Danube Institute Podcast: Recent Episodes
Danube Institute
The Danube Institute was established by the Batthyány Lajos Foundation in 2013 in Budapest, with the aim of encouraging the transmission of ideas and people within the countries of Central Europe and between Central Europe, other parts of Europe, and the English-speaking world. The Institute itself has been committed from its foundation to three philosophical loyalties: a respectful conservatism in cultural, religious, and social life, the broad classical liberal tradition in economics, and a realistic Atlanticism in national security policy.
Sweden. Europe’s eternal model of the right path. And increasingly, also its vision of the wrong road.
Since the year 2000, Sweden has run the mass migration experiment at hyper-speed. And equally, it is now running a counter-revolution at similar pace. Anyone familiar with the country will be aware of the Law of Jonte and the concept of the Thought Corridor.
Swedes are herd-like: it is very hard to break with Orthodoxy. But when the herd moves, the herd moves.
In 2022, populism came to Sweden. The country fractured its historical cordon sanitaire, to elect a coalition of the centre-right Moderate Party, with support from the hard right Sweden Democrats, led by Jimmy Akkeson.
Akkeson has been a fixture in Swedish politics for over 15 years. His career is a classic case of First they laugh at you, then they denounce you, then you win. From national joke, into the Riskdag. Akkeson has modified his positions somewhat, presented a more clean-cut image. But in the main, it is public opinion that has done the real pivot.
The Sweden Democrats are now three years deep into a coalition that has not faltered. And, as a result of the historic Tidö Agreement, has made great strides in regulating immigration.
Yet despite delivering what they promised on that score, the public appetite does not appear to be sated. Indeed, Swedes today are drifting further right than they ever have on questions of culture. With an election due in 2026, it now appears that Akkeson could not only bolster the traditional parties - he could lead a government.
What happens next? Could Sweden now point the way to a sophisticated dismantlement of the mass migration project? And could Akkeson prove central to that?
To explain, Gavin Haynes is joined by visiting fellow at the Danube Institute, Markus Johansson-Martis.
We asked Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister of Sweden, about Europe's bright or dark future at the Brain Bar festival in Budapest.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
Something’s brewing in Central.
Here in the so-called Visegrad Four - Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, the shape of your average parliament no longer mirrors that of the wider Europe.
In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s challenger in the 2026 elections will be a centre-right former Fidesz cadre.
In Poland, Donald Tusk ran from the centre-right to narrowly beat the conservative right of Law and Justice.
In Slovakia, the heterodox anti-EU populist Robert Fico remains the dominant figure.
And in Czechia, Andrej Babis has just been returned to power, after four years in the wilderness.
Babis’ headlines in the West often describe him as a maverick billionaire of the populist right — a Trump for Prague.
Babis now needs an additional twenty one seats to find a workable coalition.
But the bigger picture is already clear: between Fico, Orban and Babis, Central Europe is now the beating heart of nationalist-populism - and an effective blocking vote against EU centralism.
As Babis comes back, how should we interpret Central Europe’s nationalist turn?
Gavin Haynes is joined by two Danube researchers who’ve been studying the issue, in the context of the Czech elections. Visiting Fellow Hugo Martin, and Senior Fellow Peter Sztitas.
We spoke with Robert Wilkie, Chairman of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute and former United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs about Trump's three unresolved geopolitical games.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
What is Israel planning to do after the Western recognition of Palestine? Will there be a point when Washington doesn’t back Israel further? Why has the Hungarian government become a staunch pro-Israeli government?
We spoke with the former Political Director of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the fragile situation of the Jewish state.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
Is there a season to burn? And are we now in it?
Vice President JD Vance guest-hosted the Charlie Kirk Show, in lieu of his assassinated friend. At the end of the webcast, Vance gave one of the most extraordinary closing monologues in TV history.
Visibly upset, naming the Soros Foundation and the Ford Foundation as wealthy accomplices to violent left-wing radicalism, he promised little short of vengeance, a righteous fury that would purify America of the institutions and actors that have legitimised political violence.
There can be no doubt that Vance spoke for tens of millions of Americans who are sick of the growing radicalism of the woke era. But how far will this vengeance go?
Is the right now ready to take on the structures of power themselves?
One man who might know is Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin is America’s foremost advocate for the proposition that democracy is outdated.
He represents a more radical view from Charlie Kirk of what should be done. For him, to take power always means to reform its deepest structures -- and that requires a will to power that leaves little off the table.
It’s time to talk about the limits of anger. To whom can vengeance belong, in a democracy? What does the present moment demand?
Wrath and the future of the conservative movement: this time, on View From The Danube.
View From The Danube is the video podcast of the Danube Institute, a conservative think tank based in Budapest. This month, it stars Curtis Yarvin, Zsófia Bódi-Rácz, and Calum Nicholson. It is hosted by Rod Dreher.
Britain has become a meme.
Twenty years ago, it was still the floppy charms of Hugh Grant that served to frame American impressions of this distant province within its imperium.
Notting Hill England still lived, alongside other cliches.
But in the past twelve months, the varnish has truly rubbed off in the minds of many foreign spectators.
Thanks in part to ardent anglophile Elon Musk, Britain has become renowned for its anti-speech surveillance state, its ethnic grooming gangs, its vast levels of unintegrated mass migration, and its general air of economic sag.
Today, that impression risks becoming dominant. In the public mind. Online, the United Kingdom has become known Yookay - a creole spelling — denoting a garish and alien country, hermit crabbing in the ashes of old England.
This unwelcome image change poses several questions:
Questions about its overall truth, which is of course a refraction of online discourse.
Questions about ho the political class are dealing with a society in obvious decline - and how much of this reality they can even accept.
Then, about the power of Britain to change itself.
Is what is happening here a deep, almost ethnogenic endpoint of one kind of society? Or is it simply a call to get our house in order?
Gavin Haynes, a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute, is joined by David Frost, Lord Frost of Allenton, who is himself senior fellow here at the Danube Institute.
Will there ever be a Palestinian state?
Do the Palestinians have a right to form a state? If there is a one-state solution, what will happen to the Palestinian population? Why is compromise impossible with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority?
We asked the head of the Shomron Regional Council, the quasi-leader of the Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria about the fading two-state solution.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
Is reliance on Russian energy a choice or a necessity?Has Hungary made efforts to diversify its energy resources since 2022? What alternative energy supply routes does Hungary have? What will Hungary do if Donald Trump asks it to stop buying Russian oil?We asked the Hungarian State Secretary for Energy about Hungary’s energy policy.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis sent 40000 volts through the global geopolitical system.
