When Steve Bannon left his position as White House chief strategist less than a week after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017, he was already a notorious figure in Trump’s inner circle, and for bringing a far-right ideology into the highest echelons of American politics. Unconstrained by an official post — though some say he still has a direct line to the White House — he became free to peddle influence as a perceived kingmaker, turning his controversial brand of nationalism into a global movement. The Brink follows Bannon through the 2018 mid-term elections in the United States, shedding light on his efforts to mobilize and unify far-right parties in order to win seats in the May 2019 European Parliamentary elections.

To maintain his power and influence, the former Goldman Sachs banker and media investor reinvents himself — as he has many times before — this time as the self-appointed leader of a global populist movement. Keen manipulator of the press and gifted self-promoter, Bannon continues to draw headlines and protests wherever he goes, feeding the powerful myth on which his survival relies.

Speakers

Alison Klayman 

New York Times chief film critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis named Alison one of their ’20 Directors to Watch’ on a list of rising international filmmaking talents under 40. Her debut feature documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry was shortlisted for an Academy Award, nominated for two Emmys, and earned Alison a Director’s Guild of America nomination. Alison has made many media appearances to speak about her documentary work, including on The Colbert Report. Alison’s other films include The 100 Years Show about 102-year-old Cuban- American painter Carmen Herrera, who worked in obscurity for decades until finally receiving recognition late in life. She has also served as an executive producer on several award-winning films, including the Oscar-shortlisted Hooligan Sparrow and the recent Sundance-winner On Her Shoulders.

To many of his detractors, Soros is an unelected force who uses his vast wealth to pursue an agenda that leaders such as Viktor Orban in Hungary argue undermine their policies and programmes.

To his supporters, Soros is a global champion of democracy and human rights; an example of how philanthropy can lead the fight against authoritarianism, intolerance and racism. To them, ‘Soros Hatred’ is a global sickness and tainted with festering anti-semitism.

Chair:

Jonathan Dimbleby is a broadcaster, programme-maker and historian. Over the last 45 years he travelled extensively reporting from conflicts and crises in Europe, The Middle East, Africa and the Americas for ITV. Between 1987 and 2006 he presented weekly political debate programmes for both BBC TV and ITV, anchoring election night programmes on ITV in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Since 1987 he has chaired BBC Radio Four’s weekly ‘Any Questions’ programme  and, over the last three years, a monthly debate programme for the BBC World Service, ‘World Questions’. Among countries in Africa, Central America and Europe, this has taken him to Poland and Hungary, the country of George Soros’ birth.

Speakers:

Roula Khalaf is Deputy Editor of the Financial Times. She has worked for the FT since 1995, first as north Africa correspondent, then Middle East correspondent and most recently as Middle East editor. Before joining the FT, she was a staff writer for Forbes magazine in New York. Roula oversees the FT’s network of foreign correspondents and bureaus. She writes regularly on global politics and business.

Patrick Gaspard is president of the Open Society Foundations. He joined the Foundations as vice president in 2017.Prior to joining Open Society, Gaspard served as the U.S. ambassador to South Africa from 2013 to 2016. Gaspard has extensive experience in presidential and congressional campaigns. Most recently, he served as a senior aide to President Barack Obama, as the executive director of the Democratic National Committee, and as an assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Political Affairs. He was the national political director for Obama for America in 2008.

James Kirchick is a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe and Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. A widely published journalist, he is author of “The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age” (Yale, 2017), and a frequent contributor to a wide array of publications including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Politico.

Dr. Frank Furedi is an author and social commentator and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England and Visiting Professor, Institute of Risk and Disaster Reduction, at University College London. His study, ‘Populism And The Culture Wars In Europe: the conflict of values between Hungary and the EU’, discusses the sociological implications of the tension between populists and anti-populist political currents.

