In 1789, members of the newly-created National Assembly in Paris split between those for whom the king should retain an absolute veto, sitting to the Assembly President's right, and those who thought he shouldn't, sitting to his left. The primordial version of our structuring political cleavage was born: the party of order vs. the party of progress. This left-right divide has served as the founding metaphor of modern European politics. More than two centuries later, many are penning the obituary of that division. In 2017, the election of Emmanuel Macron against Marine le Pen seemed to usher a new cleavage, loosely defined as open vs. closed by some, nationalist vs. globalist or liberal vs. authoritarian by others. But is the left-right divide of yore buried just yet? Today we take stock of the evolving morphology of political fractures and map the main cleavages dividing European politics. With us this week: Francois Hublet, of Le Grand Continent, and the University of Manchester's Rob Ford, co-author of Brexitland (2020) and Senior Fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) network. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon, where you can access the full episode including an extra section where our guests discuss the forthcoming EU elections: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Every new year seems to heighten the impression that History is accelerating, and this may well not be new. The novelty lies in the fact that with every passing year, that impression seems to root itself in firmer ground. This is not just about the Ukraine conflict, which will turn two years old in February, and seems to have trapped the European Union (EU) in a quandary of indecision between scrapping its end-of-history pieties to decisively win the war, or protracting its limited military aid to continue its controlled damage on Russia, at the risk of eternalizing the quagmire. History is accelerating in the Middle East too, where Israel’s offensive against a genocidal terrorist group risks turning the accusation of genocide against it, while the threat of regional escalation has become palpable in Yemen, where the Iranian-backed Houthis threaten to disrupt sea trade. To welcome 2024, this week we take one of our deep dives into the stories that we believe will shape the year’s European news cycle, such as the EU parliamentary race in June and the attendant rise of the national-populist right, elections in other latitudes, and how Europe will tackle the normalization of global conflict. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In a daring move, we kicked off March 2021 quoting none other than Francis Fukuyama, titling our episode "Getting to Holland" as a twist on Fukuyama's famous cliché of “Getting to Denmark”. The episode came in the heels of Mark Rutte's re-election as Dutch Prime Minister, which seemed like an apparent vindication of the Fukuyaman ideal of Northern Europe as the endpoint of political development. Not only had the country championed rule of law and the welfare state, but Rutte's liberal-centrist politics of moderation seemed to stand on a thick layer of consensus that other European nations lacked. But fast forward to November 2023, and the Dutch political scene takes a dramatic turn with Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) seizing victory a month ago. Join us this week as we unravel the beliefs driving Wilders, from welfare chauvinism to skepticism of Islam, and explore the implications for the upcoming EU parliamentary elections in June next year. Our esteemed guests, Caroline de Gruyter and Professor Ewald Engelen, bring their expertise to bear in delving deep into the dynamics reshaping Dutch politics. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Dive into the conundrums and riddles of Spanish politics with our latest riveting episode. Picture this: a high-stakes election, an unexpected coalition, and a political landscape teetering on the edge of ungovernability. In a plot twist that kept the nation on edge, the anticipated "right-wing tsunami" fell short, leaving the ruling socialists hanging by a thread. As the political chess game unfolds, alliances shift, and the spotlight turns to a liberal-separatist party holding the key to the caretaking Prime Minister's second mandate. The drama reaches its climax with an unprecedented deal, an amnesty broadly deemed unconstitutional, and a nation grappling with heightened polarization. Joining us are two seasoned Spain-watchers, Michael Reid and William Chislett, to unravel the twists and turns with insider perspectives garnered throughout decades covering post-Francoist Spain. Our podcast, while now on a slower release schedule, aims to deliver each episode with impact, allowing listeners to savor the intrigue. Don't miss out on the unraveling of Spain's constitutional compact and the gripping insights into a modern European country in flux. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

On October 15, Poles were called to the polls—no pun intended. The ruling Law & Justice party—or PiS in its Polish acronym—came first with a plurality of ballots and parliamentary seats, but fell short of a majority. As a result, after eight years of rule, PM Mateusz Morawiecki's party will likely be replaced by a large and disparate coalition that ranges from the far-left to the right-of-center, helmed by former PM Donald Tusk of Civic Platform. Today we will cover the race's aftermath and its implications for Europe. Are Poland’s positions on Ukraine and NATO as immutable as they seem? Is the country about to mend fences with the EU, and unfreeze the approximately €100 billion in post-Covid recovery funds currently withheld by Brussels over concerns about so-called “democratic backsliding”? More importantly, will Tusk’s agenda be undermined by holdouts from the previous government across the civil service and state-controlled corporations? To unpack the meaning of Poland’s result, we are honored to have with us the consultant and veteran commentator of all things Polish Marek Matrazek back with us this week, along with Warsaw-based Belgian historian David Engels. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on whatever platform you use and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod) to get access to the full episode where we talk more about the future of EU-Polish relations. We also wanted to take a moment to apologise for launching this new season belatedly. All three of us have all been dealing with personal and professional challenges, and we wanted to take the time out to ensure we returned when truly ready. We will flesh out what we have in store very soon! Enjoy the episode!

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Romans, I seem to see "the Tiber foaming with blood". That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror across the Atlantic but which is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century.” That was Enoch Powell, the Tory MP who delivered his infamous “Rivers of Blood" speech on April 20th 1968. On the same day that Powell offered his apocalyptic vision of a Britain that opened its doors to immigrants, the FBI added James Earl Ray to its list of ten most wanted fugitives. Why? Two weeks prior, James Earl Ray had assassinated Dr. King in Memphis. On his death’s eve, Dr. King had given a speech posthumously referred to as the “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech. Addressing the crowd, Dr. King said: “In the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed.” For Dr. King the progress of colored persons was vital to human progress. For Powell, it was the end. Dr. King’s influence has far exceeded that of Powell’s, and the world is better off for it, but in the UK we don’t learn about the debate over the Race Relations Act. We don’t learn about Powell being sacked by Ted Heath from the shadow cabinet because of his speech. We don’t learn about Paul Stephenson and the bus boycott in Bristol, but we do learn about the bus boycott in Birmingham Alabama.  As in other areas of public life, the UK takes its lead on race relations and the study of civil rights, from the US. This was exemplified in June 2020, when in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, people across Britain and the world took to the streets to protest racism. In London, protesters marched in Parliament Square, and in Bristol, they pulled down the statue of Edward Colston and tossed it into the river, mirroring similar actions in the US where confederate statues had been toppled. This spurred a series of debates and actions across the UK about racism in Britain. For one of our guests, this is exactly the problem. Tomiwa Owolade is a writer and critic whose latest book, This Is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter (2023) argues that we should consider race from a British perspective, not an American one. Our second guest is Dr. Remi Adekoya, a lecturer at York University and author of two books, Biracial Britain (2021), and It’s Not About Whiteness, It’s About Wealth (2023). This week you can help us a lot by filling out this short survey. This is your chance to tell us what you like about the pod and what you'd like to see improved. Help us make the pod the best it can be: https://forms.gle/Mu5uqUHD5R7bwvSA7. We will pick one random respondent and award them 6 months of Patreon access for free. This is also our last episode of the season, we will be back in September for a new season of Uncommon Decency but if you’re a Patreon you will get access to some deep dives that we will produce over the summer. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Welcome to another Decency Deep Dive. This week we tackle three thorny topics. Non-subscribers will hear us lay out the ongoing coalitional dynamics on the Spanish right in the wake of last month's regional and local races, as well as the looming migration crisis knocking on the EU's door. Yet only Patreon subscribers will get to hear the sauciest part of the episode: a debate on whether the much-discussed Ukrainian counter-offensive will be all it's hyped up to be. This week you can help us a lot by filling out this short survey. This is your chance to tell us what you like about the pod and what you'd like to see improved. Help us make the pod the best it can be: https://forms.gle/Mu5uqUHD5R7bwvSA7 As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

We are extremely lucky this week to host Ben Judah, Director of the Atlantic Council's Transform Europe Initiative, but most importantly for our purposes, the author of the recently published This is Europe (2023), a travelogue of sorts that compiles short stories from all around the continent in an attempt to capture the spirit of being European. It’s a special episode for many reasons. Firstly, because Uncommon Decency is a podcast that focuses a lot on the big politics of our continent and the great moments in European history. In contrast, this book is a supremely personal approach to what Europe is today, with interviews of extraordinary characters from across the continent which shed light on all the joys and hardships of life in Europe. So this is not your typical Uncommon Decency podcast. Secondly, because when we imagined what this podcast would look like in June 2020 we listed some names we would love to have on. We are happy to report that we’ve crossed many of these names, including Benjamin Haddad, Luuk van Middelaar and the historian Christopher Clark, for example. The last of the Mohicans on that list was Ben Judah, whose thinking about Europe is both one of the most creative but also one of the best informed. So we are proud to say that, 92 episodes later, Ben finally is with us for a conversation on what is Europe, Macron, immigration and technology. Enjoy! As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was re-elected as President of Turkey in a run-off on May 14th this year, all but assuring him a spot as one of the world's longest-serving leaders (he will have served 25 years altogether after this historic third term). His election victory cements Erdoğan's status as modern Turkey’s preeminent leader alongside—and perhaps even surpassing—Kemal Ataturk. But what does another Erdogan term actually mean in terms of domestic policy and Turkey’s role in regional and global affairs? To find out, we spoke to Professor Birol Baskan, non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute (MEI), and Dr. Judd King, sernior adjunct lecturer at American University's Department of Philosophy and Religion, who joined us live from Turkey. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

It's debating season again at Uncommon Decency. This week we are chatting about Zelensky's rock star world tour, unpacking the Greek center-right's triumph and weighing the Conservatives' (low) chances for a similar performance in the UK. Join us for our second Decency Deep Dive! As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“Soon there will only be five kings left: the king of spades, of clubs, of hearts, of diamonds, and the king of England”. King Farouk of Egypt was off in his prediction, but the permanency of the British monarchy has recently come under heightened scrutiny. The threat of independence from Britain’s constituent kingdoms, accelerated by Brexit, means that this could well be the Last King of Britain we see. Across the seas, Commonwealth members are expected to hold referenda on removing the British monarch as their head of state, something that many had only retained out of respect for the longevity of Elizabeth II. This is the challenge the latest person to sit on the Stone of Scone faces. Charles III has waited a long time to be King, but his reign could mark the end of one of Britain's most enduring institutions. The monarchy is but one of many constitutional institutions, and this week we also looked at the history of Parliament and its struggles with the Crown over the centuries, as well as the constitutional legacies of seminal figures in British history such as Oliver Cromwell. To explore this vast topic, we sat down with Sir Peter Riddell, a former journalist with the Financial Times and Times of London, and an Honorary Professor of History at University College London, where he works with the school’s Constitution Unit. We also covered recent constitutional crises stemming from the premiership of Boris Johnson and whether these exposed or validated the role of a monarch. Finally, our patreons will be able to hear an extended conversation on various constitutional reforms that have been floated in recent years, including by the commission led by Gordon Brown. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In the mid-1990s, the mayor of Istanbul was quoted saying: “democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off”. That mayor is now president and his critics fear he believes Turkey has reached its democratic destination. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rise to power, his consolidation of it, and his ability to shape world events makes him one of the 21st century’s extraordinary leaders. But he is currently at risk of losing his re-election battle as rampant inflation and the mishandling of rescue efforts following an earthquake and its aftershocks wrecked the south of the country. Now we’re faced with the question of whether one of the longest-serving autocrats in Europe’s neighborhood could lose in the forthcoming election. This week we recorded the first of a two part episode on Turkey. This edition covers Erdogan’s rise to power, his ideology, the clash between Kemalists and Islamists and finally (for our Patreons only) a discussion of what could happen when Turks vote this week. Our guests for this deep dive into Turkey and its mercurial president are Birol Baskan, a professor at Georgetown University and non-resident scholar at The Middle East Institute. Professor Baskan has published a number of books including The Nation or the Ummah: Islamism and Turkish Foreign Policy (2021). We also welcomed back Ryan Gingeras, a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He is the author of six books, and his most recent work The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire (2023) is available to purchase now and linked in the show notes. The views he expresses here are not those of the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