The discovery of Soviet missile bases, 90 miles off the coast of America could not stand. But could it be reversed?
Today, we know how the story ends.
The boats turned back. World War Three was postponed.
But at the time, it wasn’t so obvious.
Sean Nottoli is a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute.
Sean joins host Gavin Haynes to tell us about another island, another sea, and another crucible of the potential next World War 3. Of Taiwan. And China.
Plenty of Western countries have good relations with America, he argues. But few have equally good relations with China. And for that matter, Taiwan.
Could the Swiss model – a new kind of neutrality – allow Hungary to leverage its geopolitical strengths in the 21st century?
What is the importance of Hungary in Europe? What is the significance of the upcoming election in Hungary? Why do European institutions continuously criticize the policies of Fidesz?
We asked the head of the MCC School of Media about the changing political landscape in Hungary.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks its guests – decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians – about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
China and the West have known each other for longer than we commonly admit. For most of that time, a small cognoscenti have taken each other's ideas and run with them, in mutual admiration.
In this episode of Danube Culture, Philip Pilkington and David Dusenberry look over their recent lectures and seminars on the topic, up to an essay they co-authored entitled: 'The Western Roots of China and the Chinese Roots of the West.' from Confucianism, travelling to Europe, to the power of Marxism in Chinese ideas in China.
What are the ideological roots of this self-hating Western mentality? What did the ancient people know about the purpose of life that we do not? What are the symptoms of the decline of Western civilization?We asked Swedish-American author and philosopher Benedict Beckeld aboutour significant problem.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
Will Romania ever grant autonomy to Szeklerland? Why does Romania consider Russia an imminent threat to Europe’s security? Why do Hungary and Romania view Ukraine’s possible EU membership from different angles? We asked a Romanian foreign policy analyst and former presidential adviser about Hungarian-Romanian relations and the Russian threat.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas. Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
Inflation is a game we play with ourselves – and we always lose it. In a fiat money environment, for the system to work long term – then money has to keep the value it had when we earned and saved it. If its value declines, then we end up in a world of hard-to-notice theft. Savers are robbed. Asset owners rewarded more than their fair share. Banks lose the trust of their customers – and vice versa.Treasuries finance their deficits by kicking the can down the road, by borrowing more rather than either cutting spending or raising taxes, and eventually by borrowing in order to increase government spending still further. And inflation is not just an economic problem for finance ministers to solve. It’s a moral problem for ordinary citizens too. It impoverishes the poor, the old, and those on fixed incomes with particular severity. It enriches the better-off who have assets that rise in value as their prices rise. It encourages companies to hike prices covertly – by cutting the number of potato crisps in a bag or the amount of beer in a glass. And as for workers who win higher pay through collective bargaining–inflation reduces their take-home pay while they’re still walking home. And if they strike for still more money next year to recoup their losses from inflation, that will only add another twist to the inflationary spiral. The 1980s generation of politicians who took on runaway inflation, often did so clothed in the language of morality. They were right to do so. After all, tackling inflation requires us to make the sacrifice at the heart of morality. It’s short term pain for long term gain. But why do we never learn our lessons–that inflation is a mug’s game. That restoring price stability is hard and means a loss of income, jobs, and growthBrian Griffiths was Dean of the City of London University’s business school, before he became Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit in 1985. He later served as vice-president of Goldman SachsHe chaired the Griffiths Commission on Personal Debt in 2004, and for his services, was created Baron Griffiths of Fforestfach in the House of Lords. He is also a committed Christian. It is with all of these priors in mind that he came to his latest book, titled: Inflation Is About More Than Money: Economics, Politics and the Social Fabric. Brian will be joined in discussion by Philip Pilkington. Philip is a Danube Fellow, and the author of his own new book – The Collapse of Global Liberalism and the Emergence of the Post Liberal World Order. Philip is also a talented and unorthodox economist. Both of them see economics through a moral lens. And both of them believe our institutions should be more than just score-keepers. In this episode of Danube Economics, the duo discuss their perspectives on the proper relationship between inflation and morality with the Danube Institute’s President, John O’Sullivan.
What is the significance of the Tusványos Fest? Howcan it be a catalyst for Hungarian-Romanian dialogue? Is Hungary's policytoward Ukraine effective? Can Hungary remain a friend of the US, Russia, andChina simultaneously?
We asked the President of the Committee for ForeignAffairs in the Hungarian Parliament about Hungary's regional and geopoliticalchallenges.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the DanubeInstitute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the institute'sguests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their uniqueideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist atthe Danube Institute.
Will Russia listen to Donald Trump's 50-day ultimatum? What burdens transatlantic relations? Are the Hungarian government's arguments on Ukraine reasonable? What's the current political landscape in Poland?
We asked Liliana Śmiech, Director General for International Affairs at the University of Public Service, Hungary, about the geopolitical challenges of Europe.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
What comes after the decline of the rule-based world order? What is the geopolitical weight of Europe? Is there any role for Christianity left in modern politics?
We asked Timothy W. Burns, a professor of political science at Baylor University, about the crisis of Western civilization and the intellectual legacy of the West.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
John O’Sullivan, the President of the Danube Institute, our leading thinkers and guest expert Michael Doran — Director and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East — discuss the prospects for lasting peace in the Middle East. The panel explores the region’s shifting alliances, the impact of Trump-era policies, and whether U.S. intervention can reshape the current conflict.
Michael Doran offers critical insights into the strategic dimensions of American involvement and the broader geopolitical stakes.
In Danube Special we discuss the most significant events shaping the fate of our world, together with our leading experts.
Is there a chance that Israeli casus belli (Iran was close to building nuclear weapons) was false? What's the purpose of military action: eliminating the nuclear threat or toppling the ayatollah regime? Is creating a peaceful Middle East a realistic idea?
We spoke with Maya Kadosh, the Israeli Ambassador to Hungary, about the Israeli-Iranian war.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
Dr John Pang is Senior Fellow at The Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia Pacific. He's one of China's leading experts on Western political philosophy.
In that sense, he sees Liberalism as the Chinese do: as a curiously Western product, with its own idiosyncrasies. Rather than how it is seen in the West: as the universal currency of political philosophy, a levelling force with an inevitability to its end-of-history telos.
Pang was in Budapest recently for the Budapest Global Dialogue conference.
Here, in conversation with the Danube Institute's own chief critic of liberalism, Philip Pilkington, he explains how the East has sought to take the best and bind it to its own traditions, while being innately suspicious of the hectoring format liberalism now takes in much Western discourse.
In January of 2023, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis announced six additions to the board of New College, a small liberal arts school in Sarasota.
In a just world, this should not have been a story.
