RADIKAAL

My guest today is Guilherme Casarões, a Professor of Public Administration, Political Science and International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. He has mostly published on Brazilian foreign policy, but his more recent interest is in the far right in Brazil, most notably Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Together with two colleagues he runs the Twitter account Observatório da Extrema Direita (Observatorium of the Extreme Right) at @oedbrasil.His personal Twitter account is @GCasaroes. 

My guest today is Sithembile Mbete, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she teaches on International Relations and South African politics. She has published several articles on the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and is at the start of a book project on populism in South Africa. You can follow her on Twitter at @sthembete.

My next guest will be Kacper Rekawek. Kacper is an affiliated researcher at the Counter Extremism Project and a GLOBSEC associate fellow. Between 2016 and 2019 he led the latter’s national security program and has published on a broad range of extremist and terrorism groups. Since 2014 he has been monitoring the topic of foreign fighters in Ukraine and earlier this year published a report titled “Career Break or New Career? Extremist Foreign Fighters in Ukraine” for the Counter Extremism Project. He tweets at @KacperRekawek.

My guest today is Evan Smith. Evan is a Research Fellow in History in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University in Australia. His academic work focuses on Australian, British and South African politics and history. He has published on a broad variety of topics relevant to RADIKAAL, including British Communism, counter-terrorism, as well as fascism and anti-fascism. His latest book is the very timely “No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech”, published by Routledge this year. He tweets at @evanishistory.

My guest is Winnie Wong. Winnie has been at the forefront of almost every major progressive campaign in the US in this century. She was a leading organizer for Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Sandy, and the Women’s March on Washington. She co-founded People for Bernie, and helped develop the viral hashtag “Feel the Bern”. After serving as a Senior Political Advisor to Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, she is now an Advisor of the Once Again PAC, which strives for “the continuation of everything we’ve been fighting for”. She tweets at @WaywardWinifred.

My guest is the singer songwriter and activist Billy Bragg. Billy started his music career in the late 1970s in the band Riff Raff, had a short flirt with the British Army, before embarking on a solo career that has led to twelve albums so far. He is also a tireless political activist for a broad range of progressive causes and groups, including my friends at the anti-racist group Hope not Hate. Finally, he has written several books, including his latest booklet “The Three Dimensions of Freedom”, published with Faber last year. He tweets at @BillyBragg.

My guest is Justin Salhani. Justin is a freelance journalist who has written on both radical politics and football for many different outlets. He lived and worked for several years in Lebanon, where he also almost had a football career. Two of his most recent ventures are also football-related. The first is Guerrilla FC, which started as a football team in Washington DC, but has since evolved into a creative studio and streetwear brand inspired by football culture. The second, founded last month, is the podcast “The Streets Will Remember”, which assesses the legacies of the greatest footballers on and off the pitch. He tweets at @JustinSalhani.

My guest is Nicole Curato. Nicole is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra in Australia. Her academic work focuses on deliberative democracy as well as on populism in the Philippines. She is also a much sought-after commentator on politics in the Philippines. Last year she published the book Democracy in a Time of Misery: From Spectacular Tragedies to Deliberative Action with Oxford University Press. You can follow Nicole on Twitter at @NicoleCurato. 

My guest today is Matthew Oware. Matthew recently left DePauw University for the University of Richmond in Virginia, where he will be the Irving May Professor of Human Relations in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. Matthew’s work centers on the intersections of race, class, and gender in popular culture with a particular focus on hip hop music. In 2018 he published the book I Got Say Something to Say: Gender, Race, and Social Consciousness in Rap Musicwith Palgrave.

My guest this week is Rafal Pankowski, a Professor at the Institute of Sociology of Collegium Civitas in Warsaw, who has published widely on nativism in Poland. He is also co-founder of the anti-racist ‘Never Again’ Association and a tireless activist to kick racism out of football. I will talk with Rafal about the transformation of the far right in Poland, the democratic challenges that Poland is facing under the current PiS government, and the continuing problem of racism in Polish football.