The Hated and the Dead

Zviad Gamsakhurdia was a Georgian nationalist leader who served as his country's first independent President from 1991 until 1992. Under him, Georgia became a hellish place, ripped apart by civil war, organised crime and militia violence.

Sadly, Gamsakhurdia cannot be acquitted in all of this as a placeholder- his commitment to an ethnically homogenous Georgia, in a part of the world anything but, was always going to lead to problems. Gamsakhurdia’s own life ended in a Tblisi bunker in 1993, probably by suicide, and is a rather sordid reflection of how Georgia’s own utopian dream for its future died on its feet in the early 1990s.

Listening to my guest today, Gamsakhurdia reminded me of two former subjects on this podcast, the Welsh nationalist leader Saunders Lewis, and the Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic, both of whom also had a no-holds-barred and blunt approach to nationalism. Thankfully, the country has taken a different and cannier path to self-government since, and is a relative success story among the post-Soviet states.

My guest for this conversation today is Tom de Waal. Tom is a senior fellow with Carnegie Europe, and is one of the leading authorities on the Caucasus region. I would highly recommend is book The Caucasus: An Introduction, to anyone looking to read up on this amazing and enigmatic part of our continent. As well as Gamsakhurdia’s life, Tom and I discussed the bizarre interplay between Stalinism and Georgian nationalism, Georgia’s place in Europe, and how a country and a region so far away from the capitals of diplomacy has forged relations with the great World powers. 

Paul Kagame has been President of Rwanda since 2000. He can be blamed more than any other person for the unsatisfactory way in which the 1994 Rwandan Genocide has been remembered, both inside Rwanda and across the World. 

Kagame has centralised power around himself, painting himself as the man who stopped the terrible events of 1994 in their tracks, and telling Rwandans that only he can bring stability to a country that in most of our lifetimes tore itself apart in the worst way imaginable. 

As my guest today tells us, this is not only fatuous, but worse, the West believes Kagame. Kagame is seen as a reliable ally of the governments in Washington and London. The West has chosen not to delve into the conflicting narratives surrounding the genocide, and lazily believes the one that suits its interests best: that Kagame, whilst a little rough around the edges, is a consummate stabilitocrat. He wouldn’t hurt a fly; a person perhaps, but as long as he doesn’t present problems for them, they’re willing to turn the other cheek. 

My guest for today’s conversation is Michela Wrong, a British journalist and author who focuses on Africa, previously working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters, the BBC and the Financial Times. Her recent book, Do Not Disturb, details the terrible lengths to which Kagame has gone to remain in power.  

George Orwell is perhaps the most important journalist and writer of political fiction of the twentieth century. Though he only lived to 47, dying of tuberculosis in 1950, he did more in half a century than most would in three of four lifetimes. Reluctantly signing up, and then ceasing to be, an imperial officer in Burma, voluntarily entering destitution in Paris, and fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell was never afraid to stare suffering and desperation right in the face. 

He was also never one to run with a crowd; of all Orwell’s firmly held beliefs, in anti-imperialism, in freedom from oppression and opposition to totalitarianism, none were more important to him than the freedom to think for yourself. This has made him many enemies on the left, a place Orwell called home. The brilliant thing about Orwell as a political thinker is that most of the attacks levied at him, and the devices used to deploy them, resemble the sort of attacks directed towards the enemies of the totalitarian regime in 1984, his most read and celebrated novel. 

But in a world free from Soviet domination- which Orwell devoted the last years of his life to criticising- what relevance does he hold? Had he lived a longer life, what would he have become? What would he think today? These are the central questions discussed in today’s show. 

My guest for today is David Osland (@david__osland). David is an unabashed left-winger, and a journalist, who writes primarily for the website LabourHub. 

Leonard Leo is an American legal activist who has done more than any other person to shift the United States Supreme Court to the political right. Pivotal in the selection and confirmation of all six conservative judges currently sitting on the Court, Leo could be seen as ground zero for the Court's recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has jeopardised abortion rights in the US. 

The Supreme Court, whose role it is to ensure that legislation passed by Congress is constitutional, is increasingly becoming the final word in US political life. Therefore, the liberal-conservative balance of the nine judges sitting on it is, other than control of the White House, the most visceral and important litmus test for which side is winning America's so-called culture war, or as comedian Bill Maher recently put it, the “Cold Civil War”.