But it was. Because, instead of appointing six liberal progressives, as had somehow seemed a constitutional duty for most colleges for most of the last 40 years, DeSantis instead appointed six conservatives.
Who then swept through the place, tearing up the boards of progressive education, firing the leadership, and totally renovating the curriculum.
He was, after all, an obvious man to call, if you were going to start a counter-revolution in academia.
An Emeritus Professor of English, at Emory University, as far back as 1997 he was penning books like: Literary Criticism: An Autopsy.
In 2008, he penned the only half joking: “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future”.
In short, he sits in the lineage of both Alan Bloom and Harold Bloom. Raging against the closing of the American mind, and for the Western Canon.
In this episode, Gavin Haynes talks to him about his hands-on experience in reversing the decline of culture – in the practice of long marching back through the institutions.
Danube Politics is the current affairs strand of the Danube Institute, a Budapest based think tank, bringing Hungarian conservatism to the Anglosphere and beyond.
Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull has been at the forefront of trans-exclusionary women's rights for a decade. She is the founder of Let Women Speak, and, in 2018, began a poster campaign involving the slogan “Adult Human Female”. The seemingly innocuous definition of ‘a woman’ became a flashpoint for transgenderist activists in the UK.
In 2021, she began a hugely controversial speaking tour of the Antipodes, which resulted in her being denounced by government ministers in Australia, and, in New Zealand, attacked by a mob of activists.
On this special edition of Danube Politics, Danube Institute President John O’Sullivan talks to her about her recent victory in the UK Supreme Court — clarifying existing equalities legislation to agree with the ‘adult human female’ definition. And takes a broader sweep of a life of courage. Has the tide finally turned on women’s sex-based rights? And what of relations between the sexes? Is her brand of feminism the answer? Or is it only in a temporary alliance with the broader trunk of conservative thought?
Danube Politics is the current affairs strand of the Danube Institute’s podcast output, committed to bringing Hungarian Conservatism to the English-speaking world and beyond.
Metaphysics is back.
That’s the word from Nathan Levine, author of the hugely popular Substack, The Upheaval, and a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute.
Nathan is one of the most crisp thinkers in meta-politics today, and here he goes into depth with the DI’s Head of Research, Calum Nicholson. on what we can expect, as the old structures, the liberal order that has presided since 1945, begins to break down.
As he points out, the fables we told ourselves about rule of law, human rights, central planning, neoliberalism, and the supremacy of the individual, are all beginning to warp and fold beneath the pressures of multiple simultaneous revolutions: in tech, in communications, and in the functioning of democracy itself.
Yet what is to come still has not quite been born. We are in an interregnum, between worlds. The technocratic age, the scientistic age, is fading away, and what comes after will have to rely more on ‘magic’, on the right-brain, the Gestalt understanding of who we are.
But if we can no longer rely on plans and machines to fulfil our dreams, what even are we?
Danube Politics is the current affairs strand of the Danube Institute's podcast output. Subscribe and follow for more.
Can India become a similar global player to China one day? Can it be a power for counterbalancing China? In which sectors is India already a leading power? And is its neutrality on world conflicts and its political parallelism sustainable?
We spoke with Dr. Saroj Bishoyi, a Senior Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, who delivered a lecture at the MCC Budapest Summit on Technology and Society.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
When Benjamin Netanyahu flew into Budapest in April 2025, he triggered a political earthquake.
Wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza, the Israeli Prime Minister risked arrest in nearly every European capital. Yet here he was warmly welcomed: the red carpets rolled out, and within days, Hungary announced it would leave the ICC altogether, calling it a “political court.”
Why does Hungary stand apart, not just from the EU, but from the entire liberal international order?
In this episode of Danube Knowledge, host Adam LeBor takes the long view on Hungary’s embrace of Israel, and what it tells us about shifting alliances in the 21st century. He’s joined by Senior Researcher Peter Szitas, co-author of a landmark paper on Hungarian-Israeli relations, and by Researcher Daniel Farkas.
Danube Knowledge is the research brand of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, specialising in Hungarian affairs, conservatism and geo-economics.
What does Budapest reveal about Europe’s past—and its possible future? And can the continent recover a sense of political seriousness before the next crisis hits?
In this episode of The View From The Danube, Rod Dreher is joined by Matthew Goodwin, British political scientist and author; István Kiss, Executive Director of the Danube Institute; and Michael O’Shea, visiting fellow at the Institute. Together they trace the growing divide between liberal migration policies and public frustration across the continent. From the UK’s broken border system to Poland’s cautious pragmatism, and Hungary’s unapologetic stance, the panel unpacks what happens when mass migration is reshaping the social and political order of a country. Topics discussed in this episode include:
• The UK’s net migration crisis: most of the migrants are not looking for jobs or cultural assimilation
• Hungary’s model: how tough border policies reshaped the migration debate
• Poland’s growing tensions: economic growth, political ambivalence, and migrant fatigue
• Islamist influence and identity politics in Britain and France
• The backlash against DEI policies and ideological overreach in academia
• Trump’s challenge to the global consensus on migration and national sovereignty
• Tune in now for a sharp, timely conversation on one of Europe’s most explosive issues.
The View From The Danube is the keystone video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank that aims to bring Conservative perspectives from the Anglosphere together, in the heart of the European capital of Conservativism.
What were the major factors that could allow the Trump campaign to win the 2024 presidential election? What mistakes did the Democrats make to become disconnected from reality? And what is the significance of CPAC? We asked Sean Nottoli, a campaign manager from the former Trump team and a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute.The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
In the race for the presidency, a right wing candidate faces off against the mayor of the country’s largest city.
In a rising country, the battle is between two identities: the global, liberal one. Versus a national conservative vision.
As with Romania, so now with Poland.
On Sunday June the first, Eastern Europe’s new powerhouse will decide its destiny.
Will Poland’s next President be the candidate sympathetic to Donald Tusk’s centrist government? Or will the country’s voters turn right – thereby ensuring a legislative logjam until 2027?
For now at least, everything is still to play for. And just as with Romania, it is a game with many turns left to run.
As the race quickens, Gavin Haynes talks to Michael O'Shea, the Danube Institute's Visiting Fellow, who covers the Visegrád states, on whether Karol Nawrocki can do what George Simion could not.
Danube Politics is the current affairs brand of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, specialising in Hungarian affairs, conservatism and geo-economics.
The battle against ‘progressive education’ is always ongoing.
This week in Britain, Michael Gove’s successor as Education Secretary, Bridget Philipson, introduced a bill that will take British education back, to a decolonised, knowledge-light world that “centres the learners”, as the jargon goes.
