Allen Lane Podcasts
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Today’s guest is Eric Kaufmann who is a Professor of Political Science at Birkbeck College at London University. The last time Eric was a guest on this podcast, in june 2021, we focused our discussion on his book Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities (Allen Lane 2018). It’s about the demographic change of the Western world, about the reactions this gives rise to, about right-wing populism and its opposite, left-wing modernism. A great read, so go read it if you haven’t already. And listen to the podcast we did then.
Today we talk more about the threats to academic freedom, and what can be done about it. This is something Eric has been working on a lot lately (read here and here and listen here, for example), and he’s been vocal in defense of the new Freedom of Speech Bill which the Tory government in Britain proposed recently.
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He argues that the right need to be more active in combating the left's institutional takeover, which are happening at basically all major institutions. Not only in academia, but in government agencies and private companies as well. It’s not enough to take a step back. Conservatives need to use governmental power to protect individual freedoms from increasingly dogmatic institutions. It’s a tough pill to swallow for many liberally minded conservatives whose ideas of the world were formed during the cold war. But the right needs to rethink how they use political tools.
I have to say it was a delight to talk to Eric again, and the podcast could have been much longer. I will probably bug him enough to come back again in the future.
If you enjoyed our talk give him a follow on Twitter and check him out at Sneps.net where all his public talks and writings are collected.
Utgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.)
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In today’s episode I talk to journalist and author David Goodhart. He first became famous, or infamous to some, when he wrote an essay in 2004 – “Too diverse?” –about how diversity can come in conflict with solidarity within a nation state. It sparked a huge debate in Britain, which also reverberated here in Sweden. Since then he’s been a public intellectual with an almost absolute pitch for noticing changes in society and in people’s attitudes.
His latest book – Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century (Allen Lane 2020) – concerns the way in which cognitive labour has received most of the economic rewards during the last decades, and also most of the status. People who work in cognitive-heavy sectors have shaped society in their image. The huge expansion of higher education is a case in point. This has laid too much of an emphasis on academic achievement, and too little on other areas which are equally if not more important. The hand and the heart are obviously metaphors, but they correspond to sectors of the job market that tends to be looked down on, or seen as out-dated. It’s the people that might not have gone to university, which didn’t mean that much when only 15 percent did so. But when 50 percent go to higher education it creates a completely different dynamic, where they themselves get blamed for not going. It’s not a classless society, but a society where class has morphed into something different.
It’s a followup on his book – The road to somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (Hurst 2017) – which had more to do with how different people relate to openness, borders and their identity. It got published right after both the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, and provided a much needed analysis of how that came to be. Many have by now heard the dichotomy anywhere versus somewheres, which David Goodhart came up with in that book. Basically the anywheres tend to be focused on the head, and the somewheres tend to work more with the hand and the heart. The anywheres are less rooted in place, and tend to have more achieved identities which has to do with merit, education, profession etcetera. Somewheres tend to have more ascribed identities, which are beyond the individuals control, such as nationality, locality, sex.
We talk about this in the podcast, and also his forthcoming book which will be the third installment of this trilogy. The preliminary title is Who cares? and will take off where Head, hand, heart left the reader. The focus is on the care sector, family life and why we need to rebalance our aging societies towards the heart.
I highly recommend reading David Goodharts books, if you haven’t already. He’s been an influence on my thinking for a long time. And I hope you find the interview as interesting as I did.
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Guest on Matt Goodwins subcast
I was recently a guest on. I suggest giving him a follow on his Substack if you like the interview. He’s one of my go to sources for British politics, among other subjects. Here’s the full audio:
Utgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.)
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.enrakhoger.se/subscribe -
Skotten i Sarajevo den 28 juni 1914 blev upptakten till första världskriget, en av världshistoriens största katastrofer. Men vad var det egentligen som hände den där dagen, då ärkehertigparet Franz Ferdinand och Sophie sköts ihjäl i Bosnien-Hercegovinas huvudstad av en klen tonåring vid namn Gavrilo Princip?
En del av förklaringen ligger i själva datumet. Just precis den 28 juni var förmodligen världens sämsta dag för en åktur i öppen sportbil genom Sarajevo, i alla fall om man hette Franz Ferdinand och var tronarvinge till den habsburgska dubbelmonarkin Österrike-Ungern. Den 28 juni är nämligen en av de viktigaste högtiderna i Serbien, ett land som 1914 låg i luven med habsburgarna om Bosnien-Hercegovinas nationella status.
I detta avsnitt av En oväntad historia samtalar historikerna Olle Larsson och Andreas Marklund om Franz Ferdinands och Sophies sista resa. De reflekterar över det mytomspunna slaget på Trastfältet, den 28 juni 1389, som utkämpades mellan serbiska och osmanska styrkor – och i efterhand har blivit till ett definierande ögonblick i serbisk historieskrivning och identitetsutveckling. Dessutom försöker de att ringa in den unge, lungsiktige och på många sätt ganska osannolike mördaren Gavrilo Princip.
Litteraturtips
Andreas Marklund: Skotten i Sarajevo. Upptakten till första världskriget. Historiska Media, 2020.
Christopher Clark: The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went to War in 1914. Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 2014.
Bild Omslag: Mordet illustrerat av Achille Beltrame i den italienska tidningen Domenica del Corriere 12 juli 1914. Wikipedia, Public Domain.
Bild artikel: Sarajevorättegången med mördaren Gavrillo Princip i mitten av främsta raden. Wikipedia, Public Domain.
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