Novara Media

As Euro 2024 gets underway, election results show a surge of support for the far-right across Europe. Can football help us make sense of it?

This week on Pro Revolution Soccer, Juliet Jacques and Tom Williams look at the connections between football and fascism, and explain how the same forces that allowed a tiny elite to take over the game are now reopening the door to the far-right.

Music by Matt Huxley. Design by Pietro Garrone. Produced by Chal Ravens.

What’s it like to be left-wing in an aspiring ethnostate?

Israel has swung hard to the right in the last few decades, with self-described fascists now in government. But a left remains, calling not just for a ceasefire in the war on Gaza, but for the end to the apartheid regime as a whole. What power do they have?

Comedian and activist Noam Shuster-Eliassi and +972 Magazine journalist Haggai Matar talk to Rivkah Brown about the terrifying consequences of resistance to the Israeli state, how Jewish ethnic minorities are treated within Israel, and how to survive in a society that treats ‘leftist’ as a slur.

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Novara Media’s football podcast returns for another crack at the silverware! Every Wednesday until the Euro 2024 final, Juliet Jacques and Tom Williams provide political and tactical analysis of the tournament in an episode of two halves.

This week: the strange spectacle of politicians pretending to like football, the changing status of women and LGBT+ players and fans, what Starmer will do for the game, and England’s prospects after a flat showing against Iceland.

Music by Matt Huxley. Design by Pietro Garrone. Produced by Chal Ravens.

After investigating the politics of cool on the last Trip episode, the crew turn their attention to another distinctly modern sensibility: camp.

Digging into Susan Sontag’s formative 1964 essay on the camp aesthetic, Nadia, Keir and Jem think about how elements of the artificial, the theatrical and the sentimental come together in camp objects, from porn movies to Tiffany lamps to risqué radio comedy.

Find our ever-expanding playlist on Spotify by searching “ACFM”.

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS licence number: LE-0016481

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Renewable energy technology is only getting cheaper. And yet it hasn’t increased its share of the energy mix for two decades.

So what explains this paradox: cheap green energy with incredibly slow adoption?

According to Brett Christophers, there is a straightforward explanation for this seeming paradox: the capitalist need for profits. And green energy projects are not as profitable as oil and gas.

So can capitalism address the climate crisis? Does the state need to play a decisive role? How is it possible that China is both a global leader and a laggard in greenhouse gas emissions? And is Europe over?

You can buy Brett’s book, “The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet” here.

The right have ditched climate denial and found something worse. They’re doubling down on the exhaustion of people and planet alike, making us run ever-faster just to stay in place. Can we turn our collective exhaustion into a climate politics of rest and recuperation?

That’s the urgent question Ajay Singh Chaudhary asks in The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. He tells Richard Hames about the strange new alliances forged by climate change, what we can learn from global peasant struggles, and the possibilities buried in a world coming apart at the seams.

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The Indian election will be one of the largest the world has ever seen, with almost 1 billion people eligible to vote. It’s often said that India is the world’s biggest democracy. But what if that isn’t quite true? What if Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister for the last decade, has undermined the very building blocks of what we consider a democratic state to be?

To discuss the caste system, political assassinations and state-sanctioned pogroms, Aaron is joined by anthropologist Alpa Shah, author of ‘The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India’.

What exactly is cool? Well, if it was that easy to describe, it obviously wouldn’t be cool. In this Trip, Keir, Jem and Nadia wonder if cool can ever be politically useful, and what happens when cool is used as a disciplining force.

With ideas from Pierre Bourdieu, Norman Mailer and Paul Gilroy, and music from OutKast, Gwen Stefani and Miles Davis, the gang adopt a blank expression to explore the mysterious rules of this singular modern concept.

Check out all the books and music mentioned in the show: https://novara.media/acfm

Produced and edited by Matt Huxley and Chal Ravens. PRS licence number: LE-0016481

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The difference between sex and gender is fundamental to how we talk about trans people. But what if it obscures the richness of life outside of gender norms?

There is so much more to gender non-conforming people than this academic, middle-class, distinction – so says Jules Gill-Peterson, a historian at Johns Hopkins University and the author of A Short History of Trans Misogyny.

In conversation with Eleanor Penny, Gill-Peterson reaches back into the past to explain what it means to be a queen, why trans women do sex work, and how to reignite the celebration of femininity as a cornerstone of feminist politics.

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In the pouring rain and 20 points behind in the polls, Rishi Sunak has announced that a UK general election will take place on 4 July. Michael Walker and Moya Lothian-McLean report.

Plus: Ireland, Spain and Norway have announced their intention to recognise Palestine as a state.

Follow our election coverage on Novara Live every weekday at 6pm on YouTube, and subscribe to the podcast by searching “Novara Live” in your app.