Gove had established a more rigorous, conservative curriculum. It had proved astoundingly successful with learners – albeit less popular with the teaching unions.
Now, the pendulum has swung back, and all the same discredited ideas will soon return to English schools.
Few will have counted the tocks of the pendulum as well as Professor Anthony O’Hear.
From the late 1980s, Anthony advised a number of British governments on education policy, and he set up the department of education at the University of Buckingham.
As he explains to Dr Calum TM Nicholson, he wants to warn us about the dangers of forgetting. And to tell us about the redeeming power of a truly liberal education, in a world of hyper-liberal education.
Danube Knowledge is a podcast from the Danube Institute, showcasing research and ideas from the research department of the Institute.
Is IMEC simply an anti-Belt and Road Initiative project, or something more? What can the economic and geopolitical benefits be for the US? Can America reclaim global leadership through soft power ? We spoke with Daniel F. Runde, the director of the Project on Prosperity and Development at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
As the Conclave begins to elect a new spiritual leader to a billion Catholics, Rod Dreher finds himself looking towards the deeper meaning and purpose of the Papacy, the Church, and religion, in a secular world. Do Catholics need a moderniser, or a traditionalist? Constancy, or renewal? The theme mirrors the great secular debate between populism and the establishment. How much do we need our leaders to be 'relatable'? What is the source of their power: is it ordinariness, or the extraordinary?After all, populist insurgent Nigel Farage is presently toasting big UK wins for his Reform Party in the UK; while establishment conservatives Pierre Poilievre and Peter Dutton were both dumped out of their respective election battles in Canada and Australia. Finally, we turn to Trump’s film tariffs. The latest front in his war for American jobs. Could it ever work? What would it even mean? And what does the global roster of film scripts say about the liquid capital that the modern film business represents? This month, Rod is joined by Lord David Frost of Allenton, former Conservative peer. And Anthony O’Hear, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham, and Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute. *** The View From The Danube is the keystone video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank that aims to bring Conservative perspectives from the Anglosphere together, in the heart of the European capital of Conservativism. It stars Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option and Living in Wonder, a senior fellow at the Danube Institute, John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher, the founder and President of the Danube Institute, and Calum Nicholson, the Director of Research. This month, Anthony O’Hear fills in for Calum. With regular guests, we’ll be looking at how Conservatism is changing in a world that is itself changing beyond recognition.
What world order will emerge after the decline of American hegemony? What is China's big strategy, its foreign policy plan? Why is Hungary significant to China? We asked Yan Xuetong, a prominent Chinese foreign policy expert and the Director of The Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University.
Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
What is the geopolitical significance of Central Asia? Why did Turkic states form a regional organization? And what is Hungary’s role in it? We spoke with Kubanychbek Omuraliev, the Secretary General of the Organization of Turkic States about national identity, economic interests, and connectivity.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
The new Syrian administration began life with supreme tactical daring. But it will take more than military prowess to hold together this fractured state.
To keep together a tapestry of Alawites, Kurds, Yazidis, Druze and others, it will require a grand pax between the region's biggest players.
Hungary claims a certain status as a 'keystone state' in central Europe. In other words: a country that punches above its weight geopolitically, and is super-connected to the region.
Ibrahim Mammadov, a Researcher at the Danube Institute, is a citizen of what he considers to be another keystone state within its own region: Azerbaijan.
Together, Mammadov points out, the two countries represent a unique geopolitical circuit that encompasses all the key players in any potential Syrian peace deal: Iran, Israel, Russia, Turkey, the US, and to some extent the EU. Could Hungarian-Azeri shuttle diplomacy be the best way to bind together the bigger players?
After all, as the Danube Institute's Director of Research, Calum Nicholson, finds out, the key skill set of mid-ranking keystone states is precisely that they are honest brokers. They can touch the third rail of power without raising the suspicion of others.
You can read Ibrahim's original paper on the Danube Institute's website, here:
https://danubeinstitute.hu/api/v1/companies/381/files/5122155/download
Hugo Martin wants to turn Hungary into a linguistic superpower.
Inspired by Balázs Orbán’s state strategy of ‘connectivity’, he foresees Hungary using its central place in Europe to leverage language-learning.
He proposes creating a specialised diplomatic corps, to make Hungarians fluent in obscure languages and dialects, giving the country a prime advantage in small or obscure foreign markets that, taken together, represent a big important market.
As he points out, learning foreign languages outside of English or German has become an unaffordable luxury for many of the nation's youth.
Here, he chats to the Danube Institute's Director of Research, Calum Nicholson, about his recent paper sketching out the 'Connectivity Corps'.
You can read Hugo's original paper here: https://danubeinstitute.hu/api/v1/companies/381/files/5122223/download
How was Donald Trump's vice president discovered in 2016? Why did JD Vance go from critic to Trump supporter, and what led him into politics? We asked Rod Dreher, a senior fellow at the Danube Institute, about American conservatives' antipathy towards the EU elite, the threat of soft totalitarianism, and the film based on his book.
The Danube Lectures is a video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based conservative think tank that asks the Institute's guests, decision-makers, experts, academics, and politicians about their unique ideas.
Host: Tamás Maráczi, a journalist at the Danube Institute.
In an environment of low interest rates and low returns, private equity was advertised as a clever means to increase returns in a difficulty investment environment. Private equity allows investors to get access to assets that are not traded on the public markets and so, in theory, can offer them exclusive, higher returns. But the private equity structure also risks that a lack of transparency can be used to cover up bad investments and this could even create financial and economic instability. Is private equity driving property bubbles in multiple countries by allowing for a loophole to get around post-2008 bank regulations? Is private equity a blessing or a curse? Analyst David P. Goldman talks to Danube Institute Visting Fellow Philip Pilkington.
On March 13 of this year, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo, directing the Pentagon’s Performance Improvement Officer to reassign all civilian employees of the Office Of Net Assessment. Fifty two years since it opened, the Office is now closed.
In one sense, Hegseth’s memo is just one more demolition job, in a blizzard of executive orders that have marked the early days of the Trump restoration.
In another, it’s a lot of history to tie up one idle Tuesday.
Few outsiders understood the acronym ONA. But it helped forge the strategy that ended the Cold War, reset the Pentagon’s Chinese strategy, and coined the influential concept of the Revolution In Military Affairs.
This was the Pentagon’s brain. Its cerebral cortex, in fact, concerned with ultra-long-term thinking. Puzzling out real possibilities from the infinite string of potential futures.
And one brain within that brain was Adam Lovinger, whose two decade career at the Office saw him shadow its inspirational founder, Andrew Marshall.