It's debate season on Uncommon Decency. This week we evaluated President Macron's visit to China, and the premiership of Giorgia Meloni. As well as what stood out to us from the first part of this year. Enjoy! As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“If only mine were the last drop of Spanish blood to be spilled in civil strife. God willing, may the Spanish people at peace, so replete with extraordinary virtue, at last find homeland, bread and justice”. Who among today’s Spaniards could possibly disown this quote? The man who uttered in November 1936 shortly before being shot by firing squad, in whose tombstone the epitaph is inscribed, is José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The current left-wing government of Spain has different plans for his bodily remains. As part of its so-called law of democratic memory, approved last summer, Primo de Rivera will be disinterred this week from his tomb at what used to be called the Valley of the Fallen—renamed Valle de Cuelgamuros by the same bill—incinerated, and his ashes will be relocated to the San Isidro monastery in Madrid. So what does the government of Pedro Sánchez fault Primo de Rivera for? Although he ended his life on the aforecited conciliatory note—and even though he lived through only six months of the civil war from prison before being executed by the Second Republic, which viewed him as a threat—Primo de Rivera remains a standard-bearer of 20th century Spanish fascism, someone historians see as having laid the idealogical groundwork for Franco, who went on to rule for 40 years upon winning the Civil War. He is the latest target of a sweeping effort, unfolding since the previous socialist government in the late 2000s, to settle the scores of these tumultuous decades of Spain’s history. These bills do various things. They rename streets and monuments. By setting up DNA banks, they enable families to trace, find and give a proper burial to Republican victims of Francoist repression buried in mass graves. And lastly, they reframe the way History is taught, depicting the Second Republic (1931-1939) as the unimpeachable defender of freedom and democracy against Franco’s fascist villains. This week, we will navigate this treacherous topic by inquiring about Franco’s exact place in Spain’s public consciousness, exploring the demographics of this issue, and questioning whether Spain’s history can be so neatly framed as a black-or-white story of good versus evil. We are joined by two distinguished hispanists. On one side of the line, Michael Reid, a longtime regular at The Economist and the author most recently of Spain: The Trials and Tribulations of a Modern European Country (2023), with Yale University Press. On the other side of the line we have with us Nigel Townson, a professor of History at Complutense University in Madrid. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“I was born in 1881 in the great and mighty empire of the Habsburg Monarchy, but you would look for it in vain on the map today; it has vanished without trace”. We begin with this quote from Stefan Zweig’s memoir The World of Yesterday (1942) for two reasons. First, because it is a wonderful book that beautifully describes this powerful sense of loss—do give it a read. But more importantly, because in this episode we will challenge the idea that the Empire of the Habsburgs vanished “without trace”. In fact, its legacy remains incredibly alive in Central Europe specifically, and across Europe more generally. Some might see in the European Union (EU) an offspring of the buried liberal empire. So today we will explore what we owe to the Habsburgs and weave that parallel between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the EU. Joining us in this time capsule of an episode, we have Caroline de Gruyter, a German journalist of all things Brussels, and author of “Monde d’hier, monde de demain” which covers exactly today’s topic—go give it a read if you want to dig in further. On the other side of the line we have former Talking Politics podcast star and Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge, Helen Thompson. She recently published “Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century”, a top-rated account on the three crises rocking western democracies in the 2020s. As usual, the full conversation will be available only to our Patreon subscribers. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"Is it a revolt? No sire, it's a revolution". While this famous exchange is attributed to Louis the XVIth and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, odds are that French President Macron has had similar conversations with his aides in the past few weeks. In an attempt to balance the books of France's pensions regime, Macron’s party—Renaissance—filed a bill to increase the legal retirement age from 62 to 64. Without a formal majority in Parliament, he needed the support of the center right, but given the overwhelming opposition to the bill across the electorate, Macron decided to use a constitutional trump card to force through the bill without a vote. This triggered a no confidence vote which was only 9 votes short of toppling Macron's PM, Élisabeth Borne, and her government. In the meantime, millions have taken to the streets or went on strike to oppose the bill. While these have been largely peaceful, some have turned violent, with brutal street fights breaking out between police officers and antifa groups. This week, we try to take stock of this chaos with Nicholas Vinocur from POLITICO and Cole Strangler, a Paris-based freelancer. Bear in mind we won’t be releasing an episode next week, and expect us to be back the week after that. Enjoy your Easter break! As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

While the geographic center of the EU is apparently in a small Bavarian field, its political center is harder to pin down. Historically, it was probably somewhere between France and Germany, but with the war in Ukraine, this center has seemingly moved East. Warsaw was not too long ago under considerable pressure from Brussels over rule-of-law skirmishes. Now, Poland and Lithuania are reaping the political benefits of their unambiguous support to Ukraine and their long-established hawkish stance on Russia. In a sign of this evolution Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki last weekend was not afraid to lambast Germany for being “co-responsible for the mess on the energy market” and urged Berlin to step up its support for Kiev. We wanted to map this shift in European politics and stress-test whether this pivot is noise or substance. We are joined by Jana Puglierin, the head of European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in Berlin and a returnee to the show. On the other side of the line, we are joined by Timothy Garton Ash, a historian of contemporary Europe who just published Homelands: A Personal History of Europe (2023), a part-memoir based on his decades of experience traveling across Europe. This week our Patreons will get to listen to Timothy and Jana mapping out the nuances of Central and Eastern European politics, between Poland and Hungary, or Romania and Bulgaria. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

On episode five of this show, the late Gyórgy Schópflin, then retired and in the twilight of his life, made a lucid observation about what, at bottom, set his native Hungary apart from his adoptive Great Britain. “Hungary has no post-colonial guilt”, intoned the retired academic and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Schöpflin meant this as a partial explanation—if not a justification—of the nationalist politics practiced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the subject of our episode that day. Not having colonized other territories, Orbán's dealings with other world leaders were, in Schópflin’s view, a function of Hungary having fallen under the dominion of foreign powers throughout recent history, be it Austria or the Soviet Union. What did Schópflin mean about the UK, however? Simply put, that conversely things like the British public's toleration of high levels of immigration from former colonies or its support for high levels of development aid towards them are also, in their own way, a function of Britain’s past as the ruler of a vast empire. In his latest book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2022), Oxford University ethicist Nigel Biggar hopes to inform a reassessment of Britain’s colonial guilt, placing on a single moral ledger the calamities and abuses worthy of guilt and condemnation along with the achievements worthy of praise and celebration. The Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, Biggar is joined in this latest episode by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a historian of Spanish colonialism and the William P. Reynolds Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. Together, our two guests challenge one another to comparatively assess the historical and moral record of the Spanish and British empires. Enjoy! As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." That is the peroration from possibly the greatest speech ever written, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The final words have been a rallying call for the voices of liberty and democracy not just in the US but across the world. However, those voices have been met with a growing chorus pushing back on the ideals of democratic governance. The debate over whether we are in a democratic recession has become a mainstay of modern political discourse, and world leaders are increasingly casting the world in manichean terms of democracies vs. autocracies. That is the context in which our guest this week, Martin Wolf, wrote his latest book. The Chief Economics Commentator for the Financial Times and one of the preeminent thought leaders in the West on economics and politics, Wolf is the author of a number of books, with his latest one, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (2023), covering all the most pertinent issues shaping the globe today. What is ailing democracy? What reforms are needed? What is the relationship between capitalism and democracy? These were just some of the questions that we covered during this episode. There is also a policy discussion for our Patreons including the merits of Starship Trooper’s citizenship policy, and a discussion on changing voting laws away from one person one vote, not to ranked choice voting, but something far more interesting. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Since mid-December, a corruption scandal has been unfolding in Brussels that could soon begin rock the European Union's (EU) very foundations. Eva Kaili, a 44-year-old Member of the European Parliament (MEP), was detained by Belgian authorities along with three other suspects—including fellow MEP Marc Tarabella and Kaili’s partner, an assistant to another MEP—for allegedly accepting large bribes from foreign government officials in exchange for whitewashing the image of those governments in Brussels. Qatar was frontline in the scandal, but so was Morocco, and more recently, even Mauritania. As this episode goes to press, no less than 1.5 million EUR in cash have been seized, much of which was lying around the house of Kaili’s father, who is also ensnared. With the World Cup then about to take place in Qatar and amid widespread allegations of unsafe working conditions for migrant workers hired to build the facilities, Kaili and her fellow suspects had their work cut out for them. Now—the scandal’s implications cannot be overstated. While the EU has long labored under critiques of its democratic legitimacy, the moral legitimacy of its leaders has largely gone unquestioned. That all changes now. To discuss the repercussions of this scandal, we have with us Frank Furedi, executive director of Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Brussels and Thomas Fazi, a columnist at UnHerd and Compact. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“Exactly a year ago, I broadcast a message that contained the two things that remain most important now: that Russia had launched a full-scale war against us, and that we are strong. We are ready for anything. We will defeat anyone. Because we are Ukraine. We will never rest until the Russian murderers face the punishment they deserve. The punishment of the international tribunal. The judgement of God. Of our warriors. The verdict is clear. Nine years ago, the neighbor turned into our aggressor. A year ago, the aggressor turned executioner, looter and terrorist. We have no doubt that they will be held accountable. We have no doubt that we will win”. That was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week. To take stock of how profoundly this one-year war is changing our continent, we have decided, on this bonus episode, to reflect upon three unique angles of it: (1) the shifting tectonics of public opinion, (2) the enduring resilience of the transatlantic relationship and (3) the message the invasion sends to other authoritarian would-be aggressors like China. Enjoy the episode! As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety". These words by American statesman Benjamin Franklin are often paraphrased into “those who sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither”. Franklin was talking about taxes, but don’t worry—that’s not what we’re going to cover today. We’re diving back into the world of espionage. This episode originally would have been combined with the one on Russia's security services, but we finally decided to keep them separate because we had so many interesting things to discuss with Dan Lomas. Dan is a senior lecturer in intelligence and security studies at Brunel University. This week, we asked him to comment on the role of intelligence agencies in democratic societies. We talked about the war on terror and how it affected the public's view of the security services, as well as the debate over Huawei and other forms of Chinese espionage. For those of you listening in February, we had a brief discussion about the infamous Chinese spy balloon and what it says about the country’s security posture. For our Patreon subscribers, you will be able to hear Dan discuss the effects of surveillance capitalism on the security services and how the collection of personal data by companies is reshaping intelligence work. Naturally, any conversation on Western spies must include a debate over who is the best James Bond—subscribe to hear Dan’s answer! As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

