In Solidarity - by openDemocracy

The already fraught relationship between the United States and South Africa has been put under even more strain with Donald Trump's decision to cut foreign aid, not to mention South Africa's case against Israel at the ICJ.

Menzi Ndhlovu, a political economist and risk analyst at Signal Risk a risk analysis consultancy focused on Africa, joins us to discuss this critical moment for South Africa.

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In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy’s Africa Editor, Ayodeji Rotinwa. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

00:00 Introduction

02:51 South Africa's support for Palestine

09:19 The street that caused a geopolitical issue

14:06 How the ANC has changed

16:26 Trump's issues with South Africa

22:10 Musk's issues with South Africa

24:10 Is the US trying to bring South Africa to heel?

28:00 How can South Africa appease the US?

31:30 Is there an upside to the rift with the US?

34:28 South Africa's moral quandary

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny Sriskandarajah is the author of Power to the People: Use your voice, change the world

Sriskandarajah discusses the shift from a positive phase of civic engagement to a reversal over the past decade, emphasising the importance of community networks beyond state and market fixations. He highlights the role of civil society in nurturing democracy and the need for international solidarity. Sriskandarajah shares personal experiences from his childhood in Sri Lanka and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, underscoring the power of collective action and the interconnectedness of global issues.

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Get our independent journalism delivered direct to your inbox, join the openDemocracy Newsletter today. 

In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jimmy The Giant is a popular YouTuber who did what many would consider to be beyond the pale - he changed his mind about politics. Jimmy went from heading down the right wing pipeline of self improvement gurus to U-turning and becoming, dare we say, ‘woke’. 

In today’s episode Aman Sethi talks to Jimmy about how and why he changed his mind about the political landscape and together they examine the changing online landscape that is making it all too easy for mainly young men to slip gradually into the world of alt-right politics. 

Jimmy the Giant: @JimmyTheGiant

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Get our independent journalism delivered direct to your inbox, join the openDemocracy Newsletter today. 

In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Featuring audio clips from CSPAN, Jimmy The Giant and Rebel News. 

00:00 Introduction

03:32 Jimmy's history

08:30 The rightward turning point

13:22 The popularity of Elon Musk

15:17 The need for hope

17:23 Ad - The World Unspun Podcast

18:48 Disillusion in young men

24:11 How do we get people thinking about the world again?

27:47 Are algorithms actually the problem?

30:13 Understanding online culture

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Borders patrolled by AI-powered robotic dogs once seemed like something purely in the realm of dystopian sci-fi novels. But the border industrial complex is working hard to make them a part of our (still dystopian) reality. 

Petra Molnar, author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, joins us to discuss the militarization of border technologies, the racial politics of migration and the complexities of being both a refugee and an economic migrant.

Petra is a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in migration and human rights. She is the co-creator of the Migration and Technology Monitor, a collective of civil society, journalists, academics, and filmmakers interrogating technological experiments on people crossing borders.

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In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Featuring audio clips from NowThis, TVO Today and ParliamentTV

00:00 Introduction

01:39 Why Petra you write The Walls Have Eyes?

07:00 The theatre of surveillance

08:55 The history of the politics of migration

11:47 Racial politics and migration

14:37 AI's roll in policing borders

18:43 How do we decide who is 'worthy' or migrating?

20:09 Is Trump creating a new type of migrants?

22:00 Defining a refugee in the modern age

24:08 Petra's experiences in Israel and Palestine

27:28 The death of physical borders

29:19 How can we resist?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Something strange is happening in Germany. 

Last year, the Alternative for Germany or AFD, as it scored, became the first far right party to win a state election in Germany since World War Two. Then in February this year, the AfD came second in Germany's national elections, with 20% of the votes.

The AFD isn't just another populist right wing party. Members of the party have consistently downplayed the horrors of Nazi Germany. What is happening?

Georg Diez, journalist, writer, and author of a Tipping Points: From the promises of the 90s to the crises of the present joins us to discuss how he believes we're witnessing the birth of a new form of far-right politics and should prepare ourselves accordingly.