In this episode of Danube Politics, he speaks with DI Visiting Fellow Gavin Haynes about the long timeline of ‘net assessment’ – and its potential revival.
As Trump’s Tariffs bite, a whole new reality is about to come to the wider world. Yet at the same time, a sense of unreality is setting in, in Western Europe. There, a series of political elites are doubling down their speech repression, trying to put a stopper in an explosive tide of popular discontent. In Britain, the country is locked in a bizarre national debate over a fictional TV show that the political class claims contains real-world policy lessons. In France, Marine Le Pen has been banished at the waving of a judge’s gavel. In Germany, the fight to smother the AfD goes on in another Grand Coalition. How can Europe slip free of its dream state? Or will it continue to tumble – perhaps into the low-grade civil war recently predicted by King’s College War Studies professor David Baetz in a viral podcast appearance? In this episode, we’re joined by the British political scientist, author and commentator Professor Matthew Goodwin. Goodwin’s substack reaches 80 000 inboxes every week. He’s become renowned for his ability to predict populism’s next turn – and he has some bleak predictions for the future state of his own country. The View From The Danube is the keystone video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank that aims to bring Conservative perspectives from the Anglosphere together, in the heart of the European capital of Conservativism. It stars Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option and Living in Wonder, a senior fellow at the Danube Institute, John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher, the founder and President of the Danube Institute, and Calum Nicholson, the Director of Research. This month, visiting fellow Gavin Haynes fills in for Calum. With regular guests, we’ll be looking at how Conservatism is changing in a world that is itself changing beyond recognition.
Billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman says Donald Trump is waging “an economic war against the whole world at once”.
Trump insiders haven’t put it much less dramatically. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio bluntly said, “Markets are crashing because… companies are embedded in modes of production that are bad for the United States.”
For Trump, dismantling global trade interdependence is not a side effect—it’s the point.
But the collateral damage is vast.
ECB board member Isabel Schnabel warned that what Trump triumphantly calls “Liberation Day” “was not liberating” at all, but rather “marks the end of global free trade.”
It is certainly the most dramatic day in global trade since the accession of China to the WTO in 1999. That moment marked the low water mark of tariffs, and the coming of a truly globalised world economy.
So if that era is indeed now over, what does that mean for China? And indeed the manufacturing-intensive Eastern rim?
Trump’s China strategy has always been bullish. Is this a bull in a china shop?
To discuss this Great Leap Forward, Dr Eric Henrdiks is joined by economist Philip Pilkington.
After a disputed election late last year, the ex-Soviet satellite of Georgia was catapulted towards the top of the Western news agenda.
Its dominant political party, Georgian Dream, has traded on a peculiar mix of conservatism, nationalism and populism. If ‘all nations are conservative about different things’, then Georgia is a particularly esoteric blend. But as Calum Nicholson discovers, at the same time, Georgian Dream party trades on a formula that goes back over a century.
In this episode of Danube Knowledge, he sits down with Danube Institute Visiting Fellow Stefano Arroque, to talk over the history of Georgia’s eternal slogan: “Homeland. Language. Faith.”
If you want to read Stefano’s full paper, you can do so at the link here:
https://danubeinstitute.hu/en/research/homeland-language-faith-how-georgia-embraced-traditionalist-conservatism
Malcom Kyeyune is a writer for UnHerd and many other titles. He is a big thinker in the realm of geopolitics, military strategy, and social organisation. In the first episode of Unknown Knowns, Kyeyune sits down with host Philip Pilkington to discuss the biggest arc of all: Western decline. After all, it is no longer a question of if, or even when, but how Western decline occurs.
The past five years have seen a major breakdown in the system’s ability to re-order itself. The US military is increasingly a paper tiger. In Germany, we’ve now got insipid ‘grand coalitions’ whose sole purpose is to block out the rising AfD, the first retrenchments in the car industry since the war, and a doubling of the national debt ceiling. Britain has seen riots, the bankruptcy of its second city, and an effective police state in matters of speech take hold to quell the palpable sense of national unease. The BLM era shook the fundaments of Western self-belief, and Covid saddled it with unmanageable debt.
Kyeyune and Pilkington discuss the deep roots of Western decline. From the theories of Oswald Spengler, to Edward Gibbon, to Karl Mark to Julius Evola: prophets of doom have been around forever. The true question is: can the West recover? Or is it locked into an inevitable path?
The View From The Danube The map of Europe is soon to be re-drawn. At the same time, thanks to Trump, the history of social justice ideology (DEI, and so on) will soon be written by the victors.
There are times in the affairs of men when the world must be made anew. That means taking some of our past forward with us - things we remember.
But it also means putting some of it away – a collective amnesia, in pursuit of a bigger social goal: moving on. Peace with Russia will mean moving past the crimes and injuries of the past three years, much as British soldiers were suddenly told that Stalin was now our friend in October 1941.
What of the Guilty Men (and women)? Will the Euro elite of von der Leyen, Kallas, and co, who have led the continent to this uneasy impasse, be able to get away with their heads?
Likewise, will the turning of the tides against social justice ideology — “woke” — mean that we forgive and forget those who were responsible? Or should we exact a more demonstrative justice?
The View From The Danube is the keystone video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank that aims to bring Conservative perspectives from the Anglosphere together, in the heart of the European capital of Conservativism.
It stars Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option and Living in Wonder, a Senior Fellow at the Danube Institute, John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher, the founder and President of the DI, and Calum Nicholson, the Director of Research. This week, they’re joined by Peter Boghossian.
Lord Frost Podcast David Frost, Lord Frost of Allenton, was Britain’s Chief Brexit Negotiator.
Five years ago, as Britain exited the European Union, David Frost was sent to Brussels, to make a landmark speech, setting out the country’s position on the next the kind of trade policy we’d want, and to some extent the kind of country we’d be.
Five years on, it feels as though we’re way off course. Brexit is remembered with bitterness by some, and wistfulness by others. But few think it has fulfilled its purpose.
This month, Lord Frost returned to Budapest, to the Danube Institute, to deliver a kind of sequel speech, setting out a vision for Europe’s institutions. For how we lost our way — and how we might recover it.
In this exclusive podcast, he talks to the DI’s Director of Research, Calum Nicholson, about the timeline of the past five years. From “Get Brexit Done” to the Windsor Agreement, to Keir Starmer’s subtle Rejoin-ism.
Danube Politics is the current affairs strand of Danube Podcasts, a product of The Danube Institute. Connecting Hungarian conservatism to the English-speaking world and beyond.
As the Ukraine War starts to wind down, the next few months willdecide the shape of Europe for a generation.