My guest for this conversation is Ken Vogel, who writes for the New York Times, and primarily investigates the influence of big money in his country’s politics. He is the author of a recent exposé of Leonard Leo, which you can read online. 

Sepp Blatter served President of FIFA, football's international governing body, between 1998 and 2015. To mark the beginning of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, my guest and I take a look at his time in charge of the world's most popular sport. 

The irony of the Qatar decision is that Blatter didn’t actually want the World Cup to go there; instead, he lost control of the corruption that had infested world football governance for decades prior.  

Amid some of the other things currently going on in the world, many might claim that focusing on something as trivial as a football tournament is unimportant. But I'm not so sure; there is, for example, something rather fitting about millions of Brits shivering in their freezing homes due to soaring energy bills, watching football matches played and attended by the wealthiest people in the world. And despite the constant attempts to make football a more accepting sport for gay fans and players, the current world cup and the one before it have been hosted by two of the most intolerant countries one could hope to find. On the contrary, then, the Qatar story isn’t a distraction from the worst things happening in the world today, but a reflection of them.

 My guest for this episode is Martyn Ziegler, who is the Chief Sports Reporter for the Times and Sunday Times, and is the author of a recent article exposing the Qatar World Cup bid for that publication. As well as Blatter’s career, we discuss the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in world football, the potential for future tournaments to be hosted by unpleasant regimes,  whether there is too much football played today, and, on a lighter note, who Martyn thinks will win the World Cup in Qatar.

Angela Merkel served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 until 2021. This impressive tenure makes her the second longest-serving Chancellor since the Second World War.

Merkel’s time in power was characterised by a series of major crises. Over Merkel’s sixteen years as Chancellor, the World became a much scarier and more unstable place. This conversation deals mainly with Merkel’s handling of four crises: the 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 migrant crisis, and the relationship with two troublesome world powers, Russia and China. 

Whilst she steered Germany through this period, many have criticised Merkel for merely attempting to manage crises rather than solve them. To give Merkel her due, broadly managing crises, as the Germans have done, is better than broadly failing to manage them, as her British and American counterparts did. This conversation isn’t supposed to make you love or hate Merkel, but to make up your own mind. In truth, she probably isn’t deserving of such strong emotions in either direction.

My guest for this conversation is Oliver Moody. Oliver is the Berlin correspondent for the Times, and I’d encourage you all to read his analysis of what still is by far the most important country in the European Union. As well as Merkel’s handling of the four crises, we discuss Germany’s democratic future, and whether the country’s immediate political future will be as stable as its recent past.  

The Kaczyński Brothers, Lech and Jarosław, have exerted considerable influence over the politics of Poland for more than twenty years. Lech served as President from 2005 until his death in a plane crash in 2010, and Jarosław served as prime minister in 2006 and still leads the Law and Justice party (PiS in Polish) to this day.

As my guest today explains, the plane crash of 2010 which claimed Lech's life was much more than a personal tragedy, precipitating a polarisation of Polish politics and the election of a new Law and Justice government in 2015. But this government was a much more conservative iteration of the Kaczyńskis’ government that had taken power ten years earlier. Since 2015, Law and Justice has co-opted the Polish media, attempted to restrict abortion rights, and used increasingly hardline rhetoric on LGBT issues.

Other countries that have experienced similar political phenomena in recent years have often languished in economic stagnation high unemployment in the years prior. But the interesting thing about Poland is it hasn’t stagnated since the Fall of Communism; on the contrary, it has flourished, even seeing handsome economic growth in 2008. Poland, then, is a case study of cultural, rather than economic dislocation.

My guest today is Stanley Bill, who is the Director of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He also founded the news site Notes from Poland, which examines issues within contemporary Polish politics and society. Notes from Poland also has its own podcast, and this interview will be going out on that platform, too.

Ali Khamenei has been the Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989, and previously served as President in the 1980s. This podcast is released at what appears to be a moment of mounting crisis for the Islamic regime, with protests across the country going into their seventh consecutive week. 