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Get our independent journalism delivered direct to your inbox, join the openDemocracy Newsletter today.

In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Featuring audio clips from CSPAN, Diem 24, Institute For Policy Studies

00:00 Introduction

01:23 What's going on in Germany?

05:30 The global financial crisis and the rise of the far-right

08:12 Right-wing extremism in modern Germany

12:01 Is fascism the right word?

15:27 What hope do we have for the future?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do the Ukrainians at the heart of the conflict with Russia feel about being used as a bargaining chip by countries like the United States? In this episode we speak to Volydomyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, academic, and editor of Ukraine World. Volydomyr lives in Kyiv and is also the host of the Explaining Ukraine podcast.

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Get our independent journalism delivered direct to your inbox, join the openDemocracy Newsletter today.

In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Featuring audio clips from CSPAN

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The rising global far right is violent, racist and misogynistic – and depends on exploiting women. 

While many of us associate attacks on women’s bodily autonomy with ultra-religious groups, openDemocracy’s Sian Norris argues that the stripping away of abortion rights is a political issue, rooted in fascistic ideas about women and men. Her book, Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, explains how organisations and individuals obsessed with stopping the “great replacement” are fuelling the assault on reproductive rights, and their success relies on recruiting, and exploiting, women.

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Get our independent journalism delivered direct to your inbox, join the openDemocracy Newsletter today.

In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Featuring audio clips from CSPAN

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have we all been looking at Donald Trump’s success in the wrong way? Jeff Sharlet, journalist and author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, makes a compelling case for examining his rise not as a political figure, but as a religious one. After all, Trump himself would surely be the first to suggest that he is divine.

Do the president’s most ardent supporters truly believe that he is an ‘imperfect vessel’ chosen by God? Join us as we discuss.

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Get our independent journalism delivered direct to your inbox, join the openDemocracy Newsletter today.

In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Featuring audio clips from CSPAN

00:00 Introduction

01:04 Why did Jeff write 'The Undertow?'

04:45 Trump the 'imperfect vessel'

06:06 Actually listening to Trump

10:01 The people who follow Trump

14:33 The appeal of Trump to people of colour

18:16 Where do we go from here?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since al-Assad’s regime fell from power in December 2024, much of the reporting on Syria has focussed on geopolitics in the region. More concern has been paid to the reactions of neighbouring nations than the ordinary Syrians whose lives have been uprooted by years of violence. 

But Syria is so much more than a strategic stronghold to be fought over by nations in the Global North. 

We spoke with Waseem Albahri, a Syrian cultural heritage specialist who works to preserve heritage sites in conflict zones, about the challenges of reclaiming a country’s history after it’s been held hostage by a regime that was quite literally re-writing the history books.

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Get our independent journalism delivered direct to your inbox, join the openDemocracy Newsletter today.

In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Featuring audio clips from Aljazera, Middle East Eye, Wall Street Journal and France24

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trump 2.0: Is This the Inauguration of A New Era of the Strongman?

Professor Wendy Brown is an American political theorist, UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and an author. 

Professor Brown’s bibliography includes what we refer to as ‘the Trump trilogy' - three books that span the political career of President Donald Trump. Given Trump’s return to the White House we felt it was the perfect time to speak to her about how a new blueprint for authoritarian leaders seems to be materialising before us. 

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Get our independent journalism delivered direct to your inbox, join the openDemocracy Newsletter today.

In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. It’s hosted by openDemocracy editor-in-chief Aman Sethi, an award-winning journalist and author of A Free Man. Support the show by visiting openDemocracy.net/donate.

Credits:

Presented by Aman Sethi

Edited and produced by Nandini Archer, James Battershill & Ayodeji Rotinwa

Theme song ‘Odyssey’ performed by Edward Abela

Featuring audio clips from CSPAN

00:50 How surprising was Trump's victory?

04:00 Why do Democrats find economic populism so hard?

06:34 Do pundits overlook Trump's populism?

11:30 Is chaos part of the plan?

13:37 The destruction of institutions

21:49 Profound unfreedom

25:30 Is Dehli a window into the future of the US? 

27:12 Charisma and demagoguery 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.