What happens when the continent is neither master of its owndomain, nor under the aegis of a superpower? And what of the continental elitewho piloted us to the gates of disaster? Professor Doug Stokes explains wherewe might be headed.
View From The Danube What is the proper order of love?
Is it the one thing that irreconcilably separates liberals from conservatives?
How much can ordinary retail politics ever be built from deep moral philosophical foundations?
And how far are we from Real Existing Post-Liberalism?
This month, on View From The Danube, we’re tracking recent events in America, in the context of an intellectually self-confident re-assertion of conservatism. This is “the religious right” thumping their Thomas Aquinas.
Host Rod Dreher is joined by his guests to discuss the astonishing executive presidency of Trump’s first month. From DOGE to USAID to DEI to Robert Kennedy, this has been a revolution in the head like little else.
But the thing that Rod picks up on is the battle royale of JD Vance versus Rory Stewart over the ‘ordo amoris’. The proper order of love.
Is there, Rod wonders, a deeper battle underway between liberalism and conservatism? Are we really injuncted to love everyone equally? Or is the truth that we have special obligations to our family, friends and neighbours?
In short, is Stewart the last godforsaken yelp of the disappearing liberal world order?
The View From The Danube is the keystone video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank that aims to bring Conservative perspectives from the Anglosphere together, in the heart of the European capital of Conservativism.
It stars Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option and Living in Wonder, a senior fellow at the Danube Institute; John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher, the founder and President of the DI; and Calum Nicholson, the Director of Research.
This week, they’re joined by Liliana Śmiech, Director General for International Affairs at the Ludovika University of Public Service.
Podcast Episode Chapters
In the first episode of his new podcast from London, David Oldroyd-Bolt, the Danube Institute's Anglosphere Fellow, interviews the former Conservative Party Member of Parliament and Cabinet minister the Rt Hon Michael Gove.
After leaving Parliament at the General Election of July 2024, Gove succeeded Fraser Nelson as editor of The Spectator in October and has been widely tipped to received a peerage in Rishi Sunak's resignation honours list. Oldroyd-Bolt and he discuss what makes the Spectator such an enduring success and what he plans to do as editor, before turning to Gove's political career, including his revolutionary education reforms and whether he was correct to take a such hard pro-lockdown line in Cabinet during the Covid panic.
As the Trump 2 era dawns, the talk is all of a price on Greenland and the kowtowing of Canada. The Mar-a-lago world view that is emerging is one based on shoring up America's geographical power. We're back into the world of hemispheres - of the Monroe Doctrine, and implied spheres of influence.
So what happens when America pulls away from the abstractions of the 'rules based international order', and re-enters the world of territory and pseudo-empires?
This time on The View From The Danube, host Rod Dreher, the Danube Institute's Senior Fellow, is joined by renowned geopolitical scholar Dr Gladden Pappin, President of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. And Liliana Śmiech, a Pole based in Budapest, who is the Director-General for International Affairs, at the Ludovika University of Public Service.
Along with the Danube Institute's Director of Research, Dr Calum Nicholson, the panel consider the implications of this new Great Game for Europe. Once the forge of empires, in the 21st century it has become suborned to America's military might.
Will Trumpism 2 mean a pulling back from America's implied military protections? How will the continent's ailing great powers cope? How can it maintain itself in a world where being 'a regulation superpower' won't even be a droll punchline?
OUTLINE 00:00 Introduction * 00:08 Greenland, the vibe shift, nationalism and neo-imperialism. * 26:00 Elon Musk: Tump's court jester or his new prince? * 36:00 Europe in challenging times. Cultural lethargy versus a potential reboot. * 45:00* Predictions for 2025: Melania, Musk, and J.D. Vance.
The View From The Danube is the keystone video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank that aims to bring perspectives from the Anglosphere together, in the European capital of Conservativism.
With regular guests, we'll be looking at how Conservatism is changing in a world that is itself changing beyond recognition.
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SOCIAL LINKS:* X: https://x.com/institutedanube * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/danube-institute * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danubeinstitute
Sáron Sugár, a researcher at the Danube Institute, sits down with Or Yissachar, the Head of Israel Defence and Security Forum's Content Division and Research Department, to discuss what lies ahead for Israel’s security strategy as tensions with Iran and its proxies continue to simmer. The discussion explores the prospects for US-Israel relations under President Trump’s second term, controversies around humanitarian aid to Gazans, and rising anti-semitism in the West. The discussion concludes with a question related to Hungary’s strong support of Israel.
Michelle Watson, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute, sits down with "Mimi" Roy, Visiting Fellow at Ludovika University of Public Service in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss her latest research topic. The conversation delves into two key questions: how India’s tech strategy is shaping its role in the new era of techno-competition, and how the country is positioning itself as a prominent stakeholder in influencing the global narrative around technology.
“Every epoch is a sphinx that tumbles into the abyss once its riddle is solved” - Heinrich Heine, 1833 It was only as the reality of Trump’s win began to sink in that the enormity of the change ahead began to dawn on us. With control over the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the executive, Trumpism 2.0 has the all means to make good on its outlandish promises; early nominations suggest it has the mettle too. But beyond politics itself, there is an even bigger prize at stake: to change the psychology of a nation. After 40 years of neoliberal dominance, finally, it feels as though the consensus around both social liberalism and economic liberalism will end in January. Now, with a few definitive strikes of the legislative guillotine, Trumpism will set the tone for the middle of the 21st Century: a post-liberal world order. As Rod Dreher explains, this has huge implications, from art to race to geopolitics The world is about to be made anew. The vibe shift is real.The View From The Danube is the keystone video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank that aims to bring Conservative perspectives from the Anglosphere together, in the heart of the European capital of Conservativism. It stars Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option and Living in Wonder, a senior fellow at the Danube Institute, John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher, the founder and President of the DI, and Calum Nicholson, the Director of Research. This week, they’re joined by David P Goldman, deputy editor of the Asia Times, and a Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute. With regular guests, we’ll be looking at how Conservatism is changing in a world that is itself changing beyond recognition.
When the Washington Post failed to endorse the Kamala campaign, the reaction was off the scale. Journalists resigned. The rest of the liberal media blew a fuse. But this was only one paper and one guy, Jeff Bezos. What was going on? As Rod Dreher explains, The Washington Post’s non-endorsement was the moment the Harris campaign and their supporters sensed that the deep narrative was finally drifting away from them. So they pulled out the biggest of guns - the F-word… the spectre of midcentury Germany. It feels desperate. The hyperbole is now so big it’s visible from a SpaceX satellite. But does that mean that, after constant lawfare and two assassination attempts, victory is finally in sight for Donald Trump? On the inaugural View From The Danube podcast, the team break down the weirdest election since at least 1912. Maybe since 1876 — or even 1824. *** The View From The Danube is the keystone video podcast of the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank that aims to bring Conservative perspectives from the Anglosphere together, in the heart of the European capital of Conservativism. It stars Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option and Living in Wonder, a senior fellow at the Danube Institute, John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher, the founder and President of the DI, and Calum Nicholson, the Director of Research. This week, they’re joined by Deputy Director Melissa O’Sullivan. With regular guests, we’ll be looking at how Conservatism is changing in a world that is itself changing beyond recognition.
