This Time Tomorrow

In episode 31 of This Time Tomorrow, Omri, Benni and Daniela dig into a question rattling America’s progressive middle: what message do Democrats send when they surrender the government shutdown fight without a real struggle? After years of promises to stand firm for working people, the party’s reflex to cave leaves many wondering what the Democratic leadership is actually willing to risk. Unlike MAGA conservatives, whose unflinching posture is part of their political brand, Democrats project uncertainty, and the consequences are… well, mounting, to say the least.

The conversation then turns to NYC mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, whose grassroots-driven campaign energised thousands of activists and won decisively. And yet, outside progressive circles, Mamdani is very often caricatured as the worst kind of extremist. Daniela unpacks how Mamdani actually campaigned, what made it effective, and what lessons his success offers a party that is struggling to connect with new generations.

Next up: the European Commission’s proposed “Democracy Shield”. And the verdict? Lukewarm… Without clarity on its goals or a serious investment of resources, the shield risks becoming another well-intentioned initiative with no bite. Meanwhile, autocratic actors are spending heavily and strategically. Defending democracy requires a single, well-funded strategy that scales what works instead of scattering money across various projects.

Finally, we zoom out a little and look at EU enlargement, where momentum is building for the first time in a decade. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sped up conversations that once dragged. Montenegro remains the frontrunner, Albania and North Macedonia are steadily advancing, and the broader target appears to be expansion by 2030. But the process mustn’t devolve into an endless technocratic maze while anti-democratic forces attack both the Union and candidate countries. For enlargement to succeed, the EU must make clear that its ambitions are democratic, not imperial, and commit to a process that strengthens, rather than weakens, Europe’s political integrity.

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When the political world begins to describe acts of cruelty as technical mastery, then that’s a sure sign that our collective humanity is starting to wither away. Gestures of tenderness, hesitation, or mercy start to look clunky… and inefficient. And when they disappear completely, cruelty no longer shocks us. Indeed, it simply looks like order is being restored.

In this monologue, Ted applies Gonçalo M. Tavares’s novel, Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique (2011), to something Donald Trump said in a recent interview with 60 Minutes. Tavares’s main character—Lenz Buchmann—may be fiction, but his logic is not. Donald Trump is definitely not fiction—but his logic is the same. The danger is not just that such men gain power, but that we begin to see the world through their eyes.

TW: violent/sexual imagery.

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The 30th episode of This Time Tomorrow is about the cost of conviction. It’s about the vulnerability that comes with standing up for what’s right, the pain of being ruthlessly targeted, and the resilience it takes to… keep going.

Join Omri and Benni as they speak with Nina Jankowicz, who in 2022 briefly led the Disinformation Governance Board at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Just three weeks in, an onslaught of personal attacks—and a lack of support from the Biden administration—drove her to resign.

At a time when President Trump and the rest of the autocracy gang are threatening democratic institutions, this kind of bravery is not optional. It is essential for all who believe in democracy.

Antilopes in the boardroom at Disney? Or zebras? Who knows—but Jimmy Kimmel is back on air again, and that tells us something about the power of unsubscribing.

What next? How about Russia’s new routine violations of NATO airspace in Europe, or Benjamin Netanyahu’s shake-up at the Shin Bet, or Trump at the UN, or the indictment of James Comey…

It’s a packed agenda as contributing editor Daniela Vancic (of Democracy International) joins Omri and Benni for another round of firefighting.

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From Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address to Elon Musk… erm, inciting violence on the streets of London? And then on to Brazil, where former President Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to prison.

And the USA? Not today! (Almost!) There’s only time for so many fires all at once...

Join Omri and Benni for the ride as they…

- get kind of excited about Ursula’s 28th regime

- express renewed incredulity at Elon Musk performing the role of a far-right agitator

- recite the British Public Order Act of 1986

- celebrate the Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes

- list the misfortunes of former US Attorney General, Merrick Garland

- and much more…

Get inspired. Then go out and make your voice heard.

Our free and open democracies depend on it.

This monologue doubles as a book review of a book that doubles as a weather forecast.

Confusing?

In Deaf Republic (2019) by Ilya Kaminsky, deafness becomes an act of collective resistance after a deaf boy is murdered by a soldier at a puppet show. It’s a book of some 60 poems that show us how love, tenderness and laughter can manifest as resistance, defiance, and insurgency.

