Winter is Here

I’m joined by Larry Diamond for a conversation on how our social media ecosystem amplifies extremist movements and empowers authoritarian regimes such as China, Iran and Russia. We discuss how our democracy at home relates to the fight for freedom abroad, the perverse incentives of today's social media ecosystem, Twitter’s fate, and how Russia’s war against Ukraine relates to Taiwan.

Larry Diamond is one of the foremost experts on the study of democracy. He is a Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Larry is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, where he leads its programs on China's Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. He is the co-founding editor of the Journal on Democracy and the author of numerous books, the most recent being "China's Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance."

She is fueling the people’s revolution! Masih Alinejad is fulfilling the promise she made to the mothers of murdered and jailed protestors who have stood up to the brutal Iranian regime. As hundreds of thousands take to the streets to demand the dictatorship’s end, Masih (despite an attempt to assassinate her in Brooklyn, New York) and the millions of women she has inspired have become the backbone of this revolution. Listen to an inspiring revisit of the story of Masih Alinejad’s bravery as an exiled journalist and women’s rights activist.

As Iran enters its fourth week of protests, Roya Hakakian joins Uriel Epshtein for a conversation on Iran and its place in the global battle between tyranny and freedom. They discuss the murder of Mahsa Amini, the irrationality of Iran's morality police, and how the situations in Ukraine and Iran are connected. 

Roya Hakakian is a writer, journalist, poet, and political activist. She was a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Roya has served on the board of Refugees International, a non-profit dedicated to human rights and the relocation of refugees, and as a fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. Her writing appears in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and NPR's All Things Considered.

The Winter is Here podcast and the newsletter The Democracy Brief will be running on alternating Thursdays.

Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson was based in Cambodia as a foreign English teacher. Every time he rode out on his bike through the lush forests of Cambodia he noticed the disaster that was slowly but surely unfolding. He decided to speak out and his actions sparked the birth of Mother Nature Cambodia, an organization that today mobilizes citizens to stop environmental degradation and human rights abuses. His narration of both the price they have paid for this work and the success they have had is awe inspiring.

Jeffrey Gedmin joins Uriel Epshtein for a special conversation from Berlin, Germany. They have spent the week meeting with German lawmakers to make the case that Germany could be doing more to support Ukraine’s fight for freedom. In this conversation, they discuss whether German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s commitment to fight authoritarianism will be backed up with concrete policy or if Germany’s backlash to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is just talk.

Jeffrey Gedmin is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the magazine American Purpose. He is the former CEO of Radio Free Europe and previously ran the Legatum Institute in London and the Aspen Institute in Berlin.

Evan Mawarire fled Zimbabwe in July 2016 after leading mass protests against the mis-governance of the Mugabe dictatorship. Thousands had spontaneously turned up at his court hearing demanding his release. Now after six months in exile Evan returned and was met with an immediate arrest at the airport. In this episode of Frontlines of Freedom Evan narrates how an encounter he could never have predicted changed everything. Listen as he draws us into taking on challenges that are imbedded with unexpected moments of strength and encouragement.

“In a dictatorship everyone has a number, the only difference is when that number will come up.” This is how David Smolansky describes the life of people who live under authoritarian regimes. When David became the mayor of El Hatillo in Caracas Venezuela, he didn’t expect that he’d have to bury hundreds of young people in the city cemetery who’d been shot by his country’s own military. What he did understand however, is that when your number comes up and it’s your turn to face persecution, you engage in the most important activity - you gather people and give them vision. David’s story is both stirring and endearing.

In this special episode of Winter is Here, Uriel and Garry take a step back to look at how we got here and how we can avoid the mistakes of the past. We highlight the importance of signaling mechanisms on the global stage, whether we can have an impact on Russian public support for the war, and how the Free World can deter Putin and other dictators moving forward.

Rios de Pie (Standing Rivers) is a citizen action movement that was started by four young friends in the nation of Bolivia. Torn by the environmental degradation of the Amazon forest by their own government, they come together to figure out what to do about it. The strategies they decided upon were unusual but they resonated and even ended up protesting (sometimes in funny and creative ways) the destruction of democracy too. Jhanisse and her friends show us that there comes a time when we just gotta step up and do what needs to be done. Definitely a David and Goliath story.

Uriel and Peter discuss the information war over Ukraine, how Putin’s propaganda shapes Russian public opinion, and how we can create a freedom-first narrative capable of overcoming Putin’s (and other would-be authoritarians’) “firehose of falsehoods.” 

Peter Pomerantsev is a Senior Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and at the London School of Economics. He is a noted expert on combating disinformation and the author of This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in The War Against Reality and Nothing is True and Everything is Possible.