Lord Frost, joined us on the Danube Institute Podcast to explain how a hard-fought Tory leadership contest has changed the whole tenor of the British Right. Here, he explains why Robert Jenrick is his pick.
Prof Doug Stokes and journalist Gavin Haynes join the podcast to discuss the state of British politics, whether we are living in a truly multipolar world, and the significance of the coming American election.
Though Chinese-Israeli relations had taken off and were set for great heights, China turned away from Israel immediately after October 7, not even condemning the Hamas terror attack. Chinese-US rivalry is a factor. What is going on? Dr Eric Hendriks, who previously worked at Peking University and is now a fellow at the Danube Institute, interviews Elie Pieprz, Director of International Relations of the Israel Defense and Security Forum. The location is Budapest, where Herzl created the idea of political Zionism 130 years ago.
Discussion on the outcomes of the French elections and their implications.
Prof Daniel Mahoney and Dr Soós Eszter join the podcast to reflect on the surprising results of the French election, and their implications for the future of france, and the french right in particular.
"There is simply no way to know what comes after liberalism", according to political economist and journalist Philip Pilkington, but he is convinced that "the world system that liberalism created after the Second World War is collapsing". In this episode of Buda Hills Podcast, we discuss some of the most striking claims in Pilkington's next book, The Collapse of Global Liberalism, which is forthcoming with Polity Press.
Next weekend French voters go to the polls in the second round of elections to the French National Assembly after the "far Right"
National Rally headed by Marine Le Pen scored a strong but not decisive success in the first round. France's President Emmanuel Macron had called the elections in a response to its victory in the European elections to demonstrate that the Euro-results were an aberration by rallying the other parties to defeat the NR nationally. But Macron's own party came a poor third p\ after the Rally and the left-wing Popular Front, This last round will decide whether the National Rally will leap over the cordon sanitaire that has excluded the party from office until now or face continued exclusion by a Centre-Left coalition. And if the former, will President Macron form of working partnership or "cohabitation" with the NR administration? Or will he seek to block it? And what is likely to be the impact on wider European politics?
In the second of three programs on the elections and their consequences between French,, American, and Hungarian experts, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet of the London Sunday Telegraph and Daniel Mahoney, author of several books on French and European politics, and Eszter Soos, a leading Hungarian academic specialist in French politics and culutrewill discuss these and other questions.
Overview and predictions for the first round of the French elections.
Over the next two weekends French voters will be going to the polls to select a new national government. France's President Emmanuel Macron called the elections in an emergency response to the victory of the "far-right" National Rassemblement,, in elections to the European Assembly. Apparently he intended to demonstrate that the Euro-results were an aberration by rallying the other parties to defeat the NR nationally. But opinion polls show that the NR's support among voters is almost forty per cent and holding up well whereas the President's own centrist liberals are trailing in third place. These elections open up the possibility of major changes in the conduct of France's democracy and government. Will the National Rassemblement be able to enter into government for the first time leaping over the cordon sanitaire that has excluded the party from office until now? If so, will President Macron form of working partnership or "cohabitation" with the NR administration? Or will he resign? And what is likely to be the impact on wider European politics? In the first of three programs on the elections and their consequences between French, American, and Hungarian experts, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet of the London Sunday Telegraph and Daniel Mahoney, author of several books on French and European politics discuss these and other questions.
Új, angol nyelvű ismeretterjesztő kötet jelent meg a Batthyány Lajos Alapítvány és a Danube Institute gondozásában „Theologians on Modern Politics” címmel. A közeledő nemzetközi bemutató apropóján a Danube Institute vezető kutatójával, a kötet társszerkesztőjével, Dr. Darabos Ádámmal Dallman Kristóf egyháztörténész beszélgetett az intézet podcast sorozatának legújabb epizódjában. A diskurzus során szóba került a kutatás alapgondolata, a kötetté formálódás folyamata, valamint a teológusok, illetve politikai gondolkodók kiválasztási módja és mondanivalójuk aktualitása korunkban.
In this special episode of Reflections from Budapest, we had the honour to have a discussion with Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, International Media Spokesperson of the Israel Defence Forces. We started our conversation by asking Lieutenant Colonel Shoshani about his military background and his role in telling the IDF’s story to the world. Lieutenant Colonel Shoshani reacted to a question about the intelligence failure of the IDF on Oct. 7 and IDF's fight against the denial of the Arab world and the ignorance of the West regarding Hamas's brutality, including sexual violence and torture.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Shirel Liberman, an Israeli activist and the co-founder of Shift, a women-led impact network aimed at supporting women in public diplomacy and enhancing Israel's positive global influence. In this part, Shirel walked our listeners through her own experiences on the October 7th massacre and highlighted the lack of international response to Hamas's violence, including sexual violence. To conclude, Shirel shared her experiences of organizing tours to the kibbutzim where the atrocities took place.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Nadia Matar, co-chairman of the Sovereignity Movement. We asked Mrs Matar about the Islamic extremism and security in the West Bank. In our conversation we also discussed the Gaza War and the case of the hostages. In the end, Mrs Matar shared with us her views about the Israeli sovereignity and the future of the West Bank and Gaza.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we had a two-part discussion with Shirel Liberman, an Israeli influencer of the Voices of Israel program, Chief of Operations at Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy and the co-founder of "Shift," a women-led impact network aimed at supporting women in public diplomacy and enhancing Israel's positive global influence. In this part, we started our conversation by asking Shirel about her previous experiences with pro-Israel advocacy. As Shirel was also involved in the We're Brothers Initiative, which formed before October 7th at the time of the mass anti-government protests against judicial reform to bring people together, we discussed how a deeply divided society became united for a couple of months following the October 7th massacre. We concluded by discussing the rise of anti-Semitism around the world, Zionism and its major role in the Israeli society.
In this episode of Danube Dialogues, John O'Sullivan and Eric Hendriks discuss the reality of world-cultural zones with James Bennett, the popularizer of the term "the Anglosphere".