  Watch the video stream of George Soros : Saint or Sinner

The Permanent Five and their power to veto any resolution reached has meant a democratic deficit in decision-making, the organisation’s lack of success in its Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, and the apparent lack of action in Yemen despite labelling it ‘the largest humanitarian crisis in the world’ are just three examples of the UN appearing to fail to ‘create and maintain international order’.

Our panel will discuss the future of the United Nations – in its totality – including its work on peace and security, human rights, and socio-economic development, as envisioned by the UN Charter, and explore the question: Is the UN still fit for purpose in the changed context of the world today where forces of populist nationalism seem ascendant?

Chair

Contributing Editor to the Financial Times, John Lloyd, has won multiple awards for his work in journalism, including; Specialist Writer of the Year in the British Press Awards and Journalist of the Year in the Granada What the Papers Say Awards. In the early 1970s, he worked for Time Out as Belfast Correspondent during the infamous period of the Troubles, and then went on to work for The Times and the New Statesman. In 2006 John co-founded Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and currently directs the Axess Programme on Journalism and Democracy. He is also an editorial member of Prospect; the advisory board of the Moscow School of Political Studies.

Speakers

Kul Chandra Gautman is a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary-General for the UN. He carried out the role of Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Nepal, his home country, on International Affairs and the Peace Process 2010-2011. Kul currently serves on a vast number of both international and national boards including the Programme Committee for Oxfam GB Council, which he chairs. As a former senior official of the UN, Gautman has extensive experience in international diplomacy, development cooperation, and humanitarian assistance. In Augst this year he wrote “Global Citizen from Gulmi”. In the book, the former diplomat recounts his journey from the hills of Gulmi to the halls of the United Nations.

The Right Honourable Clare Short was the first Secretary of State for International Development1997-2003. After her resignation over the Iraq war she wrote her award-winning book; ‘An Honourable Deception?: New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power’, discussing the true effects of the centralisation of decision-making in Number 10. Ms Short gave a notable speech in 2001; ‘Making Globalisation Work for the Poor’; expressing her view that globalisation could be shaped as a new phase in the modern world to improve the lives of everyone. In June 2009, she received an Honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Ulster in response to her services to international development. The Right Honourable Lady also appeared before the Chilcot inquiry, condemning Blair for his attempt to obtain consent to invade Iraq by deceit. Ms Short is known for her outspoken nature and fierce criticism of the Blair administration, particularly of his ‘reckless’ decision to go to war with Iraq without a clear mandate from the United Nations. In 2010 she retired from parliament after serving as MP for Birmingham Ladywood for 27 years (1983-2010).

When Deeyah Khan was six, her father took her to her first anti-racism rally.  A Pakistani immigrant to Norway, he promised her that things would get better and that the skinhead gangs that terrorised their family and families like them would soon find themselves relics of past prejudices, that bigotry belonged in history, that tomorrow would be a more tolerant time.

Three decades on, and we’re still waiting for tomorrow.

With a US president propagating anti-Muslim propaganda, the far-right gaining ground in German elections, hate crime rising in the UK, and divisive populist rhetoric infecting political and public discourse across western democracies, Deeyah Khan’s White Right: Meeting The Enemy asks why.

Following the lauded JIHAD – in which she spoke to radicalised British Muslims who had fought in the name of jihad on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Chechnya and now found themselves full of regret – Deeyah joins the frontline of the race wars in America. She sits face-to-face with fascists, racists and the proponents of the “alt-right” ideologies that have propelled Donald Trump to the presidency. From Breitbart’s darling, Richard Spencer to Jeff Schoep, leader of American’s largest neo-Nazi organisation, Deeyah’s need to find the deeper human causes of horrific social forces opens a different possibility for connection and solutions. Rather than dismiss these men as monsters, she’s determined to discover the men behind the masks.

Urgent and resonant, White Right is Deeyah Khan’s most personal film yet. Nominated for 2018 BAFTA Award in the Current Affairs category.