Domestically, Khamenei's time as leader has been characterised on the one hand by consolidation of the regime after the Iran-Iraq War, but also by passionate disagreements in civil society over how puritanical Iranian religious doctrine should be. The presidency has changed hands from stalwart conservatives like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to reformer Hassan Rouhani, and back again in 2021 to hardliner Ebrahim Raisi. 

With each change has come a greater fracturing of Iranian society, and a slow drip-drip of protests. Khamenei, at 83, is still at the helm, and has recently spoken out against the protests and reaffirmed his support for President Raisi. The question of these protests is: will they be different to former demonstrations, lasting the course, and perhaps precipitating a change of regime? I generally believe that those who have knowledge don’t predict, and those who predict have no knowledge, but it’s nonetheless interesting to speculate on Iran’s future. 

Joining me to discuss Khamenei and Iran is Borzou Daragahi (@borzou), an Iranian-American journalist who works as an international correspondent for the Independent. Borzou is a member of Iran’s Gen Xers, who came of age in the Ayatollah’s tumultuous first decade in power. His comparisons of his generation and the current generation, who are much less squeamish about protesting against the regime, were great to listen to. 

Sweden Democrats are the first far-right party in Sweden’s parliament. Unlike Britain's UKIP or Spain's Vox, both of which split off from mainstream conservative parties, the Sweden Democrats’ origins in fascism and the fringes of Swedish political thinking is well-documented. 

First entering parliament in 2010, Sweden Democrats, led by the bespectacled Jimmie Akesson, now support a right-wing government propelled to power after many years of riots and shootings in the country’s cities. The party has increased its vote share at every election since the 1990s, something which has coincided, and in part been caused by, an increase in mass immigration, especially Islamic immigration. 

The Sweden that emerges from the conversation today is plagued by political extremism and anxiety. Where does this leave Sweden’s reputation for tolerance and liberalism? Was this merely an illusion? Did it ever exist in the first place? This is the central theme of today’s podcast.

My guest today is the journalist Anders Lindberg, who is political editor-in-chief of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, or Evening Paper. As well as the Sweden Democrats, we discuss Sweden’s approach to handling the 2015 migrant crisis, the country’s welfare model, and whether Sweden will see a liberal approach to immigration again. 

Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union, and I’ve yet to cover any single person who has exerted a bigger effect on the world we live in today than him. When he died in August this year, the outpouring of grief for the 91-year-old in the West was immense; he was heralded as the man who ended the Cold War, and, through his signing of a 1987 nuclear treaty with Ronald Reagan, as the man who brought the world back from the brink of total destruction. 

However, Gorbachev’s legacy would lead you to the conclusion that the greater an impact a person leaves on the world, the less the world agrees on what exactly it is they left behind. Because for all the praise Gorbachev garnered in the West, those who lead Russia today see a very different legacy. Gorbachev wasn’t just the last leader of the Soviet Union; he was the last leader of an economic and military superpower. When the Soviet Union fell, Russia, the heart of that empire, lost 25% of its territory in three years. The 1990s was horrendous for ordinary Russians, with GDP per capita in the country more than halving across the decade. The degree to which this economic emasculation can be blamed on Gorbachev, who left power in 1991, is debateable, but there’s little doubting he lit the fuse under the disintegration of the Soviet Empire.

Fast forward thirty years to the present, and democracy in Russia is dead, and an orthodox Christian nationalist regime is waging the worst war in Europe since 1945. The doomsday clock, which indicates how close the world is to nuclear war, is now closer to midnight (i.e. total destruction) than at any time during the Cold War. Gorbachev’s legacy, in other words, is complicated, but you can’t overlook him if you want to understand the mess we’re in today. 

The person I’ve chosen to talk to about Gorbachev is someone who has spent his adult life looking at Russia and watching the slow-motion disintegration of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, John Lough worked as a NATO representative in Moscow, and worked as an international advisor to Russian oil company TNK-BP from 2003 until 2008. He is now an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, and the Senior Vice President at global risk advisory firm Highgate. 

As well as Gorbachev’s career, we discuss the air of inevitability surrounding the Soviet Union’s collapse, the emergence of right-wing nationalism in Russia, and whether the so-called “unipolar moment”- the period after the Cold War, where the United States seemed completely untouchable- was really a good thing for its foreign policy.