The problem of X as a source of hate and a threat to democracy is back at the top of the policy agenda. Elon Musk's social media platform circulated a large amount of false information as well as images of extreme violence during the recent terror attack in Israel. A European Commissioner, Thierry Breton, said that content probably was illegal in Europe and threatened X with fines. That standoff is likely to drag on for a while. But there's another European on Musk's case. His name is Imran Ahmed and he's already done much to hold X, and Musk, to account. Imran, who's British, runs a research and advocacy non-profit: The Center for Countering Digital Hate. The Center campaigns to get social media platforms to suspend or remove harmful accounts and stop advertisers spending money at sites spreading harmful content. And whereas Musk has kept his exchanges with Breton cordial, Musk has treated Imran like, well, vermin. The tension between Musk and Imran began after the Centre published its Toxic Twitter report in February. That report said that Musk had allowed large numbers of bad actors — Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists and conspiracists — back onto the platform with the goal of getting more eyeballs and advertising dollars. Now X is suing Imran's Center for losses amounting to tens of millions of dollars in advertising and other costs. How X's lawsuit in a California court pans out remains to be seen. But the discomfort Imran has already inflicted on Musk shows that David still can take on Goliath. And Imran's approach also holds lessons for regulators, like Mr. Breton, for the battles ahead. By way of disclosure: a board member at EU Scream also serves as a member of the board of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. 

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We need to talk about a Far Right EU. Nativists and ultraconservatives are being actively courted by the European mainstream including at the level of the EU. There's the advent of prime minister Giorgia Meloni, with her party's roots in Italian fascism, and then there's the popularity in France of Marine Le Pen, previously seen as too extreme. But would a Le Pen presidency really mark a fundamental change for the EU? Or even an existential threat, as commentators have long warned? The disarming answer from the author and think tanker Hans Kundnani is, probably not. The EU has already veered onto a course that's compatible with the likes of Le Pen and Meloni — away from social welfare as a defining feature and more toward an agenda that draws on ethnic and cultural identity. It's one of the ideas that Hans unpacks in his new book, Eurowhiteness. In this second of two episodes that take their cue from that book, Hans is in conversation with Mehreen Khan. Mehreen was an EU correspondent for the Financial Times in Brussels, before joining The Times of London as economics editor. She observes how pro-Europeans can also make pretty good nativists — and how many are prepared to tolerate the far right, just as long as they don't challenge European monetary union or foreign policy. So with far-right ideas in the ascendant, is there scope for optimism? Europe's second largest political group, the Socialists & Democrats, could consider a spell in opposition. That would avoid a grand coalition with the group that's currently the largest, the centre right, together with the far right. But that may be wishful thinking. And as for the Greens, their agenda may make it hard to rely on them to take a stand. Hans and Mehreen are joined by Helena Malikova, who moderates this episode, which is part of our Brussels So White series about race and the EU. Helena Malikova is talking in a personal capacity and the views expressed are not attributable to her employer, the European Commission. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to listen to Part 1, How Eurowhiteness Shapes the EU.

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Europeans are comfortable talking about whiteness in the American context. But when it comes to their own continent, not so much. That serves to shut down an important conversation about police brutality, decolonisation and migration. The resistance to discussing whiteness is starkly apparent at the level of the EU and it's another sign the European project is heading in a troubling direction. That's the assessment of Hans Kundnani, the author of a ground-breaking new book titled Eurowhiteness. Hans is an associate fellow at the think tank Chatham House in London, and he was previously with the German Marshall Fund and the European Centre for Foreign Relations. In his book, Hans describes an EU that still presents itself as congenial and cosmopolitan. In reality, he says, the EU has become much harder edged — and much more about protecting cultural and ethnic identity. Marking her return to EU Scream is Mehreen Khan, a former EU correspondent for the Financial Times in Brussels and now economics editor at The Times of London. Mehreen says Eurowhiteness is a rich concept — one that helps shed light on the Balkan wars, the colonial reflexes of senior EU figures as well as the quasi religious aspect of some pro-Europeanism. Hans and Mehreen are joined by Helena Malikova, who moderates the first of two episodes that are part of our BrusselsSoWhite series about race in the EU. Helena is talking in a personal capacity and the views expressed are not attributable to her employer, the European Commission. If you enjoy this episode, look out for Part 2 on Eurowhiteness and a far right EU. 

