Uncommon Decency

Europe—that is to say, a continent far surpassing the European Union (EU) in size and historical depth—is in the midst of several crises, each testing its resolve and resilience in different ways. The political class, to begin with, is no longer trusted to carry out its duty honorably by the majority of European societies. This past week, the United Kingdom has further aggravated this sense of disillusion by providing the latest ethical scandal or "sleaze", in Westminster jargon. A slate of senior Tory Members of Parliament (MPs), Sir Geoffrey Cox among them, are alleged to have trespassed the limitations on lobbying activities conducted whilst in office. Meanwhile, the EU keeps careening toward another refugee crisis, although unlike the migrant crisis of 2015, these refugees are unlikely to be portrayed as victims. Instead, they're being funneled to the Polish-Belarusian border from places like Kurdistan and Afghanistan as part of a deliberate pressure campaign. Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader of Europe's pirate state, is allegedly being puppet-mastered by Vladimir Putin to retaliate against the EU's sanctions on its Eastern neighbors. Finally, the third crisis concerns energy. With Germany's use of nuclear energy expected to phase out in the coming year and energy demand fast picking up, Europe's energy prices are soaring all over, casting doubts over the continent's post-Covid economic recovery and raising the prospect of widespread blackouts this upcoming winter. We discuss this and more in this bonus episode—the 42nd in our series—recorded with Julian Graham, a dear friend of the show.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected]. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In the summer of 1941, as Italy warred its way to a series of territorial annexations in east Africa and the Mediterranean, a little-known anti-fascist activist by the name of Altiero Spinelli languished in prison, his restless mind fantasizing about Europe's postbellum future. Named the Ventotene Manifesto after the island where Spinelli was jailed, the resulting document would become the blueprint of the European Federalist Movement (EFM) founded two years later, a call for the nations of the Old Continent to forfeit their sovereignty and give way to a European federation under socialist principles. 80 years into the integration project that Spinelli helped spearhead, has the EU lived up to the hopes and expectations of its progressive cheerleaders? Undoubtedly yes, argues historian Konrad H. Jarausch, Lurcy Ann Professor of European Civilization at the University of North Carolina. In Embattled Europe: A Progressive Alternative (2021), Professor Jarausch remarks that Europe has become something of a dirty word for right-wing populists on both sides of the Atlantic, which he views as a testament of the bloc's success in building a mixed model of laissez-faire capitalism buffered by a strong safety net. Similarly, in The Primacy of Politics (2006), Professor Sheri Berman of Columbia's Barnard College described European-style social democracy as the end-stage solution to the central challenge of modern politics, that of reconciling a free enterprise economy with a democratic polity. Professors Jarausch and Berman join us on the podcast this week to discuss Europe's complex place betwixt social democracy and neoliberalism.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected]. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the wartime memoirs of French historian Marc Bloch were published posthumously as Strange Defeat (1946), after the Gestapo tortured and ultimately killed their author for his resistance to Nazi occupation. To characterize France's defeat in the summer of 1940 as "strange", however, would be a vast understatement. In the short span of six weeks through May and June that year, the entire paradigm through which Britain and America were approaching the nascent world conflict was turned on its head, argues Michael S. Neiberg in When France Fell (2021). In it, he describes the state of utter panic that gripped the US military establishment upon seeing French defenses crumble so swiftly under Nazi attack. Germany's occupation of the northern half of France had dramatic consequences for the conduct of the war, too. The country's world-spanning navy and its far-flung colonies were suddenly ripe for capture by the Axis powers. So swift and unforeseen was France's defeat, in fact, that the Allies surmised pro-German fifth column activity to have been at play in the Third Republic, the decadent precursor to Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime. Suddenly, America began to fear similar pro-German coup attempts in its own Latin American backyard. For Neiberg, the country's collective memory of the war as a period of American strength overlooks the faulty and desperate decision-making that drove US policy up until the Allies turned the tables in 1943. In this episode, he discusses the book with another eminent historian of modern France, Julian Jackson.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected]. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

"France does not know it, but we are at war with America. It's a permanent war, an economic war, one seemingly without deaths and yet a war to death." This quote from former French President François Mitterrand illustrates the ancestral gallic defiance toward the US "hyperpower," one that continues to inform French strategic thinking. So when the US entered secret negotiations with Australia and the UK to launch the AUKUS defense partnership—thus scuttling France's 90-billion dollar submarine contract with Australia—Mitterrand's warnings turned prophetic. Even the usually diplomatic Minister for Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves le Drian spoke of "a stab in the back." This extraordinary diplomatic coup de théâtre happened amidst an ongoing conversation on the concept of European strategic autonomy, a topic Uncommon Decency covered in depth last year. Can the EU become a geopolitical actor in its own right, and not just a geopolitical playing field for the great powers of the 21st century? Following the events in Afghanistan and Australia, we take stock of where this conversation is headed—and whether the transatlantic relationship has suffered as a result—with The Economist's Sophie Pedder and the Atlantic Council's Benjamin Haddad.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected]. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