«With your democratic laws we will colonize you, and with our koranic laws we will dominate you». This rather bellicose warning for Europeans came from a 2002 speech by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the key intellectual leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). It’s a great insight on what the MB is—a strictly religious and conservative reaction to modernity that was launched in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan El-Banna. It’s also an insight into its modus operandi. The MB works in the shadows and builds its strength slowly through a complex maze of sister organisations to push its narrative and its pawns. Two decades after that speech, a series of controversies around EU institutions funding MB-adjacent organisations have highlighted the MB’s influence in Europe. We tried to stay light on acronyms but we mention FEMYSO a few times: that’s the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisation, which is one of these glossy organisations that get a lot of visibility in Brussels but that have strong ties with the MB’s web of organisations. To cover this issue we have invited Florence Bergeaud Blackler, an anthropologist at the French CNRS who has been working on these issues for a while and just released in French «Le Frérisme et ses réseaux, l’enquête» (The Brotherhood and its networks, an investigation). On the other side of the line we have Tommaso Virgili, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the WZB Social Center in Berlin where he works on modernization movements within Islam in response to the challenge of fundamentalism. He co-authored in 2021 a report for the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) on the MB in Europe entitled «Network of Networks, the MB in Europe». Before we move on, we're very happy to announce that we have partnered up with What’s Up EU, the best newsletter out there to follow all the policy and political development in EU politics. Take for example all the conversation we had on this podcast on trade. What’s Up EU will walk you through the inner workings of policymaking and all the horse-trading that goes behind it. It’s trusted by hundreds of journalists, policymakers, diplomats all across the world and if you need—or want—to follow what happens in Brussels, then subscribing to What’s Up EU is the best thing you can do, the link to subscribe is in the description. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"The Soviet State Security Service is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries”. Those were the words of Allen Dulles, the long-time head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but they may just as well describe the security services of today's Russia. Welcome back to a new season of Uncommon Decency where this week, we are starting with a conversation about the Chekhist state that Russian President Vladimir Putin has created. Joining us for this episode was Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who has been covering the security services and terrorism issues since 1999. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and he has written a number of books on the Russian state including his most recent work, The Compatriots: The Russian Exiles Who Fought Against the Kremlin (2022). This episode covered a lot of ground and referenced a lot of groups so let's start by outlining some of the abbreviations and names you’ll hear: KGV, SVR, FSB, GRU, Wagner Group. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

It’s that time of the year again—a time to look back on the year lapsed and make resolutions for the coming one. At episode 75, Uncommon Decency readies to enter its third calendar year—we launched in October 2020—with a potent mix of hope and derision. For the first time this year, we are greeting 2023 with a very special series of Uncommonly Decent awards and gifts. Who claims our “Brutus” award for betrayal of the year—Rishi Sunak, Giuseppe Conte or the Pakistani military? Who’s our “Gorbachev” spectacular collapse of the year—Liz Truss, BoJo, Putin or the European Parliament? Who pulled the “De Gaulle” political comeback of the year—Leo Varadkar, Bibi Netanyahu, Anwar Ibrahim or Lula? Who wins the “how-do-you-still-have-a-job” award—Berlusconi, de Kirchner or Sergei Shoigu? To hear us bestow these funnily-titled awards, listen to this special bonus episode marking the new year—and make sure to tell us how you’d have voted by reaching out through the usual channels? As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

It was the opening shot of what the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) editorial board fears may become a protracted climate trade war between the European Union (EU) and the United States. In a notorious departure from standard EU lip service to free trade, late last week French President Emmanuel Macron urged fellow European leaders anew to match the Biden administration’s round of green subsidies pork-barrelled into the Inflation Reduction Act. Unhelpfully acronymized as IRA, that legislative package was signed into law in August. As part of it, the US Treasury will be offering tax breaks and other market-rigging subsidies to companies manufacturing electric vehicles in the US, which Macron fears will unfairly disadvantage their European competitors. Macron claims there should be greater joint efforts to accelerate the green transition. In this latest episode with The Economist’s Charlemagne columnist, Stanley Pignal, and POLITICO’s Barbara Moens, we inquire whether the EU was really as committed to free trade as its liberal cheerleaders claim in the first place, and whether this latest round of rhetorical animus may spark a real trade war between transatlantic allies. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"Within our mandate, the European Central Bank (ECB) is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro, and believe me, it will be enough." By uttering those three words, Mario Draghi saved the Eurozone from collapsing, thereby ushering Europe’s monetary policy into the 21st century. European fiscal policy, meanwhile, has not quite caught up. To this day, it still sticks with the treaty-enshrined limits to member-states' debt and deficit--the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)--albeit with varying degrees of fidelity. These days, the European Commission is proposing a new economic governance framework that would give member states greater flexibility on their spending plans and the Commission a larger role in the continent’s policy. This week we spoke to Rebecca Christie—a fellow at Bruegel—to discuss the Commission's proposal and the broader sweep of European economic policy. Rebecca is the author of an intellectual history of the ESM and a columnist for BreakingViews. This conversation got quite wonky quickly, as we rattled through arguments on capital markets unions, deficit targeting, bond spreads, tackling inflation, and Alexander Hamilton. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"I think this administration—and President Biden personally—is very much attached to Europe, but when you look at the situation today, there is indeed a de-synchronization.” In an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, French President Emmanuel Macron highlighted the growing tension in the transatlantic relationship as the United States and Europe rift apart in a number of areas such as economics and energy. The EU has raised concerns that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a major package of legislation signed into law by President Biden earlier this year, will severely damage European industry through its use of subsidies and tax credits to promote manufacturing in the US. The dispute was at the core of discussions between the US and France during President Macron’s state visit to the US last week. Another area of disconnect relates to the differing approaches the EU and the US take towards China. While the US views China as a threat, European countries have a more dovish approach, favoring cooperation to competition. This was underscored by the recent visits of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Council President Charles Michel to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the former of whom recently declared in an essay for Foreign Affairs that the world is facing a "Zeitenwende"—the end of an era. Both visits were criticized by China hawks given their proximity to the party congress where President Xi was enshrined for another five years, becoming its most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. This week in a bonus episode, Jorge, Francois, and Julian discussed the fractious state of US-EU trade relations, as well as the diverging approaches to China. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

On May 7, 1999, five bombs rained down from U.S. jets on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, as part of NATO’s air campaign to halt the deadly assault by the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Nearly a quarter of a century later, China is transforming the site of its bombed former embassy into an expansive cultural center, set to be one of the largest of its kind in Europe. Once opened, the center will serve not only as a potent symbol of China’s growing presence in the Werstern Balkans, but also of the potential kinship between the two regions, not least owing to the shared socialist past that Chinese diplomats often emphasize to advance those relations. In the long-run, some experts deem China’s growing economic clout in Europe, primarily through the Western Balkans, a more consequential trend than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine itself. To unpack just how deep China’s influence on the region runs, we are joined this week by Damir Marusic of the Atlantic Council and Valbona Zeneli of the Marshall Center. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In 1791, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth adopted one of the world’s most avant-garde constitutions, one establishing a progressive constitutional monarchy. And yet in 1795, the Commonwealth altogether disappeared, partitioned between Prussia, Austria and Russia. This contrast between the Commonwealth’s seemingly advanced regime and its total collapse in four years has earned it the neglect of historians. Yet for nearly four centuries, it stayed a major actor in central European politics, controlling at its peak somewhere between a third and a fourth of the European landmass, with liberal political and religious rights for its time and vibrant intellectual, economic and cultural conditions. This week, we cover this fascinating history with two leading experts. Norman Davies is the Polish-Welsh honorary fellow at St Antony’s College (Oxford). He’s a professor Emeritus at UCL and the author of many books on Poland, including God’s Playground: A History of Poland (1979). Adam Zamoyski—in his third appearance on the podcast—is the author of Poland: A History (2009). As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it.” With those words, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy sparked significant panic in European capitals, with foreign diplomats fearing that a Republican victory in the midterms would lead to diminished US support for Ukraine. Yet the red wave didn’t materialize for McCarthy and the GOP. As we recorded this episode, the House had still not been called either way. Nevertheless, the election results do raise important questions for Europe as it thinks about how Congress, which is in charge of allocating funds for Ukraine, will approach the conflict under new leadership. In this bonus episode, Francois and Julian discussed the impact of the US midterms on Ukraine, as well as how France missed its moment to push for strategic autonomy in the aftermath of the Russian invasion. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

« Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.” When a fresh-faced Vladimir Putin made those comments back in 2000, Russia had only recently lost its Soviet Empire and endured a series of violent conflicts within the borders of the Federation, most notably in Chechnya. Just like the rest of Europe lost its colonies in the latter half of the 20th century, Russia was forced then to lose large chunks of its imperial Soviet possessions. But over the last two decades, Vladimir Putin nonetheless managed to maintain a strong influence network in his “near abroad,” making Russia a central actor in the politics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Yet the increasingly costly and unsuccessful “special military operation” in Ukraine considerably undermines Russia’s might and clout. As a result, a series of border conflicts and uprisings sprang up in the former USSR, from the reheated conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan to the skirmishes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Our two guests this week are veteran Russian analysts. Angela Stent is a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings and professor emerita of government and foreign service at Georgetown. She’s a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia and the author of Putin’s World: Russia against the West and with the Rest (2019) and is about to be republished with an extra chapter on the war in Ukraine. Mark Galeotti is a political scientist specialized in Russian security affairs and the director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence. He is an Honorary Professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies and a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. He’s also publishing later this week Putin’s Wars, from Chechnya to Ukraine (2022) which should be another incredibly timely read. For our Patreon section, our two experts took an in-depth dive into the Russian Federation itself. War and the ramping up of conscription sparked some major tensions within ethnic minority groups which could upset the balance of power within the nominally federal Federation of Russia. We also had a conversation on Russian imperialism, modern Russian nationalism and whether Russia sees itself as a former colonial power. If you want to listen to this Patreon-exclusive conversation and get plenty of additional content, you can subscribe for as little as the price of a sandwich a month. On to the show! As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"This is not a bluff. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.” With those words, Russian President Vladimir Putin renewed fears across the globe that Russia could employ nuclear weapons in its war with Ukraine. As we edited this episode, Russia conducted its annual nuclear exercises, drills that had added resonance given the Kremlin’s implied threats to use nuclear force in the conflict in Ukraine. But how likely is Putin to use nuclear weapons? And how would Russia use one in the war? To answer these questions and puncture some myths surrounding nuclear weapons and Russian nuclear doctrine, we spoke to Olga Oliker, Program Director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group, and Bruno Tertrais, Deputy Director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think tank. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"Greece, look at history, go back in time; if you go too far, the price will be heavy. We only have one sentence for Greece, do not forget Izmir”.  After months of hostile aerial and naval encounters between Greek and Turkish armed forces, Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave this remarkable speech last September. By referring to the 1922 burning of the Greek Anatolian city of Izmir by the Turkish army, Erdogan's threat to Greece was crystal clear. It's a snapshot of a foreign policy decried as revanchist by its critics, and as logically assertive by its supporters, but one that from the outside can be hard to understand. How can this NATO member be at loggerheads with its Greek neighbor and trade diplomatic blows with European capitals while still technically applying for EU membership? We invited Ryan Gingeras, an expert of Turkish foreign policy, to take stock of this paradox. Is there such a thing as an Erdogan doctrine? Gingeras is a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and is an expert on Turkish, Balkan, and Middle East history. He is the author of six books, including the forthcoming The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire (to be released by Penguin in October 2022). The views he expresses here are not those of the Naval Postgraduate School, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