This is not poetry for leisure.

This is poetry for when the streets fill with sirens.

This is an instruction manual for surviving cruelty while staying human.

And we desperately need it.

In this episode of This Time Tomorrow, Omri and Benni are joined by political scientist Angelos Chryssogelos to discuss the global rise of populism. From Donald Trump to Nigel Farage, from Yanis Varoufakis to Wolfgang Schäuble, from Brexit to Covid-19, from Viktor Orbán back to Trump again, the guys explore how populist movements distort our relationship with truth and facts, dismantle liberal democratic institutions, and destabilise the rules-based order…

…all while asking this rather crucial question: what can we do about it? And how do we know when we’ve passed a point of no return?

Tune in. Get involved. (Subscribe, leave a review!)

Angelos Chryssogelos is a Reader in Politics and International Relations at London Metropolitan University, with a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. His research specialises in international relations and foreign policy, particularly the global dimensions of populism and European politics. He has held fellowships at institutions such as LSE’s Hellenic Observatory, Harvard, SAIS-Johns Hopkins, and the Robert Schuman Centre.

In this episode of This Time Tomorrow, Omri and Benni are joined by political scientist Angelos Chryssogelos to discuss the global rise of populism. From Donald Trump to Nigel Farage, from Yanis Varoufakis to Wolfgang Schäuble, from Brexit to Covid-19, from Viktor Orbán back to Trump again, the guys explore how populist movements distort our relationship with truth and facts, dismantle liberal democratic institutions, and destabilise the rules-based order…

…all while asking this rather crucial question: what can we do about it? And how do we know when we’ve passed a point of no return?

Tune in. Get involved. (Subscribe, leave a review!)

Angelos Chryssogelos is a Reader in Politics and International Relations at London Metropolitan University, with a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. His research specialises in international relations and foreign policy, particularly the global dimensions of populism and European politics. He has held fellowships at institutions such as LSE’s Hellenic Observatory, Harvard, SAIS-Johns Hopkins, and the Robert Schuman Centre.

“For the vast majority of people, life is unlikely to get better in the next five years. If you belong to that group of people, then you already know that. Unfortunately, that’s not the worst of it.

The worst of it is that unless something changes, then life is also likely to get a lot more violent. And not just other people’s lives. Yours as well.

Do I want you to be afraid? No. But perhaps we should be.”

In his fourth Monologue for Democracy, Ted riffs on an old poem by W.B. Yeats, while contending that far-right ideas once seen as fringe have entered the political mainstream, reshaping culture and policy across the West.

As extremists push the limits of acceptability, centrists weaken, and violence becomes an increasingly plausible outcome.

History warns us that collapse is not inevitable, but silence and apathy make it more likely.

”What I’m concerned with here is the role of Germany in Ukrainian defence, and that’s really European defence,” says Benni at the top of this episode. ”Why the h*** aren’t the Germans doing more? Why isn’t Germany really leading Europe on this existential issue? What’s holding us back here?”

In the 25th episode of This Time Tomorrow, Benni and Omri talk to Nico Lange—former chief of staff at the German Ministry of Defense (2019–2022), and Senior Fellow at both the Center for European Policy Analysis and the Munich Security Conference—about the role of Germany in Europe’s efforts to defend Ukraine and the continent at large from Russian military aggression.

Since the end of WWII, Europe has been a peace project, and many Europeans will naturally feel queasy about increasing defence spending…

…but as we have said on this podcast before, the war against autocracy is coming for all of us, and we must act now if we want to preserve free and open democractic societies.

”The direct challenge to Europe by Putin’s war of aggression will only be solved if Germany finally comes around,” argues Nico Lange. ”So for me the question is: How long will it take and what will it take for Germany to do what is necessary to restore peace in Europe and to preserve peace in the long-term? […] There is a missing element in this, and that is Germany making a strategic decision, ’What is it that we want to achieve by helping Ukraine?’”

Will Germany step up its efforts to lead Europe towards peace?

*Apologies for the poor sound quality at the very end of the episode. Technical issues led to an abrupt interruption in the conversation, after which a proper connection was difficult to restore.