Run Time: 60 mins

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpWUZ3NG_Do

Deeyah Khan

Deeyah Khan is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning and two times BAFTA nominated documentary film director, and founder of Fuuse, a media and arts company that puts women, people from minorities, and third-culture kids at the heart of telling their own stories. In 2016, she became the first UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for artistic freedom and creativity. Born in Norway to immigrant parents of Pashtun and Punjabi ancestry, Deeyah’s experience of living between different cultures, both the beauty and the challenges, shapes her artistic vision. Her 2012 multi-award winning documentary Banaz: A Love Story chronicles the life and death of Banaz Mahmod, a young British Kurdish woman murdered by her family in a so-called honour killing. Deeyah’s second film, the Grierson and Bafta award-nominated Jihad, involved two years of interviews and filming with Islamic extremists, convicted terrorists and former jihadis. Deeyah released her third film in 2016, Islam’s Non-Believers which investigated the lives of ex-Muslims who face extreme discrimination, ostracism, psychological abuse and violence as a result of leaving Islam. One of Fuuse’s recent initiatives, born of Deeyah’s own experiences, is sister-hood, a digital magazine and a series of live events spotlighting the voices of women of Muslim heritage.

Catrin Nye

Catrin Nye is an investigative journalist, documentary maker and presenter for the BBC. She currently hosts the monthly national debate show The Hour on BBC One Wales as well as reporting for the BBC’s BAFTA award-winning Victoria Derbyshire programme, BBC Panorama, BBC World and Radio 4. Catrin previously spent many years reporting for Newsnight and BBC Asian Network developing a specialism in Britain’s minority communities, an area she continues to work on today. She has also written and reported for the Guardian, Prospect, BBC Radio 1, BBC World Service, 1Xtra, 5Live, BBC Breakfast and local radio across the UK. Catrin has won the Mind Journalist of the Year award, two Sandford Saint Martin awards for excellence in religious broadcasting and was one of the Radio Academy’s 30 Under 30. She has also been shortlisted for RTS Young Journalist of the Year and an Amnesty Award among others.

For many Britons, their modern sense of national fellow feeling was forged in the Second World War, during the struggle for national survival. These days, it is expressed during ritual state occasions, like Royal weddings, or during great sporting events like the Olympic Games. But what about the politics of flag waving? Between 1990 and 2008, globalisation weakened the borders around nation states, bringing free trade and the free movement of (some) people. In the second decade of the 21st century, borders and boundaries are back with a vengeance, as a new generation of politicians tries to reignite national fellow feeling and recreate new borders and boundaries. Some of them even want to put up walls again.

Where does decent patriotism end and ugly nationalism begin? Is any form of nationalism, however mild, an anachronism in an inter-connected world? Or is it part of the glue that holds society together? How do we fight the upswing in contemporary nationalism? Just how necessary is national fellow feeling in the twenty-first century?

Discussing these, and related questions are the author and columnist, Zoe Williams, and Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London and author of the forthcoming book: Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities. The debate will be chaired by Toby  Mundy, Executive Director of the Baillie Gifford Prize.

“A case study of how an idea written on paper sacks in the midst of the gulag archipelago could one day be pronounced as a national idea by the heirs of the NKVD.”
– Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism

Charles Clover, the Financial Times’ former Moscow bureau chief, began the debate at the Frontline Club on Thursday 28 April by defining the idea of Eurasianism as, “essentially an artificial nationalism created in the 1920s by Russian exiles to rationalise and justify, in theoretical terms, an empire where Russia forms the core of a unique non-western civilisation.”

It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that these ideas were re-discovered and re-appropriated by “regime dead-enders who wanted to see a continuation of the soviet empire but on other terms,” through a different idea that would justify it.

Driven by the rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin and propagated by the media, “this is not an ethnic nationalism,” said Clover, but rather a “civilisational nationalism” with Russia at its centre.

While not a new idea, Eurasianism as part of official discourse only appeared very recently, said writer and broadcaster Mary Dejevsky.