The war in Ukraine keeps looming over Europe's geopolitical landscape, with sanctions, energy price caps, and weapons supplies dominating debates at EU Council meetings. Ukraine's recently successful counter-offensive warrants a check-in on the war itself, and what it means for the continent's geopolitical standing as old Europe fades in influence, and new Europe’s voice grows louder. The UK, one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters, elected a new Prime Minister and was plunged into economic crisis almost immediately. Why did Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng opt for their economic strategy? Can the Conservatives rebound before the next election? Or will Sir Keir Starmer become the first Labour PM since Gordon Brown? This week Francois Valentin and Julian Graham dove into these topics in-depth. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“Civil war politics ended a long time ago in our country, but today it ends in our parliament.” Thus welcomed Leo Varadkar—the former and future Irish Taoiseach—the new coalition between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. Ireland has been marked by division, between both the Republic's pro- and anti-treaty parties and the North and South on the island itself. Economic progress has brought with it a shift to more progressive values, and this has sparked unprecedented political change. What does this mean for the Emerald Isle, and what can Europe and the world learn from Ireland’s success? This week, we spoke about the social and political changes facing Ireland with Daniel Mulhall and Jude Webber. The former is a former Irish Ambassador to the UK and US, and author of Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey (2022), out this year. The latter is Dublin Correspondent for the Financial Times. And for our Patreon subscribers, a broader conversation on the prospect of Irish unification awaits. If you would like to hear that conversation, you can subscribe for just €5 a month. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“To you, who have been born in Italy, God has allotted, as if favouring you specially, the best-defined country in Europe”. Thus wrote Giuseppe Mazzini in his landmark essay Duties of Country (1860). Mazzini believed that Italy was unified by geography and language, and that through unification, Italians would gain the power to improve their economic and social conditions. Today Italians remain united by language and geography, but they are dissatisfied and disillusioned with their politics. This weekend’s election saw the lowest turnout of any Italian election in history. Fratelli d’Italia’s Giorgia Meloni is poised to become the next Prime Minister and the first woman ever to hold that position. Centrists and social democrats spent the campaign warning of the dangers of a right-wing coalition, and accused Meloni of having fascist sympathies. This week, we spoke to Alessandra Bocchi, a freelance journalist, and Thomas Fazi, who writes for UnHerd, about what the Lega/Fratelli/Forza Italia coalition will do in government, the accusations of extremism levelled against Meloni, the future of the Italian left, and the legacy of Mario Draghi. For our Patreon subscribers, there is an extended conversation on Italy’s relationship with the EU. We hope you enjoy this episode and decide to subscribe in order to access the full episode. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Your favorite euro-realist podcast is gearing up for a new season. In the meantime, here’s a short State-of-the-Union primer where we take stock of what we have accomplished over the past 2 years and map out what we intend to achieve in the coming one. On the agenda: our new co-host Julian, our revamped Patreon system (a way to raise the required funds to finance our project whilst offering our Patreons some juicy extra content) and our first-ever Uncommonly Decent job posting. See you soon!

In the spring of 2017, Emmanuel Macron upended France’s political system by breaking ranks with a socialist administration and running for President as the leader of a new party that bore his initials, En Marche! Five years after that victory, Macron has again triumphed against Marine Le Pen in the runoff of the presidential race. To be sure, turnout was historically low, and Le Pen climbed from 34% to 41.5% of the vote. Yet Macron is the only French president in 20 years to win a reelection bid. Furthermore, his towering standing in the French political landscape seems matchless. The two traditional governing parties—the center-right Les Républicains (LR) and the social-democratic Parti Socialiste (PS)—are both in utter shambles, whilst their fringe competitors—Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI)—are not perceived by most voters to be credible governing alternatives. With the field wide open, for now, for Macron’s lock on the Presidency, what’s next for the country? Will the near future see the beleaguered right and left rebuild themselves? Will Macron’s second term be more of the same? To discuss these questions and more, we are joined this week by New York Times Magazine contributing writer Elisabeth Zerofsky and veteran correspondent of all things French John Lichfield. This also happens to be our finale of season four, but do not worry, we will be back in September. Listen in to the end of the episode for a hint of what’s next for the podcast.   As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Sir Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, claimed during the 2016 referendum on Brexit that "the last thing on earth Churchill would have been is an isolationist. "Oui”, I think he would have wanted to stay in the EU”. On the other hand, David Davis, the leading pro-Brexit politician, argued that this vision of Churchill as a remainer was in "defiance of history. Winston Churchill”, Davis went on, "saw a very good argument for some sort of a United States of Europe. But he never wanted us, Britain, to be a part of it. That's the key point.” As part of Uncommon Decency’s biographical series on giants of European history, we felt we couldn’t shy away from covering Churchill, having covered Napoleon and Henry Kissinger in episodes 22 and 55, respectively. Churchill's passionate plea for a United States of Europe has been duly acclaimed by historians, but just what place did he envision the UK taking in that post-war European order? To answer that question, we are joined by historian Andrew Roberts, who has written Churchill: Walking with Destiny (2018), a best-selling biography of the former Prime Minister. In addition, Mr. Roberts hosts the Hoover Institution’s Secrets of Statecraft podcast. As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In numerous ways, Hungary and France couldn’t be more different from one another. Hungary is a landlocked set of hills and plains in south Central Europe, flanked to the North and East by the Carpathian mountain range, and to the West and South by the Drava river. It is a meagre remnant of its former self, having lost two thirds of its territory in the 1920 Trianon Treaty upon losing the First World War. France is a hexagon almost seven times the size, bathed by the Atlantic ocean and the Mediterranean sea. The contrast is even starker in demography than in geography. France is a rapidly aging and growingly childless society, its replacement of successive generations increasingly assured by vast waves of immigration, primarily from south and eastern Europe in the interwar period, and then from former colonies in the the Maghreb and Subsaharan Africa after World War II. Hungarian nationhood, meanwhile, has often dovetailed with descending from the Magyar tribes that first settled into the former Roman province of Pannonia nearly a millennia ago. But for all of their substantial differences, the elections held in these two countries over the past ten days have imparted similar lessons about the challenge of incumbency, the appeal of populism, the impact of international wars and the temptation to shoehorn complex events into readily-baked, cliché narratives. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán campaigned on his sound economic record and on keeping his country out of the Russo-Ukraine war. He was re-elected to serve a fourth consecutive term, his Fidesz party gaining a two thirds supermajority in Parliament. Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, seems similarly fated for re-election on April 24th after securing a larger gap between his share of the vote and Marine Le Pen’s than in the last first-round five years ago. This week, we sit down with our regular US-based co-host Julian Graham to unpack the takeaways from these two races. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

On January 29, 1848, at the Assemblée Nationale in Paris, the liberal intellectual and MP Alexis De Tocqueville rose to proclaim: "Gentlemen, I believe that we are at this moment sleeping on a volcano [...] Do you not feel—what shall I say?—as it were a gale of revolution in the air?” Within weeks, Tocqueville’s prediction came to pass—and more. Throughout 1848, nearly all of Europe revolted. The French ousted King Louis-Phillipe, the last in their history, the Austrians got the aging, arch-conservative Chancellor Metternich to retire, and Hungary attempted to become an independent nation. German and Italian idealists saw this as an opportunity to unite theirs. All of Europe was going through the so-called "Spring of the Peoples”, fighting for constitutional rights, representative parliaments, national sovereignty, and other cornerstones of modern democracy. But the Spring of the Peoples was soon followed by a cold winter of repression. The newly-established French Republic shot the hungry Parisian workers dead. The Austrian and Prussian monarchies wrestled back the momentum from the streets of Vienna and Berlin. The dreams of German and Italian unity were crushed by internal strife and the Austro-Prussian armies. The Austrians soon invited the Russians to flatten the Hungarian uprising. Despite the apparent failure of 1848, that year's legacy is seemingly everywhere. 1848 was a learning experience for men like Karl Marx, the godfather of Communism, and Giuseppe Mazzini, one of unified Italy’s founding fathers. Only decades after the failure of 1848, Italy and Germany became nation-states, while the democratic ideals proclaimed that year became entrenched across European politics. And yet today it seems that 1848 has been largely forgotten. To ensure this is not so, this week we discuss 1848's European legacy with two esteemed historians, Chris Clark of Cambridge and Jonathan Sperber of the University of Missouri. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"Politics in America, Britain, and other Western nations", reads the blurb for the Edmund Burke Foundation’s National Conservatism series of conferences, "have taken a sharp turn toward nationalism—a commitment to a world of independent nations”. In the US and the UK, this inflection point crystallized in 2016 with the result of the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump. In continental Europe, the torch has been picked up by an arc of national-populist parties, from Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz to Spain’s Vox, Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia and Poland’s Law & Justice Party. The latest such NatCon conference was held last week this side of the pond, in Brussels, bringing together a colorful assortment of right-wing politicians, scholars and journalists at a ritzy venue a short walk away from the seat of EU institutions. Naturally, the gathering had been planned well before Russian troops invaded Ukraine, and the conference had to adjust to a fast-moving news cycle accordingly. The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war has also predictably shaken up the French presidential race. This week, we sit down with Sebastian Milbank, who covered the NatCon summit extensively for The Critic, to unpack the conference’s main themes and to assess the state of play in France a mere 10 days away from the first-round of voting. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod. *Contrary to Jorge's introduction, the Edmund Burke Foundation is based in Washington D.C., not Jerusalem.

"A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy”, wrote Henry Kissinger, "will achieve neither perfection nor security". In an era where few countries have the means to back their moral postures on foreign policy, the statesman’s comments should not fall on deaf ears. Kissinger knows a thing or two about the inefficiency of empty posturing. Born in 1923 in Weimar Germany, he left his country of birth in 1938 for the United States. Months later, the Allies were trounced by the might of the Nazi war-machine. Young Kissinger brought with him many things from old Europe—a German accent, a long-lasting love for his local football club, but more substantially, a realist worldview that had been incarnated in the past by Bismarck and Metternich. The German immigrant fought in World War II with the US Army before becoming one of the most brilliant academic minds in the US, and soon one of the most famous statesmen of the century, serving as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford—a true American success story, this young European. Always attempting to see the world as it is and not how it should be, the 98-year-old Kissinger remains one of the world’s most respected voices on foreign policy. In this episode, we are lucky to have with us Ambassador Gérard Araud and Jérémie Gallon, each of whom has recently published a book on Kissinger’s relationship to diplomacy, Europe and realism. In the current geopolitical turmoil, this episode turned into a fascinating conversation on Europe’s and America’s relationship to realism and morality in foreign policy. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