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News from Spain where a far-right political party called Vox lost seats in the recent general election. Vox are culture warriors in the mould of the US MAGA movement: anti-migrant, anti-LGBT+, anti-Islam, anti-feminist and with a predilection for blocking action on EU climate goals. The response in Brussels to Vox's poor showing was triumphalism. But the uncomfortable truth is that Vox could well have been headed into power as the preferred coalition partner for Alberto Feijóo, the leader of the Spanish conservatives. As it turned out, the July 23 election was a stalemate. A coalition with Vox looks less likely, for now. But Vox could yet form part of a conservative-led government in future. And the prospect of conservatives relying on the far-right mirrors a similar dynamic across Europe. Conservatives already partner with the far-right in Italy, Sweden and Finland and at the regional level in Spain and Austria. Even the leader of Germany's conservative CDU has been eyeing such an arrangement. So how to make sense of this courtship of far-right parties? Can conservatives defang those to their right by co-opting them? Or does co-option merely give bigotry a bigger platform and move politics in a more radical direction? Whatever the case, conservatives bear a special responsibility when making alliances to their right. That special responsibility was the topic of our episode with Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt a couple of years ago. We're re-running an abridged version of that conversation in response to what's happening in Spain — and because we're in the run up to EU election season. The European People’s Party, which groups together centre-right national parties, is flirting more openly than ever with potential allies who represent a new era of blood and soil politics, and who balk at modern progressive democracy — including the need to address climate change. Conservative parties "have to deal with and think about and worry about what happens on their right edges," says Dan.  They must "figure out a strategy to distance themselves from these groups, but at the same time not allow these groups to get out of control, and shape politics."

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Polish state media still is treated as a legitimate public service by European authorities. Yet many Poles refer to it as a factory of hate. They say Polish state TV and radio first and foremost serve to advance the agenda of the ruling Law and Justice party in Warsaw. And while Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was a pioneer in bullying media, and Viktor Orbán of Hungary took state control to new extremes, the Polish hard right has been quick to catch up. Since Law and Justice came to power eight years ago, Polish state media has become an outlet for demonising judges, LGBT people, and opposition politicians — and the deleterious effects are even felt beyond Poland. In the case of Dorota Bawołek, a respected Polish TV correspondent in Brussels, the abuse appears to follow a pattern. First her words and actions are misrepresented; next those misrepresentations are turned into lurid stories broadcast by Polish state media; and finally Dorota is confronted by an avalanche of online trolling. The attacks on Dorota are part of wider concerns about press freedom that have prompted EU plans for a Media Freedom Act. Among the Act's priorities is stopping governments turning public service media into their mouthpieces — although few observers expect any immediate impact. For its part, the European Broadcasting Union has warned about the undue influence of "political masters" and it says it wants independent oversight of public media. Yet Polish state radio and television remain full EBU members. The latest attack on Dorota came in October after she interviewed Polish politician and former president of the European Council Donald Tusk. Tusk's centre-right Civic Platform is the only real viable challenger to Law and Justice in Poland's upcoming elections. But there are worries the elections will prove neither free nor fair, especially in a media environment largely controlled by Law and Justice. "The game is not fair, for sure," says Dorota. The "media are the fourth power" but "we are being killed and the EU is watching." Listen (in Polish) to Dorota's podcast Stacja Bruksela.

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Philippe Lamberts is advancing one of the most progressive agendas ever to reach the upper echelons of the EU power structure. This month the co-head of the Greens at the European Parliament will convene a conference that seeks to change, well, just about everything. The conference is called Beyond Growth — an umbrella term for thinking about how growth in a materially finite world is reaching its limits. All 1,500 seats have been snapped up and thousands of people are expected to watch via the Internet. But what's more remarkable is how Philippe got some of the EU's heaviest hitters to come along too. Among those expected to address the conference: Ursula von der Leyen, the conservative president of the European Commission. Her presence shows the growth debate is no longer "for loonies," says Philippe. But Philippe may also be cover for von der Leyen: she may want to be remembered as someone who at least tried to seek alternatives to growth models and metrics like GDP before the climate crisis worsens. For now, most policymakers are stuck on the idea that we'll be able to find a source of nearly unlimited high efficiency low carbon energy, and that we'll do so in time to avoid sharp declines in standards of living. The resulting inertia infuriates activists like those who disrupted the Brussels Economic Forum this month. They are demanding that the EU jettison an "ideology of infinite economic growth" without delay. But such demands sit awkwardly with winning steady and sustained buy-in from lobbies and voters. So how to face the future with the odds stacked so heavily against a satisfactory outcome? Philippe starts this episode with thoughts on how his Christianity informs his thinking on Beyond Growth — and on how his faith helps him deal with the existential questions we all must now live with.