Eurasianism was an attempt to bring some sort of concord between the pro-western and Slavophil strands of thinking that had dominated Russian society since the turn of the 20^th century, “at a time when Russia was looking for an identity for itself… especially in terms seeking a definition of nationhood,” said Dejevsky.

“The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left Russia with a huge identity crisis that took a long time to enter official consciousness, but that has really started to crystallise in the last two or three years.”

Rodric Braithwaite, British ambassador to Russia from 1988 to 1992, said that Eurasianism is merely the “current phase of something that has gone on a very long time in Russian history.

“With a humiliating collapse, questions of identity – who we are, what we are – become vital and people produce fake answers which can then be exploited by politicians.”

Russian history, said Braithwaite, is a succession of humiliations and “the Slavophil-Eurasian idea is partly a compensatory device for the various disasters that have happened” – and a way of rationalising that with the idea of Russia as a great nation.

Clover said he would group this philosophy of Eurasianism with Russia’s changing relationship to the West as part of a multi-national nationalism designed to accomplish certain strategic objectives.

BOOK LAUNCH: @charles_clover 'Black Wind, White Snow', 27 April @YaleBooks https://t.co/kmdYY1B8GO pic.twitter.com/dJ4KSWF1iX

— Pushkin House (@Pushkin_House) April 17, 2016

At the same time confronted by a more nationalistic opposition during Putin’s third term, the Kremlin decided to equate this sense of national humiliation with the idea of a foreign conspiracy and promote a Eurasianism that “would ensure the integrity of a multi-national state and possibly expand it” said Clover.

Gabriel Gatehouse, chair of the debate and BBC Newsnight foreign correspondent, asked the panel to comment on the observation that a lot of the current official Russian discourse seems to be aimed at trying to return to a bi-polar world, reminiscent of Cold War divides.

For Dejevsky, many Russians are not looking to resurrect the old Cold War order, “but rather a multi-polar world where a smaller Russia co-exists but has an equal voice with other powers in the world.”

“There is a resort to Eurasianism, whether organised or simply as a concept, when Russia feels that is has been cold shouldered, especially by Europe, and is looking to a certain identity which has some justification, some basis, in a Russia that belongs to both Europe and Asia,” she said.

In this context, said Clover, the question of whether Putin himself believes in the idea of Eurasianism is almost irrelevant.

“We assume that Putin is a pragmatist at heart and only really cares about power. That has always and will always be true, but the context of his pragmatism has changed utterly over ten years.”

In the past, pragmatism was paying lip-service to nationalism, said Clover, but now national interests are denominated in completely different ways in terms of territory, making it pragmatic for Putin to seize Crimea and put troops into eastern Ukraine.

“The entire context of being Putin has changed. The playing field in Russia is now a totally nationalist one. So as a skilful, powerful politician, the way he plays politics has changed and as a pragmatist he must now be a nationalist.”

Following the success of Girlfriend in a Coma, director Annalisa Piras brings us an artfully constructed depiction of how Europe is sleepwalking toward disaster, starring Angus Deayton in fiction scenes from a post-EU future. Piras pairs an imagined view from a dystopian future with insightful analysis by ordinary Europeans and economic and political experts on how and why things are going so wrong.

With an innovative form that combines playful narrative and hard facts, the film examines the identity crisis of current-day Europe and the complex challenges that are mounting against the Union’s survival. Beset by growing nationalism, seven years of economic crisis and an increasing dissatisfaction with its undemocratic political structure, will Europe sleepwalk into catastrophe as it did one hundred years ago?

Using beautiful photography, expert interviews, personal stories, and archival footage, Piras constructs a picture of a Europe that is worth fighting for, but which, if things carry on as they are, looks destined for disintegration. Through 5 different European stories – in Britain, Sweden, Germany, Spain and Croatia – the film creates a unique, choral portrait of the “European dream” and how it could be lost forever.