France looks back on November 13, 2015 with a mix of pain and horror. That day, a group of ISIS-trained jihadists launched coordinated attacks on the Bataclan nightclub, the Stade de France, and a handful of Parisian cafés. The onslaught left 130 dead, shell-shocked French public opinion, and forced a reckoning across Europe about the threat from radicalization. In September 2021, the French Republic trialed Salah Abdeslam, the only author of the November 2015 attacks to have survived, along with 20 other defendants. The months-long case was an opportunity to serve justice for the victims and to better understand how a slaughter of such scale was possible in the heart of a major European city. It also appeared to close a bloody chapter of European history, since no further attacks of that magnitude have followed. Those committed against the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, in Nice, Brussels, Manchester and many other places also seem to be on the rearview mirror. To lure us further into complacency, ISIS has been militarily defeated whilst Europe’s counter-terrorism capacities have considerably improved. Yet for radicalization experts, we would be naïve to believe the danger has passed. This week, we sought to get a better sense of the past, present and future of jihadism in Europe by speaking to two of them: Hugo Micheron, a returnee to the show, one of the expert witnesses in the Abdeslam trial and the author of Jihadisme Européen (2022), and Petter Nesser of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Mere hours after Russian tanks rolled over Ukraine’s borders, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock made this chilling statement : « We buy 50% of our coal from Russia. If we exclude Russia from the SWIFT payment system, the lights in Germany will go out. » In our 44th episode a few weeks ago (« Europe Braces for Winter »), we wondered whether soaring energy prices could lead to mass blackouts, but we never expected that problem to be soon compounded by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. This naked act of aggression has starkly highlighted Europe's energy dependence on Russia, which provides nearly half of our gas and a quarter of our oil. Such a reliance has logically hampered the European Union’s (EU) capacity to hit Russia’s massive energy sector despite the Biden administration's calls for the West to profoundly decouple. This week, we turn to Nick Butler and Simone Tagliapietra, two experts on the geopolitics of energy, to take stock of Europe’s dependency. How long can the EU survive without Russian gas? And can Russia’s aggression spark a much-needed strategic approach to energy ? As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”. This oft-quoted passage from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks sounds eerily apt to describe Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine over the past week and its shock effect on the so-called rules-based international order. We at Uncommon Decency began our journey into podcasting a little over a year ago with an episode titled "Europe’s Paradise Lost". In it, our esteemed friend Ben Haddad warned us that Europe had been enjoying a geopolitical bliss since the end of the Cold War that could not be indefinitely sustained. The European Union (EU), he argued, should urgently graduate from America’s security patronage and become a geopolitical actor in its own right. Ben’s argument has aged, well, spectacularly well. In response to a scale of violence unseen on the European continent since World War II, the EU’s member states have beefed up their sanctions on Russia to what they hope will be a choke point, pledging to end their dependence on Russian gas and raise their defense spending up to the 2%-of-GDP required by NATO. In this latest bonus episode with our regular guest Juilan Graham, we ask: in what ways is the war over Ukraine reshaping the contours of the international order? As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In 1997, the Chicago School guru and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman eerily foresaw the challenges that a common European currency would eventually face through the following decade. “The drive for the euro”, he wrote that year for Project Syndicate, “has been motivated by politics, not economics. The aim has been to link Germany and France so closely as to make a future European war impossible, and to set the stage for a federal United States of Europe. I believe that adoption of the euro would have the opposite effect. It would exacerbate political tensions by converting divergent shocks into divisive political issues.” Fast forward to two decades later and the Euro, although severely challenged by the sovereign debt crises of the 2010s, is still alive and kicking. The “divergent shocks” that Friedman warned about have indeed caused tensions within the Eurozone, and yet the European Union (EU) has successfully overcome them through sheer political initiative. The Euro’s landmark achievement has been to survive the 2008 financial crisis, the subsequent eurozone crisis and the rise of euroskeptic parties across the continent. But has it met the objectives it was set up to achieve? Has the Euro made Europe’s economy more robust and more convergent? On its 20th anniversary, we reflect on the Euro’s past and future with two eminent economists, both of whom have been writing about it since long before it reached our wallets: Jean Pisani-Ferry and Barry Eichengreen. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Charles de Gaulle famously asserted that the French presidential election was an “encounter between a man and the people.” This inherently Bonapartist spirit of the Fifth Republic lives on to this day, as illustrated recently by Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic offensive on behalf of the European Union (EU) over Russia’s military build-up along Ukraine’s border. In the span of just a few days, the swashbuckling French president met with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, hoping to simultaneously deescalate the perilous chicken game unfolding on the Ukrainian plains whilst also casting himself as a capable diplomatic entrepreneur ahead of the upcoming presidential race in May. Macron, who is yet to announce his run for a second term, faces a markedly different political landscape than in 2017, with no less than 3 major candidates to his right and an electorate that has shifted rightwards in significantly major ways. The proverbial Overton Window, in other words, has expanded so widely that concepts previously considered too right-wing such as Renaud Camus’ Great Replacement theory have even crept into the rhetoric of the center-right candidate Valérie Pécresse. Can a Bonapartist Macron be reelected in a Zemmourist France? Midway through the episode, François refers to an essay he wrote on this very topic for Palladium magazine, which you can read here. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

When exactly are electoral observation missions warranted in a democracy? Hungarians are heading to the polls on April 3rd this year, and a substantial share of the opposition to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seems to fear that the election will be neither free nor fair. Last month, a coalition of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) officially requested that a team of election monitors be sent by the OSCE, which quickly acquiesced. Their call for applications, should you wish to help combat electoral fraud and ensure equal access to balloting, is open until February 11. By calling external observers, mind you, the opposition is making a larger point. Orbán, they claim, has spent the past 12 years in office amassing power at the expense of democratic institutions, silencing critical media, lining up the pockets of his cronies, buddying up to China and Russia, all whilst advancing an illiberal worldview that threatens Hungary’s good standing in the European Union (EU) and the rights of vulnerable minorities. Now that’s a thoroughly negative case, but what is the opposition actually for? Whilst Orbán is sure to run on his record securing economic prosperity for his people, it is far less clear what kind of government Péter Márky-Zai, Orbán’s challenger, will form if elected. With us this week to discuss we are pleased to be joined by Boris Kálnoky, head of the media school at Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), and Dalibor Roháç, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).   As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal São lágrimas de Portugal!” “O salty sea, so much of whose salt Is Portugal tears!” Verses like this one by the acclaimed 20th century poet and critic Fernando Pessoa were somberly recited in his native Portugal throughout the 2010s, as the country went through a bruising cycle of financial insolvency, economic downturn and fiscal austerity. Amidst the gloomiest outlook since the advent of democracy in 1974, Pessoa’s melancholic poetry mirrored the mood of the crisis-stricken nation. Fast forward to this year, and the socialist government of Prime Minister António Costa has pulled off the unlikely feat of stabilizing the country’s finances while sparing it the kind of draconian austerity enforced by his predecessor, the right-of-center Pedro Passos Coelho. Costa first rose to office in late 2015 propelled by a no confidence vote in Parliament, despite falling short of a majority in an election earlier that year. He fell short again in 2019, his parliamentary majority relying on the support of two parties to his left—the communists and Bloco de Esquerda. This left-wing united front disbanded last November when the government’s budget, deemed not progressive enough by these two forces, was voted down, triggering a snap election scheduled for last Sunday. Earlier that week, we had sat down with University of Lisbon politics professor António Costa Pinto—no relation to the PM—and Peter Wise, the Financial Times’ Portugal correspondent, to survey the electoral field as Portugal headed for the polls. We can now report the results. Costa pulled off a stunning victory with almost 42% of the vote, meaning it will no longer need a smaller coalition partner. We hope our guests’ comments remain relevant now the suspense is gone. Namely, how has the country achieved financial solvency with only limited austerity? How come are the Socialists, sunk into irrelevance most everywhere else, still dominant in Portugal? And what does the rise of Chega, the upstart right-wing party whose rhetoric is at times redolent of Salazarism, tell us about the mood of the country? As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“When asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing the United States, you said Russia—not Al-Qaeda, Russia. The 1980’s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. The Cold War has been over for twenty years.” The seasoned politicos in our audience might recognize Barack Obama’s quip on former Governor Mitt Romney in a 2012 presidential election debate, back when America hoped to “reset” its relationship with Russia whilst pivoting towards the Asia-Pacific. Two years later, Russia annexed Crimea and sent “little green men” to back Ukrainian separatists, leaving that country in a state of perpetual civil war since. Over the past month, Russia has further escalated tensions, massing troops on its border with Ukraine. The Kremlin demands that the US never allow Ukraine or Georgia into NATO, and that all countries that joined since 1997 be expelled from the alliance. In other words, Vladimir Putin wants a Monroe doctrine of sorts enforced in its immediate vicinity that would leave Ukraine squarely in Russia’s sphere of influence. As the possibility of war in the East becomes a distinct probability, we launch season 4 by taking stock of these tensions with the Atlantic Council’s Vladislav Davidzon and Catholic University’s Michael Kimmage—both returnees to the show. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

If the European Commission (EC) had to be described in a single word, “technocracy" would come fittingly close. Commissioners and EU civil servants are selected on the basis of subject matter expertise to carry out the thanklessly tiresome tasks of patching together the bloc’s budget, governing the single market and negotiating trade deals on behalf of the 27 member states. Culture wars, on the contrary, are too scrappy, too militant for the EU’s executive arm to get embroiled in. Or are they? The notion that the Great Awokening unfolding across the West since the death of George Floyd on police custody in May last year may have spared the high echelons of the EU's bureaucracy was swiftly dispelled the week of November 28th with a scoop courtesy of Il Giornale. The Italian daily unveiled the Commission’s so-called “Guidelines for Inclusive Communication”, an effort spearheaded by Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli and meant to be binding on all of the Commission’s internal and external communications. The document sought to forbid from use such unwoke expressions as “merry Christmas”, “ladies and gentlemen”, “homosexual" or even “citizen”, deemed offensive to stateless refugees. This week, we explore whether and how wokeness has permeated the European Union with Rodrigo Ballester, a former career Eurocrat now directing the Center for European Studies at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, and bestselling French journalist Brice Couturier, who is fresh off publishing Ok Millenials! Puritanism, Victimization, Tdentitarianism, Censorship… A Baby Boomer’s Survey of the Woke Generation’s Founding Myths (2021). As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“Democracy always includes a form of incompleteness, it is not self-sufficient. The terror during the French Revolution dug an imaginary emotional, collective void: the king is no longer there!”. Thus spoke then Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron in 2015. The French have tried to replace the king ever since the death of Louis the XVIth in 1793. General de Gaulle bequeathed to France its presidentialist system, essentially giving the citizenry the right to crown their chosen king every 5 years. De Gaulle’s heirs on the center-right have since tried to honor this legacy but were blindsided in 2017 by Macron’s win, failing to make it into the run-off for the first time. Nearly 5 years later, a weakened Les Républicains (LR) party is parrying attacks from all sides. On its left, Macron wishes to triangulate. On its right, the nationalist TV polemist turned feisty presidential contender Éric Zemmour just held his first public rally this week. Last Friday, LR nonetheless managed to elect their candidate for the 2022 race, the president of the powerful Île-de-France region Valérie Pécresse. The French right has thus been split into three comparably sized blocks: Pécresse, Zemmour and Marine Le Pen. Jorge, Julian and François take stock of this latest cycle in the race. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

