests in Tunisia in the early 2000s. After teaching for various years at Rutgers University in the US, he returned to Tunisia to join the Southern Mediterranean University in Tunis, where he is now an assistant professor in history. Pre-COVID, he wrote me an email that he was writing a book on populism in Tunisia, which he described as “the only Arab surviving democracy after the wave of the Arab Spring” -- note that this interview took place a week before president Saied's "constitutional coup". You can follow Tarek on Twitter at @t_kahlaoui.
My guest is Paul Mason. Paul is a British journalist and left-wing activist as well as a film maker and prolific author. He has made a four-part documentary on the Greek left populist party SYRIZA called #ThisIsACoup and, more recently, the documentary “R is for Rosa” about the politics of Rosa Luxemburg. Among his books are Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (2017), Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being (2019), and How To Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance, which is forthcoming in August. He tweets at @paulmasonnews.
My guest is Robbie Shilliam. Robbie is a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he researches the political and intellectual complicities of colonialism and race in the global order. His latest book is Decolonizing Politics: An Introduction, which is just out with Polity and is a fascinating read. Robbie is also a scholar-activist of the Rastafari movement, involved in a host of activities focused on highlighting the histories and significance of the Rastafari movement for contemporary politics. Two of these projects are Rastafari in Motion, which focuses on Britain, and Iniversial Development of Rastafari, which focuses on the Baltimore and DC area.
My guest today isLéonie de Jonge. Léonie is an assistant professor in European Politics & Society at the University of Groningen. In 2019 she defended her PhD at the University of Cambridge on “The Success and Failure of Right-wing Populist Parties in the Benelux Countries”, which will be out with Routledge later this month. Léonie is also an up-and-coming commentator in the Dutch media on the topic of the far right as well as a critic of the way the media cover the far right. She tweets at @L_DeJonge.Léonie and I talk about right-wing populist parties in Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, what explains their different levels of success, and what role the media do and should play in covering the far right.
My guest is the US singer-songwriterDavid Lowery. David has a decades-long history in music and is probably best known as frontman of bands like Camper van Beethoven and Cracker. Less know, he has been teaching courses on the music business in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, where I also work. In recent years, David has also been a tireless activist for the right of musicians and a fighter against streaming companies. He is currently involved in a court case against Spotify. David tweets at @davidclowery.David and I talk about band and song names, about "white angst", about music and politics, and about non-nativist populism.
My guest is Poyâ Pâkzâd, economic policy advisor with the Red-Green Alliance, or Unity List, a left-wing party that supports the current minority government of the Social Democrats in Denmark. He is also the editor of the left-wing magazine Eftertryck, which translates as Emphasis, if I’m not mistaken, and a parliamentary candidate for the Red-Green Alliance. Poya and I got into a discussion on Twitter on the challenges of immigration policy for left parties, which is a key topic of our conversation today. He tweets at @ppkzd.
My guest today is Laurien Schreuder, the artistic director of Snowapple, a multidisciplinary, international ensemble that combines theater with a wide range of different music genres, from pop to opera and avant-garde cumbia. Snowapple has spoken out on political issues, most notably violence against women in Mexico. This year, on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Snowapple and Mexican singer Vivir Quintana released the beautiful song “Alerta” and an incredible video of testimonials. We’ll talk about music and politics in general, and Snowapple’s decision to become active around the issue of femicide in Mexico in particular.If you want to know more about Snowapple, check out their website at www.snowapple.nl or follow them on Twitter at @snowappleNL or on Instagram at @snowapplemusic. Apologies for poor quality on my end -- my computer was very noisy and I was working with open mic.
My guest today is Sam Jackson. Sam is an assistant professor in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security & Security at the University at Albany in Upstate New York. He primarily studies the far right in the US, focusing most notably on the militia movement and on online extremism. He is the author ofOath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group, published by Columbia University Press in 2020. We will talk about the US militia movement in general and the Oath Keepers in particular. He tweets at @sjack26.
My guest today is Dilara Hekimci-Adak. Dilara is a graduate student in Political Science at Florida International University in Miami, where she works on a PhD on populists in power and the role of the opposition in Hungary and Turkey. Before coming to the US, she had already done a PhD at Bahcesehir University, in her native Turkey, on clientelism and democracy in Latin America. She also wrote an MA thesis on nationalism and football in Turkey. Dilara and I talk about football and politics in Turkey, including the role of Istanbul United in the Gezi protests and the rise and significance of the newest star in Turkish football, Basaksahir, popularly known as the AKP team.
My guest is Nadia Marzouki. Nadia is a Research Fellow in Political Science at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, France. Her work examines public controversies about Islam and religious freedom in Europe and the United States. She has written and co-edited several books, including Islam, an American Religion, published by Columbia University Press in 2017, and with Olivier Roy and Duncan McDonnell of Saving the People, How Populists Hijack Religion, published by Hurst and Oxford University Press in 2017. We talk about Islam and Islamophobia in France and the US and the newest enemy of the French government, the so-called Islamo-Lefists. Nadia tweets at @NadiaMarzouki1.