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

You may have noticed that Populism is getting quite… popular. In the last 20 years, populist parties in Europe have tripled their votes. By 2018, they were in government in 11 countries. Populist leaders now govern countries with a combined population of over 2 billion people. How did we get here? Where are we going? What’s at stake?

There are, of course, no simple answers. Populism evades the traditional tropes of how politics plays out in democracies. Across the world, populist challengers are concocting complex hybrids of left-wing economics with exclusionary social protections to capitalise on mistrust of ruling elites – and a fear of mass migration. We’re joined by award winning author and journalists, Ece Temelkuran and Patrick Cockburn, to try and understand why, how: and why now.

In her new book, How To Lose a Country, Ece is proposing alternative, global answers to the pressing, and too often paralysing, political questions of our time. Temelkuran explores the insidious idea of “real people”, the infantilisation of language and debate, the way laughter can prove a false friend, and the dangers of underestimating one’s opponent. She weaves memoir, history and argument into an urgent and eloquent defence of democracy, fierce debate and dissent.

Speakers:

Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist and political commentator whose journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Frankfurter Allgemeine and Der Spiegel. She is also a frequent commentator on BBC and Channel 4. She won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award for her novel Women Who Blow on Knots and the Ambassador of New Europe Award for Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy. She has been twice recognised as Turkey’s most-read political columnist, and twice rated as one of the ten most influential people in social media. 

Patrick Cockburn is an Irish journalist who has been Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times since 1979 and, from 1990, The Independent. He has also worked as a correspondent in Moscow and Washington and is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books. He has received the Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting, the James Cameron Award, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism. He is the author of Muqtada, about war and rebellion in Iraq; The Occupation (shortlisted for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007); The Broken Boy, a memoir; and with Andrew Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein.

  Watch the video stream of How to Lose a Country

Duterte is a serial womaniser and a self-confessed killer, who has called both Barack Obama and Pope Francis ‘sons of whores’. He is on record as saying he does not ‘give a shit’ about human rights. Yet he is beloved of the 16.6 million Filipinos who voted for him, seen as vulgar but honest, a breath of fresh air, and an iconoclastic, anti-imperialist rebel.

In this revelatory biography, reporter Jonathan Miller charts Duterte’s rise in conversation with Channel 4’s News Anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy, and shows how this fascinating, fearsome man can be seen as the embodiment of populism in our time.

Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller is Channel 4’s Asia Correspondent based in Bangkok. Three months after Rodrigo Duterte was elected in the President’s southern home city of Davao, Jonathan became the first foreign journalist to challenge him face-to-face on the devastation wrought by his controversial and deadly war on drugs. Jonathan was born in Derry, Ireland, and has lived much of his life in Southeast Asia, including correspondent postings with the BBC.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy

Krishnan Guru-Murthy is Channel 4’s News Anchor and presents Unreported World. Since joining the Channel 4 team in 1998 he has fronted big events from the Omagh bombing and 9/11, to special war coverage and the Mumbai attacks. Having covered five British general elections he does special political shows for Channel 4 such as the “Ask the Chancellors” debate.

Join author Jamie Bartlett in conversation with academic, writer and speaker Matthew Goodwin to discuss the rise of the radical. Bartlett, delves into the disparate worlds of various communities that all have one theme in common – to seek to live radical lives in the world today. From talking to transhumanists in Las Vegas, to  nationalist, anti-Islam supporters in Germany, or visiting the Psychedelic Society in the Netherlands; these are just a few of the innovators, disruptors, idealists and extremists who think society is broken, and they have the answers to fix it.

Jamie Bartlett is a leading thinker in extreme politics and technology. He is a journalist and tech blogger for The Telegraph and Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media for Demos in conjunction with The University of Sussex. His primary areas of interest include the use of social media by political movements and law enforcement agencies and internet culture, the dark net and crypto-currencies. Bartlett is also the author of The Dark Net Inside the Digital Underworld.

Matthew Goodwin is a writer and speaker known for his work on British European politics, populism, Brexit and elections. He is Professor of Politics at Rutherford College, University of Kent, and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House. For more information you can visit here.