But for a handful of hardcore survivalists, the announcement caught most EU watchers flat-footed. Klaudia Tanner, Minister of Defense in the now disbanded Kurz government, alerted her Austrian compatriots earlier this month of the possible need to stockpile food if the blackouts that many fear end up materializing. Others have been hedging their bets for a while, too. Earlier in May this year, Spain’s Minister for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera penned a letter to Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal, pleading for EU-wide legislation to prevent power outages from disproportionately hitting the less well-off. These were merely the opening salvos in what has since shaped up to be a full-fledged energy crisis in Europe, with a skyrocketing surge in electricity prices across the continent hampering the prospects of a rapid post-Covid economic recovery. Will Europeans face a blackout this winter? Who should we blame for this surge? Russia, the EU, the emissions trading system? To talk about this issue we are very glad to have Aitor Hernández-Morales from POLITICO Europe and Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, director of the Institut Jacques Delors’ energy center. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“The judges of the nation are only the mouth that pronounces the words of the law, inanimate beings, who can moderate neither the strength nor the severity of the law.” When Montesquieu wrote these words in The Spirit of the Laws in 1748, he laid out the ideal framework for the interaction between lawmakers and judges. Montesquieu’s ideal vision contrasts with the messy reality of the judiciary, which has to deal with unclear laws or even contradictory ones, a tension enhanced by the emergence of a new legal order, the EU. Since the 1960s, the primacy of EU law emerged as the sine qua non condition for the good functioning of the bloc, but over the past months a series of political and judicial actors have challenged the notion head on. The most visible broadside came from Warsaw, with the Polish Constitutional Tribunal ruling in its K 3/21 decision that 3 articles of the Treaty on the European Union were unconstitutional. In the French presidential election, the primacy of EU law has also been under heavy fire, including from former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, a sign that the discontent is even felt within more centrist circles. In this episode we tackle head on this controversy with two experts of EU law, Nicole Scicluna, Assistant Professor in Government & International Studies at the University of Hong Kong and Paul Craig, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Oxford. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Europe—that is to say, a continent far surpassing the European Union (EU) in size and historical depth—is in the midst of several crises, each testing its resolve and resilience in different ways. The political class, to begin with, is no longer trusted to carry out its duty honorably by the majority of European societies. This past week, the United Kingdom has further aggravated this sense of disillusion by providing the latest ethical scandal or “sleaze”, in Westminster jargon. A slate of senior Tory Members of Parliament (MPs), Sir Geoffrey Cox among them, are alleged to have trespassed the limitations on lobbying activities conducted whilst in office. Meanwhile, the EU keeps careening toward another refugee crisis, although unlike the migrant crisis of 2015, these refugees are unlikely to be portrayed as victims. Instead, they’re being funneled to the Polish-Belarusian border from places like Kurdistan and Afghanistan as part of a deliberate pressure campaign. Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader of Europe’s pirate state, is allegedly being puppet-mastered by Vladimir Putin to retaliate against the EU’s sanctions on its Eastern neighbors. Finally, the third crisis concerns energy. With Germany’s use of nuclear energy expected to phase out in the coming year and energy demand fast picking up, Europe’s energy prices are soaring all over, casting doubts over the continent’s post-Covid economic recovery and raising the prospect of widespread blackouts this upcoming winter. We discuss this and more in this bonus episode—the 42nd in our series—recorded with Julian Graham, a dear friend of the show. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In the summer of 1941, as Italy warred its way to a series of territorial annexations in east Africa and the Mediterranean, a little-known anti-fascist activist by the name of Altiero Spinelli languished in prison, his restless mind fantasizing about Europe’s postbellum future. Named the Ventotene Manifesto after the island where Spinelli was jailed, the resulting document would become the blueprint of the European Federalist Movement (EFM) founded two years later, a call for the nations of the Old Continent to forfeit their sovereignty and give way to a European federation under socialist principles. 80 years into the integration project that Spinelli helped spearhead, has the EU lived up to the hopes and expectations of its progressive cheerleaders? Undoubtedly yes, argues historian Konrad H. Jarausch, Lurcy Ann Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina. In Embattled Europe: A Progressive Alternative (2021), Professor Jarausch remarks that Europe has become something of a dirty word for right-wing populists on both sides of the Atlantic, which he views as a testament of the bloc’s success in building a mixed model of laissez-faire capitalism buffered by a strong safety net. Similarly, in The Primacy of Politics (2006), Professor Sheri Berman of Columbia’s Barnard College described European-style social democracy as the end-stage solution to the central challenge of modern politics, that of reconciling a free enterprise economy with a democratic polity. Professors Jarausch and Berman join us on the podcast this week to discuss Europe’s complex place betwixt social democracy and neoliberalism. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the wartime memoirs of French historian Marc Bloch were published posthumously as Strange Defeat (1946), after the Gestapo tortured and ultimately killed their author for his resistance to Nazi occupation. To characterize France’s defeat in the summer of 1940 as “strange”, however, would be a vast understatement. In the short span of six weeks through May and June that year, the entire paradigm through which Britain and America were approaching the nascent world conflict was turned on its head, argues Michael S. Neiberg in When France Fell (2021). In it, he describes the state of utter panic that gripped the US military establishment upon seeing French defenses crumble so swiftly under Nazi attack. Germany’s occupation of the northern half of France had dramatic consequences for the conduct of the war, too. The country’s world-spanning navy and its far-flung colonies were suddenly ripe for capture by the Axis powers. So swift and unforeseen was France’s defeat, in fact, that the Allies surmised pro-German fifth column activity to have been at play in the Third Republic, the decadent precursor to Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime. Suddenly, America began to fear similar pro-German coup attempts in its own Latin American backyard. For Neiberg, the country’s collective memory of the war as a period of American strength overlooks the faulty and desperate decision-making that drove US policy up until the Allies turned the tables in 1943. In this episode, he discusses the book with another eminent historian of modern France, Julian Jackson. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“France does not know it, but we are at war with America. It’s a permanent war, an economic war, one seemingly without deaths and yet a war to death.” This quote from former French President François Mitterrand illustrates the ancestral gallic defiance toward the US “hyperpower,” one that continues to inform French strategic thinking. So when the US entered secret negotiations with Australia and the UK to launch the AUKUS defense partnership—thus scuttling France’s 90-billion dollar submarine contract with Australia—Mitterrand’s warnings turned prophetic. Even the usually diplomatic Minister for Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves le Drian spoke of “a stab in the back.” This extraordinary diplomatic coup de théâtre happened amidst an ongoing conversation on the concept of European strategic autonomy, a topic Uncommon Decency covered in depth last year. Can the EU become a geopolitical actor in its own right, and not just a geopolitical playing field for the great powers of the 21st century? Following the events in Afghanistan and Australia, we take stock of where this conversation is headed—and whether the transatlantic relationship has suffered as a result—with The Economist’s Sophie Pedder and the Atlantic Council’s Benjamin Haddad. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In our electoral war room eight months ago, we at Uncommon Decency argued that the French political landscape ahead of the presidential race next May was ripe for a populist upset. In other words, that the scores of pollsters predicting a Macron-LePen runoff contest could be proved wrong by France’s ever so facetious electorate. That upset might just have a name now: Eric Zemmour. A former political journalist and a Tucker Carlsonesque talking head, the right-wing intellectual has published his third bestselling essay, his public meetings quickly morphing into campaign rallies. Of Algerian Jewish stock, Zemmour has found himself in the unlikely role of organic intellectual for the country’s nationalistic right. Though not officially in the running, his bid for the presidency is but a foregone conclusion. In the span of two months Zemmour surged from 5% in the polls to the high teens, making him a favorite to face off against Macron in the runoff. In the most Trumpian of ways, he keeps a near-monopoly on the airwaves by breaking up taboos and imposing his agenda, such as the borderline conspiracy theory of a great replacement of France’s white Christian population with a new brown and Islamic alien majority. Today we dive into the Zemmour phenomenon and gauge how far he can go with two veteran journalists, Anne-Élisabeth Moutet and John Lichfield. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Once nicknamed the Scholzomat for his robotic approach to politics, Olaf Scholz led Germany’s social democrats to an unlikely electoral victory on the 26th of September, stunning Germans and outside observers alike. Sholz is now in a strong position to become chancellor of Germany, but given the electoral fragmentation of the Bundestag, he will need to rely on the support of two other parties in what has been dubbed a "traffic light coalition”, with the “red” SPD, the “yellow” liberals of the FDP and the Greens. With Merkel’s center-right CDU out of office for the first time since 2005, what does this new landscape tell us about Germany’s political mood? To break this down in our inaugural episode of season 3, we invited leading foreign correspondent Tom Nuttall of The Economist and the head of European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)’s Berlin office, Jana Puglierin. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Casting about for a definition of Europe, the eminent French poet and essayist Paul Valéry told a student audience in Zurich, circa 1922: « Any people and land that has been successively Romanized, Christianized, and as regards to the mind, disciplined by the Greeks, is absolutely European.” Laid waste by deathly totalitarian ideologies, then hoisted back to relevance on the strength of its collective impetus, Europe’s soul-searching has continued into the new century. Do Europeans simply inhabit their corner of the Eurasian landmass, or are they stewards of a unique culture that sets them apart? With its societies more diverse and less Christian than ever before, has the religious soul of Valéry’s definition withered? Has the European Union (EU) lived up to this legacy? Recurrently teased by each of this show’s 35 episodes thus far, Uncommon Decency winds up its second season by tackling these themes head on, with French philosopher Pierre Manent and former EU Council speechwriter Luuk Van Middelaar. In addition to rating, reviewing, and spreading the word about the show, we kindly ask you to fill this one-minute survey that will help us better cater to your interests come September. Thanks kindly as always—enjoy the show! As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Football’s oldest international fixture, Scotland-England games have routinely showcased a fever pitch of politically-infused rivalry, and this year’s Euro 2021 proved no exception. Not only were the Scots ecstatic to draw against their English “Auld Enemy” at Wembley in their first major tournament since the 1998 World Cup—many of them even cheered Italy’s narrow win in the final. At odds with its laureate reputation for orderly behavior, the so-called Tartan Army of Scottish fans can still at times be heard jeering at “God Save the Queen”—an unmistakable testament to the pervasive influence of politics on football. Back in 2014, 55.3% of Scottish voters rejected independence from the United Kingdom in a referendum, but the Union has since undergone a political revolution of its own, leaving the European Union at the dismay of the stringently pro-European Scots. Seven years and two prime ministers later, Nicola Sturgeon's ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) is pressing for a second referendum. Whether or not "IndyRef2" sees the day, will the tides of History inevitably lead to a divorce? Exploring the odds and merits of such an outcome, we host Alex Massie of The Spectator and Ben Jackson of Oxford, two Scotsmen steeped in the complex history of the Anglo-Scottish Union and in the latest maneuvering in both Westminster and Holyrood. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Listeners may recall the clash between two of Western liberalism’s sacred cows that unfolded in France last year as part of the so-called “affaire Mila”. This 16-year-old online socialite was met with a ghastly downpour of abuse upon sharing on Instagram her dislike of Islamic mores. So far, so reprehensible, you may think. Except that Mila’s impetuous words of blasphemy were soon invoked by hordes of anonymous users who subjected her to an open season of misogynistic and sexually predatory abuse, against which France’s politically correct ethos, always mindful to eschew charges of Islamophobia, seemed despairingly unable to react. The affair captured Europe’s uneasy balance between women’s unfettered emancipation on one hand, as incarnated by the outspokenly feminist Mila, and on the other the dissolvent forces of multiculturalism, which on the pretense of tolerance for the worldviews and lifestyles of Muslim immigrants, seems too willing to jeopardize the right of women to enjoy the sexual freedoms and gender equality that liberalism admittedly affords. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has lived and worked at the heart of this contradiction. Born in Somalia, she emigrated to the Netherlands fleeing an arranged marriage, sat in the Dutch parliament, and pursues to this day her advocacy of women’s rights and criticism of Islamic fundamentalism in the US, where she is a fellow at the Stanford-based Hoover Institution. Ayaan’s latest book and the topic of our conversation is Prey: Immigration, Islam and the Erosion of Women’s Rights (2021)—enjoy! As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

“It was the rise of Athens and the fear it instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable”. Writing over 24 centuries ago about the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides’ timeless commentary speaks to the tension arising when an emerging power threatens to overtake an established one, raising the odds of open conflict. Just like Sparta and Athens rallied neighboring city-states into their colliding orbits, the US and China, increasingly locked in great power competition, have their eyes set on Europe. The lingering doubts over the EU’s Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China, put on hold last month by the Parliament (EP), lay bare Europe’s pivotal role in this fractious geopolitical landscape. Between its traditional ally to the West, and its main trading partner to the East, the dilemma for Europeans is whether to remain a geopolitical playing field or emerge as an actor in its own right. How should Europe approach Sino-American competition, and could it be an opportunity to build “strategic autonomy”? Two seasoned diplomats and scholars join us to discuss: Hubert Védrine, Former French Foreign Minister, and Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former UN ambassador. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Across most of Europe, Green parties are middling political forces, periodic junior partners in coalitions or the occasion to cast a protest vote for disgruntled left-wingers. And yet in prosperous Germany, Annalena Baerbock could well be Angela Merkel’s successor at the chancellorship. Formed at the dawn of the environmental and anti-nuclear geist of the 70s, the party was in principle opposed to capitalism, NATO and the very idea of having armed forces (Bundeswehr). Fast forward to today and the the Greens have become mainstream and established. In ten of the sixteen länders, they are junior coalition partners with the far-left, the S&D, the liberals or the Christian democrats. They even lead the regional government of the traditionally right-wing state of Baden-Württemberg, a proof that the once fringe party has the chops to seduce conservative voters. With the upcoming federal race in September, a return to the federal executive seems likely, perhaps even as a senior coalition partner. What’s behind the Greens’ surge, and what could it mean for the broader European landscape? Back with us to answer is Green MEP Reinhard Bütikofer and Sudha David-Wilp, deputy director of the German Marshall Fund’s Berlin Office. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Listeners may recall Peter Mandelson, the veteran UK Cabinet Secretary appointed EU Commissioner for Trade in the late 2000s upon helping orchestrate Labour’s social-liberal pivot as one of Tony Blair’s “spin doctors”. Mandelson’s incarnation of the party’s notorious “Third Way” didn’t just owe to his Europhile credentials and support for Blairite programs. By racking up a string of landslide victories in the northeastern constituency of Hartlepool, his career showcased Labour’s potential to press ahead with market-based and socially progressive reforms whilst retaining its historic foothold in working-class communities. Fast forward to May 6th this year, and the party’s gradual loss of its core electorate in the intervening decade was nowhere in better display than in the by-election that saw the Tories flip the Hartlepool seat with a voting share 23 points larger. The political realignment underway in British politics is often chalked up to Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn’s radical neo-socialism. Yet its contours are in fact proving deeper and more lasting, as voters get to weigh Boris Johnson’s promises to level up the North-South divide against Keir Starmer’s declared reversion to centrist politics. Beyond local variations, the trajectory for the working-class vote is one of unprecedented disaffection with Labour. This week's episode gauges the causes, extent and nuances of this trend with Paul Embery and Nick Timothy. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