In our electoral war room eight months ago, we at Uncommon Decency argued that the French political landscape ahead of the presidential race next May was ripe for a populist upset. In other words, that the scores of pollsters predicting a Macron-LePen runoff contest could be proved wrong by France's ever so facetious electorate. That upset might just have a name now: Eric Zemmour. A former political journalist and a Tucker Carlsonesque talking head, the right-wing intellectual has published his third bestselling essay, his public meetings quickly morphing into campaign rallies. Of Algerian Jewish stock, Zemmour has found himself in the unlikely role of organic intellectual for the country's nationalistic right. Though not officially in the running, his bid for the presidency is but a foregone conclusion. In the span of two months Zemmour surged from 5% in the polls to the high teens, making him a favorite to face off against Macron in the runoff. In the most Trumpian of ways, he keeps a near-monopoly on the airwaves by breaking up taboos and imposing his agenda, such as the borderline conspiracy theory of a great replacement of France's white Christian population with a new brown and Islamic alien majority. Today we dive into the Zemmour phenomenon and gauge how far he can go with two veteran journalists, Anne-Élisabeth Moutet and John Lichfield.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected]. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Once nicknamed the Scholzomat for his robotic approach to politics, Olaf Scholz led Germany's social democrats to an unlikely electoral victory on the 26th of September, stunning Germans and outside observers alike. Sholz is now in a strong position to become chancellor of Germany, but given the electoral fragmentation of the Bundestag, he will need to rely on the support of two other parties in what has been dubbed a "traffic light coalition", with the "red" SPD, the "yellow" liberals of the FDP and the Greens. With Merkel's center-right CDU out of office for the first time since 2005, what does this new landscape tell us about Germany's political mood? To break this down in our inaugural episode of season 3, we invited leading foreign correspondent Tom Nuttall of The Economist and the head of European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)'s Berlin office, Jana Puglierin.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected]. Please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

Casting about for a definition of Europe, the eminent French poet and essayist Paul Valéry told a student audience in Zurich, circa 1922: « Any people and land that has been successively Romanized, Christianized, and as regards to the mind, disciplined by the Greeks, is absolutely European." Laid waste by deathly totalitarian ideologies, then hoisted back to relevance on the strength of its collective impetus, Europe's soul-searching has continued into the new century. Do Europeans simply inhabit their corner of the Eurasian landmass, or are they stewards of a unique culture that sets them apart? With its societies more diverse and less Christian than ever before, has the religious soul of Valéry's definition withered? Has the European Union (EU) lived up to this legacy? Recurrently teased by each of this show's 35 episodes thus far, Uncommon Decency winds up its second season by tackling these themes head on, with French philosopher Pierre Manent and former EU Council speechwriter Luuk Van Middelaar. In addition to rating, reviewing, and spreading the word about the show, we kindly ask you to fill this one-minute survey that will help us better cater to your interests come September. Thanks kindly as always—enjoy the show!

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected].

Football's oldest international fixture, Scotland-England games have routinely showcased a fever pitch of politically-infused rivalry, and this year's Euro 2021 proved no exception. Not only were the Scots ecstatic to draw against their English "Auld Enemy" at Wembley in their first major tournament since the 1998 World Cup—many of them even cheered Italy's narrow win in the final. At odds with its laureate reputation for orderly behavior, the so-called Tartan Army of Scottish fans can still at times be heard jeering at "God Save the Queen"—an unmistakable testament to the pervasive influence of politics on football. Back in 2014, 55.3% of Scottish voters rejected independence from the United Kingdom in a referendum, but the Union has since undergone a political revolution of its own, leaving the European Union at the dismay of the stringently pro-European Scots. Seven years and two prime ministers later, Nicola Sturgeon's ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) is pressing for a second referendum. Whether or not "IndyRef2" sees the day, will the tides of History inevitably lead to a divorce? Exploring the odds and merits of such an outcome, we host Alex Massie of The Spectator and Ben Jackson of Oxford, two Scotsmen steeped in the complex history of the Anglo-Scottish Union and in the latest maneuvering in both Westminster and Holyrood.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected].

Listeners may recall the clash between two of Western liberalism's sacred cows that unfolded in France last year as part of the so-called "affaire Mila". This 16-year-old online socialite was met with a ghastly downpour of abuse upon sharing on Instagram her dislike of Islamic mores. So far, so reprehensible, you may think. Except that Mila's impetuous words of blasphemy were soon invoked by hordes of anonymous users who subjected her to an open season of misogynistic and sexually predatory abuse, against which France's politically correct ethos, always mindful to eschew charges of Islamophobia, seemed despairingly unable to react. The affair captured Europe's uneasy balance between women's unfettered emancipation on one hand, as incarnated by the outspokenly feminist Mila, and on the other the dissolvent forces of multiculturalism, which on the pretense of tolerance for the worldviews and lifestyles of Muslim immigrants, seems too willing to jeopardize the right of women to enjoy the sexual freedoms and gender equality that liberalism admittedly affords. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has lived and worked at the heart of this contradiction. Born in Somalia, she emigrated to the Netherlands fleeing an arranged marriage, sat in the Dutch parliament, and pursues to this day her advocacy of women's rights and criticism of Islamic fundamentalism in the US, where she is a fellow at the Stanford-based Hoover Institution. Ayaan's latest book and the topic of our conversation is Prey: Immigration, Islam and the Erosion of Women's Rights (2021)—enjoy!

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected].

"It was the rise of Athens and the fear it instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable". Writing over 24 centuries ago about the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides' timeless commentary speaks to the tension arising when an emerging power threatens to overtake an established one, raising the odds of open conflict. Just like Sparta and Athens rallied neighboring city-states into their colliding orbits, the US and China, increasingly locked in great power competition, have their eyes set on Europe. The lingering doubts over the EU's Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China, put on hold last month by the Parliament (EP), lay bare Europe's pivotal role in this fractious geopolitical landscape. Between its traditional ally to the West, and its main trading partner to the East, the dilemma for Europeans is whether to remain a geopolitical playing field or emerge as an actor in its own right. How should Europe approach Sino-American competition, and could it be an opportunity to build "strategic autonomy"? Two seasoned diplomats and scholars join us to discuss: Hubert Védrine, Former French Foreign Minister, and Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador.

As always, rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions at @UnDecencyPod or [email protected].