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Conveniently at the heart of the EU Qatargate corruption scandal is a rogue NGO. Conveniently, that is, for EU officials and lawmakers who dislike non-governmental organisations. NGOs frequently end up in an awkward relationship with states and international organisations, says Thomas Davies at City University, and that awkwardness increasingly seems to include the EU too. The trigger for the current tensions is an NGO ("Fight Impunity") that allegedly worked with Morocco and Qatar to channel cash to socialist members of the European Parliament. Conservatives, ultraliberals and the far right now are calling for NGOs to pass a kind of EU loyalty test and to classify some NGOs as foreign agents. Carlotta Besozzi, the head of Civil Society Europe, is among those who detect an increasingly hostile environment for NGOs. Among organisations under assault is Femyso, the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations. EU support for Femyso irks MEPs who dislike its fight against Islamophobia and who suggest it has links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Femyso says such allegations are false and malicious and designed to undermine an organisation with no ties to political parties or political movements. Femyso's former president Youssef Himmat was smeared in similar ways by the United Arab Emirates — and his story now forms part of a must-read article in a recent edition of The New Yorker. With thanks to the Open Society Foundations for partnering with EU Scream on this episode.

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Families can go wrong. And unless you've been under a rock these last weeks, you'll know that a number of members of the Socialist family at the European Parliament went very wrong. They allegedly took sack loads of Qatari cash on top of their already generous salaries and benefits in return, it seems, for trying to block their own Socialist colleagues from criticising Qatar's record on human rights. In this episode, Lara Wolters, a Socialist member, gives a first-hand account of being obstructed and misled by two of the prime suspects in the scandal. She also shares her feelings of vindication now that the truth is coming out. Yet Lara shows compassion for Eva Kaili, a young mother like herself, who has been implicated in the so-called Qatargate scandal and separated from her daughter. Also in this episode, a lawmaker from outside the Socialist family: co-president of the Left group Manon Aubry. Manon was convinced she saw the heavy hand of Qatar on lawmakers weeks before news about the scandal broke. So she blew the whistle on social media, where her video on the topic has racked up nearly 70,000 views. Manon, who has emerged as one of the firmest advocates for an EU ethics overhaul, reserves some of her most acid criticism for the conservative EPP group, which she says perpetuated a culture of opacity that has helped breed corruption.

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Putin's barbarism is somehow felt by us all even though it can be hard to get to grips with the magnitude of what's at stake. One reason may be what writer and academic Tom Nichols calls normalcy bias, an inherent resistance to accepting that large changes can upend our lives. Another may be what Lithuanian arts curator Raimundas Malasauskas calls unlearned lessons from history about Russia's imperialist and colonialist drives. Political scientist David Rowe is a Fulbright NATO Security Studies scholar and a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and he has been looking into why so much of Europe wasn't ready for Putin. David, who's on sabbatical from Kenyon College in the US, gives his personal views about how the EU needs to rethink the role of war and peace in building and maintaining liberal democracy. Among points he addresses in this podcast are the consequences for the Western allies of not spilling their own blood in Ukraine, and the resentment Ukrainians will surely feel if the door to the EU club isn't really open after all. David starts with a description of the philosophical roots — laid some two centuries ago — of the EU's approach to international politics. It's an approach that's helped much of Europe keep the peace over recent decades. But it may also have left Europe flat-footed in the face of abhorrent aggression. "The problem," says David, "is that peace seems so evidently good, that it is very easy to overlook the deep structures that give rise to it."

Poem 11/22 by Ariana Reines.
Video from Mars Returns in Kaunas. 

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The European Parliament is reeling from corruption allegations involving the Gulf state of Qatar. Members' offices have been sealed. Raids have been carried out by Italian and Belgian authorities. And large sums of cash seized including sacks of banknotes from the father of one of the lawmakers at the centre of the scandal. That lawmaker, Eva Kaili, was with the Greek socialist Pasok party. She was a vice president of the European Parliament — and she'd been strongly promoting Qatar. Kaili has now been stripped of her title and is in custody. Of course it's far from the first corruption scandal in the EU. But in this case there's the promise of further lurid revelations of cash-fuelled influence peddling on a much bigger scale than previously thought. And now the race is on to apportion blame. Some lawmakers suggest malign foreign interference is mainly responsible. Others say non-governmental organisations and campaign groups should be in the crosshairs. Still others stress that there will always be bad apples and so there should be no need for collective guilt in a Parliament with 705 members. But such finger-pointing mostly amounts to denial and deflection. That's because the dumpster fire at the European Parliament may be largely of the EU's own making. Foreign governments still can meet lawmakers largely undetected, and there's still no central independent investigator and no system for anonymous whistle-blowers. It's what Transparency International calls a complete lack of independent ethics oversight. And while the EU has many gifted politicians and policymakers who are above reproach — still too many are low grade national party hacks and worse. One of the leading voices on making the E.U. more accountable and transparent is Alberto Alemanno. Alberto is Jean Monnet Professor in European Union Law at HEC Paris, and he sits on the board of several civil society organisations. He's also a good sport for taking a scooter through downtown Brussels, in the dark, on an icy evening, to come talk about, yes, "Qatargate".

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