January 2013. Making its way through the dunes of the Sahel desert, a column of pick-up trucks is spotted approaching Mali’s capital city of Bamako. The jihadists at the wheel, some of the region’s most dangerous, have sensed an opportunity amidst the country’s civil war. At the demand of its government, France launches Operation Serval and swiftly annihilates the coup plotters. This spectacular success of a counterinsurgency later gave way to Operation Barkhane, a longer-term effort to stabilize the larger Sahel, a region as vast as Europe itself, and prevent it from becoming a terrorist safe haven on the continent's doorstep. In spite of the bravery of the 5.000 French servicemen posted on the ground since, recent years have seen a return to instability. 160 people were murdered last week by jihadists in Northern Burkina Faso, whilst Mali is rocked by the second military coup in less than a year. Just as the US moves ahead with its scheduled withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, France seems embroiled in its own Sahelian version of “endless wars”. French Ambassador Gérard Araud and leading West Africa expert Michael Shurkin help us parse where we go from here. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

On May 23rd, a Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius is instructed by a military jet to land in Minsk as it enters Belarusian airspace, on account that Hamas has a bomb planted on board. One passenger in particular couldn’t be fooled. Blogger Roman Protasevich, now jailed in his home country, is one of many political opponents to have fled Lukashenko’s brutal repression. The strongman’s authoritarian grip on the country has steadily risen since taking office in 1994, but the presidential race that rigged 80.1% of the vote in his favour last August has proved an inflection point. This latest feat of transnational airborne piracy on Europe’s doorstep is again testing the EU’s appetite for sanctions—and the Belarusian opposition's willingness to keep up the fight. Journalist Hanna Liubakova and Atlantic Council Fellow Vladislav Davidzon join us to unpack. As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

As a generation, the under-30s in Europe have been fed by the textbook a worldview that sees the European Union (EU) as the sole conduit for enlightened, pacified and efficient relations among the nations of the continent. “Ideals” or “values” is the preferred term for those at the helm of the institutions sprung from these beliefs and a worrying lot of the public they’ve conscripted into them. That may be a distinction in kind with the deathlier forms of zealotry that the EU has replaced, but not in the degree to which said ideology is embraced. One belief system or another will necessarily come to govern the way power is apportioned and decisions are made in such an unwieldy locus of power as Brussels, and the one dominant at present demands a growing degree of signle-mindedness from its adherents. A few months upon the arduous conclusion of Brexit from which lessons seem yet to be learnt, the supranationalists closed ranks around the European Commission (EC)’s evidently disastrous vaccine procurement strategy, typecasting any critique as contrary to enlightened technocracy. Drawing on the best of the Uncommonly Decent contrarian spirit, we host two noted critics of European supranationalism to take stock of the past year—Anna Wellisz of the Edmund Burke Foundation and John O’Sullivan of the Danube Institute. Enjoy! Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

If the West relies on external shocks to border up, Covid may be falling the test of criticality. If anything, the pandemic is exposing Europe's southern frontier as shockingly porous. As many as 8.000 migrants, predominantly Moroccan, have illegally reached the EU enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla over a record span of two days, swimming around the 20-feet, barbed wire fencing that Spain built in the 1990s to prevent stampedes, or walking the same route at low tide. The Spanish right cries out invasion whilst accusing Moroccan authorities of stoking the inflow. The southern neighbor's failure to police its side of the equation through beefed up patrols is arguably a riposte to the treatment for Covid at a Spanish hospital of a militant leader from the Western Sahara. This strip of flatlands on the Atlantic was hurriedly evacuated by Spain’s military upon the death of military strongman Francisco Franco, with the militant group POLISARIO rising to claim independence against the heavily militarized grip of Rabat, which also stakes historical claims over Ceuta and Melilla. Unsettled as the backstory may seem, the images of young men erupting by the hundreds on Spanish beaches are  already reminiscent of the refugee crisis six years ago. Though Europe’s overall intake is still nowhere near 2015 levels, the migrant routes connecting North Africa to the continent are realigning eastward to Spain, with inflows into the country reaching 20-year highs. No guests on the show this week—just a detour into the latest flashpoint in Europe’s unremitting migrant crisis by yours truly. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

A fog of war clouds the Israeli airspace as this episode goes to press. The country’s ability to secure its citizens is once again being put to the test by the more than 1,000 rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza over the past 40 hours. This reawakened quagmire sits awkwardly with the pacifying facade deployed a year ago by the Abraham accords normalizing ties with a select few Arab nations. A few weeks ago, France’s high court ruling in the Sarah Halimi case had the effect of reconnecting Israel’s “right to exist” with its commitment to secure Jews worldwide. In 2017, this 65-year-old Jewish Orthodox woman was cold-bloodedly thrown out of her balcony by a Jew-baiting, Quran-chanting Frenchman of Malian origin. The French judiciary’s failure to impart justice for the murder reminds the European conscience of Zionism’s noble aims, thereby helping rehabilitate Israel’s mission in the moral order. As the Halimi family continues a desperate search for justice and Israeli civilians undergo the heaviest rocket fire in a decade, we sit down with Simone Rodan-Benzaquen—the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Europe Director—and Einat Wilf—former member of the Knesset and co-author of The War of Return (2020), a widely noted polemic on the Palestinian refugee question. The episode would have been timely if only for the ongoing spike of anti-Semitic hate in Europe and Israel’s role in combating it. The escalating conflict in the Gaza strip and around the recent evictions in Sheikh Jarra (Jerusalem) have added an unfortunate newsy touch. Enjoy! Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

“Fair Greece! Sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! Though fallen, great!” Lord Byron published these lines in 1818 not knowing what a major figure in Greece's History he was destined to become. Three years before dying in its shores in 1824, the Greeks rose up against the Ottoman Empire to seize their national independence. The plight of the country of Plato and Pericles moved thousands of Europeans, including Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and other luminaries. Well-read in the classics, this romantic generation saw the events of 1821 as a historic opportunity to repay Europe’s cultural and intellectual debt to Hellenic civilization. French poet Victor Hugo would even have Homer and "mother" rhyme in his poems. In the Uncommonly Decent quest to trace the cultural and civilizational roots of the European order, History is seldom brought up. This year's bicentennial of Greece's national liberation commemorates one such rare European moment, providing us thereby with a chance to reconnect with our project's guiding mission. Stathis Kalyvas (All Souls College, Oxford), Thanos Veremis (Athens University) and John Psaropoulos (independent journalist) join the episode this week. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

“That is the secret of propaganda: those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in its ideas, without ever noticing that they are being so”. These principles outlined by Hitler's master propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, continue to guide the propagators of hate in our times, albeit in service of a wholly new totalitarian ideology. At times vicious, at times more insidious, radical Islamist propaganda has taken the world by storm. From the execution of American hostages in orange suits to the pictures of a dreamland Caliphate where worthy men and women raise joyful families in faitful observance of Islam, the wedge driven by Jihadist propaganda at the core of European societies is real, deep and life-costing, with Europeans being led to assassinate fellow citizens in Paris, Manchester, Brussels and Vienna. If you doubt that ISIS' propaganda arm ought to be taken seriously at all, consider that its operators are paid on average 7 times more than those risking their lives on the Caliphate's battefront. What's the worldview of a propagandist? Who do they aim to recruit, and how are Europe's weaknesses exploited, including by enlisting the indirect help of adjacent civil society "gateway" organisations along the way? Jesse Morton of Parallel Networks and Hugo Micheron of Princeton are on the show this week to unpack. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". If you've ever been introduced to a History of global power balances, this quote from the Melian dialogue in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War may ring familiar. And yet mighty states and alliances, at odds with this realist mantra, do not always muscle their way diplomatically to get what they want. Sometimes they may opt to lay low and bid for their time. This was admittedly the tenor of China’s policy for years following the Tiananmen Square massacre. But a marked and rapid shift towards a more forceful form of Sinocentric diplomacy seems well under way, as China no longer fears strong-arming and threatening its critics in a post-Covid landscape rife with uncertainty and Western indecision. The "wolf warriors" refers to this new generation of diplomats, journalists and politicians taking us towards a nastier form of political and symbolic rapports between rival states. So to paraphrase the great Baha Men in their chart-topping single from 2000, today we ask—"who let China's wolves out?". Janka Oertel from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and Antoine Bondaz from the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS) know a thing or two, so listen closely. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

“I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it." You might recognize Hegel’s description of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican-born French emperor, ruler of Europe's fate for nearly two decades. Why on earth are my two favorite European podcasters riffing on Napoleon, I hear you ask? Partly because this year marks the 200th anniversary of his death in exile at Saint Helena. But more fundamentally, a connecting thread throughout our show endeavors to define the European experience by way of political, cultural and intellectual History. When it comes to delineating what makes us European, History rarely features if at all; and when it does, the post-1945 imperative of transcending it has a way of shadowing that past which isn't found to be symbolically valuable to supranational ideals. And yet if you are in continental Europe, your legal and administrative structure is most likely directly inherited from Napoleonic France, to cite just one form of inheritance. Does that legacy make Napoleon a great European? Listen to leading historians Michael Broers and Adam Zamoyski grapple with the question. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Piotr S. Wandycz, the Yale historian, reflected once that “what to the Poles was the Polish cause, to the outside world was the Polish question”. To be sure, he was writing in 1980 about the successive European conferences of territorial partition, from Vienna in 1815 to Potsdam in the immediate post-war. But this axiom sounds perhaps more prescient than ever since Poland’s much-touted entry into the pacified end-of-History after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Speaking of a “new Polish question” sounds provocative at best, and at worst a parti pris for the national conservative persuasion of the PiS party currently in government. And yet one cannot fully understand the political cycle of the last 15 years without a level-headed reexamination of the imperative of Polish sovereignty and self-determination that had been for centuries so menaced by enemies East and West. Whether we like it or not, these sentiments are again front and center in the political imagination of broad swathes of Polish society. Adam Zamoyski and Marek Matraszek will help us pierce the partisan veil imposed by the liberal internationalist consensus that has, by casting Poland as a backsliding, retrograde, proto-authoritarian state, distorted our common understanding of the uniqueness of the Polish experience. Enjoy! Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

In The Origins of Political Order (2011), Fukuyama described the problem of creating modern political institutions as one of “getting to Denmark”. The country, in his own words at the time, was “a mythical place known for its stable, democratic, peaceful, prosperous and inclusive institutions”. A few miles south of Denmark lie the Netherlands, a country that last week renewed Mark Rutte’s mandate to lead a coalition, from a somewhat reshuffled Parliament this time. Our two guests this week highlight a gradual shift in the core of Dutch politics towards a blend of fiscal hawkishness, moderate Euroscepticism and even a less liberal social policy than the Dutch norm. No other country, however, seems to have journeyed further into the proverbial Third Way and the technocratization of vast swathes of government policy. Simon Kuper (Financial Times) and Rem Korteweg (Clingendael Institute) walk us through the Fukuyamaesque clichés borne out in last week's race, whilst giving due warning that not everything is as may rosily seem in the Dutch Low Countries. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

As President Biden tours the American heartland touting his administration’s 1.9 trillion USD Covid-19 relief package laced with numerous tax tweaks and giveaways, we are convening two economic scholars to explore the confusing in-between that both America and the EU find themselves in—Bertrand Badré, who wrote Do We (Seriously) Wish to Change the World? (2020) upon serving as World Bank MD, and Martin Sandbu, the Financial Times' European Economics Commentator. On one hand, the imperative to relieve businesses, families and governments of the prolonged financial shock to their finances. On the other, the luring temptation to remake the economy on healthier grounds, socially and environmentally. Is the latter a siren song that could turn against the former? What are the lessons to be drawn from the interaction of policy and economic fundamentals over the past year, Covid-19 itself, and even prior crises in recent memory?   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

The forthcoming 2022 French presidential race is, already this early, slated to be one of the most uncertain in Fifth Republic history. In the latest rounds of polling, voting intention gaps between the two candidates most guaranteed a pulpit at the runoff have narrowed down to the demographic size of Marseille. Apart from Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, who will be running in the first round, what are the core cleavages shaping up to be, and what will each candidate’s pitch be to a French electorate reaching peak levels of both distrust and disillusion? We have dedicated this bonus to a purely speculative, fun-laced pre-game foreboding into more than a year's time from now. All predictive errors are naturally the fault of other podcasts. Enjoy!   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

This show has said its piece about Europe's inimical tendency to freeload on everything American, from defense spending to woke historical revisionism. But if there ever was an American Trap, Frédéric Pierrucci knows what it feels like being inside. Hell, he wrote a memoir about it (2019), but the book's title alone can't do justice to what it felt like being locked up behind the freezing bars of a maximum-security prison in Rhode Island. Frédéric was an Alstom senior executive, and his falling into the throes of a late 1970s US law written to combat corporate money laundering is, in his own telling, exclusively explained by General Electric's predatory acquisition of Alstom's power and grid capabilities in 2015, among the world's largest-ever industrial acquisitions. America is waging economic war against its supposed "allies", Frederic argues, and it is high time that we meet fire with fire. Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, a French legal délicatesse at the New York bar, isn't one to throw around terms like "economic war" lightly, but this conversation between them will hopefully awaken others to the harrowing pain that extra-territorial application of economic law can produce. We come in peace, DoJ!   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

After almost 4 years since 17 million Brits voted for this outcome, the UK has finally divorced from the European supranational behemoth. The year-end deal on the new trade rapport between the two sides of the Channel was elusive, but the sighs of relief in Whitehall and the Berlaymont have been music to each other’s ears. With two of the most insightful Brexit watchers in the market—Charles Grant, the 22-year President of the Center for European Reform (CER) and Mujtaba Rahman of Eurasia Group, NYU Stern and SciencesPo—, we bring to you a retrospective on the chaotic last 3.5 years of endless back-and-forth, vitriol and deadline extensions. If anything, what has Brexit taught us about the inner forces driving the UK and the EU, and to what extent will it be a template of future divorces of this sort?   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Luigi Barzini, the Italian social critic, wrote in his 1964 American bestseller about his home country that "the Italian way of life cannot be considered a success except by temporary visitors. It solves no problems. It makes them worse". Is the Italian political imagination as fractious as we tend to think? Was Matteo Salvini's clarion call to close Europe's borders a harbinger of a new immigration politics across Europe? If so, what are other canaries in the Italian coalmine that may augur tide changes across the Old World? Chris Caldwell and Alessandra Bocchi have both been more than temporary visitors over the years, and they more often than not seem to concur with Barzini, albeit with nuances. We are so blessed to have these two distinguished writers discuss the Italian malaise on our show, in the wake of Mario Draghi's formation of a new Italian government.   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Europe's year-end investment accord with China was, to say the least, controversial on a number of fronts. The draft of the so-called CAI fails to even mention China's exploitation of its Uyghur minority, a concession made in the narrow-minded interest of securing market access for a segment of the European corporate establishment that has been revealed as wielding undue influence over foreign policy. Furthermore, the deal presented the new Biden administration with a fait accompli that upsets its plans of building a common transatlantic front to hold China accountable for its abuses, without so much as a advance notice. We sit down to discuss the background and the fallout from the deal with Reinhard Bütikofer, the German Green MEP who chairs the European Parliament's delegation for relations with China and co-chairs the newly-formed Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, and François Godement, a world-renowned China expert and Sinologist at Institut Montaigne in Paris.   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

In the wake of the Capitol-storming mob of January 6th, a flurry of contradictory reactions from European officials followed, first warning about the viral potential of misinformation to spread on social media, and then against its deliberate taming by online platforms. Was this merely a symptom of the elusive equilibrium between speech freedoms and a sane public square increasingly convened by big tech, or is there a deeper parting of ways between America and Europe at the intersection of civil liberties and technoogy? As the transatlantic alliance grapples with the limits to free speech, we convened a discussion on these questions between Frances G. Burwell of McLarty Associates and the Atlantic Council (Washington DC) and Jacob Mchangama of the Justitia think-tank (Copenhagen) and the FIRE Foundation (Washington DC).   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

An old spectre is haunting Europe—in fact, it’s as old as Europe itself, but given that it manifests itself in varied forms throughout History, the latest ones have become harder to identify each time. What is driving the ongoing spike in antisemitism across Europe? Who are the perpetrators of recent attacks, what motivates them, and in what ways are they different from past forms? How are identity politics and the Israel-Palestinian conflict playing into this worrying trend? To discuss all this we have with us two leaders in the study of—and the fight against—antisemitism. Simone Rodan-Benzaquen leads the American Jewish Committee's (AJC) work in Europe, and Günther Jikeli is the Erna B. Rosenfeld Professor at Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Whilst France undergoes a genuine introspection over how to tackle Islamic separatism in the wake of renewed terrorism, US media have taken to portraying “laïcité" in a strikingly one-sided way, as some sort of thin veil for islamophobia. Where does this skewed lens come from? Why do foreign correspondents, particularly from American outlets, insist on catering to the woke sensibilities of their domestic audience by conveying only one side of the story, however narrowly espoused across France? This latest episode isn’t really a debate in itself but an attempt to give our English-speaking audience what hasn’t been afforded to them by mainstream media. Anne-Élisabeth Moutet (columnist at the Sunday Telegraph) and Agnès Poirier (broadcaster and author of Notre Dame: The Soul of France) couldn’t be better placed for the job, having both written extensively on French issues for a variety of US and UK outlets.   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

After a tiresome four years of petty spats over trade and defense spending, transatlantic relations seem off to a reset with Joe Biden in the White House—but what exactly can Europeans expect from an administration that Daniel Fried calls the “most pro-European since George H. W. Bush’s" in the late 80s? Ambassador Fried is a longtime career diplomat who most recently coordinated sanctions policy across the US government, and previously focused on European affairs as Assistant Secretary of State and US Ambassador in Warsaw. Hear us discuss with him the thorny concept of “strategic autonomy” and how together, the EU and the US can overcome our differences to focus on the worldful of mounting challenges we both face.   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

A debate has been raging over recent weeks in Brussels and across European capitals, one that many in our non-European audience may find somewhat confusing at times. What is European "strategic autonomy"? The term is being used by French President Emmanuel Macron to promote his vision of a Europe willing and able to wield power on its own, both in terms of defense and security—through increased military spending and enhanced NATO cooperation—and economics—as a way for the EU to rise to the challenge of the Sino-American strategic rivalry and find ways to carve out an economic role of its own, dependent on neither but engaged with both. In this bonus episode (we have refrained from inviting guests just this week), listen to Jorge and François as they unpack what strategic autonomy may mean and how this debate has been playing out. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Vernon Bogdanor is one of Britain’s foremost constitutional experts, which for a country that lacks a written constitution, means not that he lacks a working subject. In his latest book Britain and Europe in a Troubled World (2020), Mr. Bogdanor traces the historical undercurrents behind the UK’s troubled, always ambivalent ties with the European continent. Brexit in fact has thrust into broad daylight a relationship far more complicated than was suggested just by the issues at stake in the referendum of 2016. In this episode, Mr. Bogdanor helps us unpack what these diverging visions about the future of Europe were all about. fIj0BYr1RhkIQGHR9DsJ Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

David Goodhart is one of the UK's foremost scholars of populism. His previous book The Road to Somewhere (2017) documented the profound value divides that Trump and the Brexiteers rode in 2016, between an elite of anywheres driven by self-actualization, individualism and adaptiveness to social change and a majority of communitarian patriots, the somewheres. In his latest book Head Hand Heart (2020), his inquiries have taken him one step further, into the so-called "cognitive meritocracy" that governs how our societies apportion status and self-esteem between different careers and lifepaths. Hear us discuss with him his case for a fairer balance of rewards across the occupational ladder. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

"A shared commitment to liberty and self-government" is how Michael Kimmage defines the West, a notion at once elusive but also intuitive when it comes to world politics. Prof. Kimmages's The Abandonment of the West (2020) is an attempt to trace the cultural undercurrents that propelled "the West" to elite appeal in the early 20th century, but he brings unparalleled expertise on Russian matters too, having led the Russia & Ukraine portfolio at former Secretary of State John Kerry's Policy Planning Staff. In this episode we discuss with him Russia, the West and how Prof. Kimmage envisions the relationship between the two moving forward.   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

What is "illiberal democracy"? What do Fidesz and Hungary's PM Viktor Orbán stand for? To answer those questions we have with us Mr. Schöplfin, a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) with Fidesz, Hungary’s Christian-Democratic ruling party for 15 years. Previously, he had a long career as an academic in the UK, and will be publishing two titles this year, A Contested Europe and The European Polis. We unpack with him the trends and philosophical foundations that are transforming the EU from a project built on consensus to one based on a single proto-federalist path and a punitive approach to recalcitrant countries, not least his native Hungary.   Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Five years after the Charlie Hebdo attack, a Chechen Islamist beheaded a middle school teacher for showing a cartoon of Mohamed during a class on freedom of expression. Despite Emmanuel Macron’s bill on “islamist separatism” there’s a distinct feeling that France’s identity and unity are at stake. Gilles Kepel, one of the country’s most respected voices on the issue of Islamist terrorism, helps us unpack how France got there and how to deal with the Islamist poison. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

"White fragility" wasn’t yet a term of art when Ed West published Small Men on the Wrong Side of History (2020), but our ever-growing culture wars since seem to have confirmed his every pre-existing thesis. Conservatives may still win elections on both sides of the Atlantic, but in the culture war they’re losing “bigly”. In the third episode of Uncommon Decency, Ed unpacks these profound cultural and demographic trends with a lot of wit and humour. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

John Kampfner was a young reporter in East Germany when the Berlin Wall came down. He has since experienced first-hand the country's unique journey through reunification, multiculturalism, migration, the European project and its own troubled memory of the Holocaust. John’s ode to Germany in Why the Germans Do It Better (2020) is about a deep admiration for the country’s embrace of maturity, consensus, political moderation and liberal democracy. The book is a fascinating read, timelier than ever as Chancellor Angela Merkel reaches her twilight months in office. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or uncommondecencypod@gmail.com.

Trump has rattled the transatlantic relationship, but is he as anomalous as he’s made out to be? In Paradise Lost (2019), Ben Haddad argues that the trends pulling America away from a position of liberal hegemony buttressing Europe’s security infrastructure are older and more profound. In it, he calls for Europe to wake up to a new world order marked by the return of History and grow its own strategic autonomy. A former senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and advisor to presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, Ben is currently director of the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C. Through his own journey and work, Ben encapsulates the kind of transatlantic conversation that Uncommon Decency will work to spark. Rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or undecencypod@gmail.com.