This is the second webinar in the “China Keywords” series of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute. In this webinar, Eric Hendriks, the director of TPPI's China Initiative, and Logan West of the Danube Institute talk with Yan Xuetong about the concept of Wangdao, or "The Kingly Way." Among China's most influential foreign policy thinkers, Yan Xuetong is the author of numerous books, including Analysis of China's National Interests (1996), Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power (Princeton University Press, 2011), and Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers (Princeton University Press, 2019). He is a distinguished professor and dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Nadia Matar, co-chairman of the Sovereignity Movement. We asked Mrs Matar about the Jewish identity and its connection to the Land of Israel. Since Nadia Matar currently live in the West Bank, she gave us insight into the situation of the israeli settlement in the region and the relation with the Palestinians. Mrs Matar also share with us her personal memories and thoughts about the most famous persons in the settlement history.
In this episode of Reflection from Budapest, we interviewed Josh Hasten, International Spokesperson for Gush Etzion, host of the weekly “Israel Uncensored” program and a well-known award winning freelance journalist. Through the discussion we can learn about the settlements and the perception of settler violence in the media and the Western world. We also touched upon the events of October 7 and the possible consequences of the UN Security Council resolution issuing an immediate ceasefire.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we interviewed Shadi Khalloul, Director of Strategic Partnerships Alma Research & Education Centre, Founder and President of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association and Aram Galilee Centre, and reserve captain in the IDF. Listening to the discussion, we can get an overview of the history of the Aramaic community in the Middle East and Israel, and a deeper insight into their life today in a Jewish state. Also, how do other religions in the country and the region relate to them?
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Amiad Cohen, director-general of the Tikvah Fund in Israel. We asked Mr Cohen about his intake on Hungary’s strong support of Israel, the IDF’s operation in Rafah, and his insights into the historical background of the current conflict in Gaza. To conclude, we talked about how the war impacted the West Bank, the possibility of a third Lebanon war, and the future of the Middle East in the day after the Israel-Hamas war.
"In war it is perfectly acceptable to lie to your enemy," says Professor David Betz of King's College London, "lying to yourself, though, is the kiss of death". In this episode of the Buda Hills Podcast, we discuss the ways in which Professor Betz thinks the collective West has been lying to itself about war in the twenty-first century.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Amiad Cohen, director-general of the Tikvah Fund. Since the October 7th massacre, Mr Cohen has been on reserve duty; we asked about his experiences and role in the IDF. Mr Cohen detailed Hamas’s intention behind October 7th and his views on the impossibility of a two-state solution in the foreseeable future, Palestinian violence in the West Bank and the importance of Judea and Samaria for Israel.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Lt. Col. (Res.) Maurice Hirsch, the Director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a Senior Legal Analyst at Human Rights Voices and a senior researcher at the Israel Defence and Security Forum. We asked Mr Hirsch about his personal, professional and military background and his experiences living in a settlement in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria. As Mr Hirsch was the architect of the law that strips Israeli citizenship from Palestinian terrorists who have been convicted of terror offences, he gave valuable insight into legal strategies and measures used by Israel to combat Palestinian terrorism.
In this special episode of Reflections from Budapest, we had a discussion with Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Yaron Buskila. He is the CEO of the Israel Defense and Security Forum and a retired IDF commander who currently serves in the reserves as operations officer for the Gaza Division of the Israel Defense Forces. We asked Colonel Buskila about his military background and past experiences in Gaza. During the discussion, Colonel Buskila shared his personal experience of fighting against 40 Hamas terrorists on October 7th and provided valuable insights into the Gaza conflict, including how the 2005 withdrawal contributed to the events of that day.
In this special episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Colonel Christopher P. Costa. Colonel Costa was a former US government official with 35 years of experience, including 25 years in military counterintelligence, human intelligence (HUMINT), and special operations forces (SOF). He also served as the Special Assistant to the President & Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the White House from 2017-18. Since 2018 he has been the executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. We continued our discussion with Colonel Costa about the ramifications of the war in Gaza. Colonel Costa shared his insights on the issues stemming from hostage-taking and subsequent negotiations or hostage rescue. To conclude Colonel Costa shared what lessons Israel should have learned and what changes he would recommend to ensure that October 7th will not happen again.
In this special episode of Reflections from Budapest, we had the honor of having Colonel Christopher P. Costa as our guest for the second time in our podcast series. Colonel Costa was a former US government official with 35 years of experience, including 25 years in military counterintelligence, human intelligence (HUMINT), and special operations forces (SOF). He also served as the Special Assistant to the President & Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the White House from 2017-18. Since 2018 he has been the executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. This time we focused our discussion with Colonel Costa on the ramifications of the war in Gaza. Colonel Costa shared his insights on how the attack on October 7th and the subsequent war in Gaza have affected American policy and security concerns and discussed the possible reasons for the Israeli intelligence failures on October 7th. To conclude,we asked Colonel Costa about the brutal tactics employed by Hamas on October 7th.
Communist states had, and still have, a millennial sense of utopianism. But is secular liberal democracy utopian, too? Could it be that our democratic utopianism is presentist? This is what Professor Zoltán Balázs of Corvinus University argues in the new episode of Buda Hills Podcast. With our rights "revealed" in the American and French Revolutions, democratic utopianism has located us at the end of history. We now live in a sort of eternal future in which we must fight to maintain democracy—forever.
Historian, theologian and ethicist Nigel Biggar CBE, emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford and Danube Institute Visiting Fellow David Oldroyd-Bolt discusses Professor Biggar's bestselling book 'Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning', which his original publisher tried to cancel before it had even been published, as well as the explosion of public antisemitism across the West since Hamas invaded Israel on 7 October last year and the moral nature of the war in Ukraine.
In this special episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Amir Avivi, a brigadier general retired from the Israel Defence Forces and founder and chairman of the Israeli Defence and Security Forum (IDSF). We asked General Avivi about his command experiences in Gaza operations and how the 2005 Gaza withdrawal of Israeli troops contributed to the October 7th massacre. General Avivi also gave his insight into the future of Israel in the aftermath of October 7th and the war in Gaza. To conclude, General Avivi elaborated on how the war could spill over to the West and the importance of Hungary’s strong support of Israel.
In this special episode of Reflections from Budapest, we had a discussion with Amir Avivi, a brigadier general retired from the Israel Defence Forces and founder and chairman of the Israeli Defence and Security Forum (IDSF). We asked General Avivi about his background, upbringing, and his first-hand military career experiences. General Avivi also gave insights into how and why IDSF was founded and the deep influence the organization has on the Israeli government, society and military policy. To conclude, General Avivi highlighted the importance of understanding the core values of Zionism, which are deeply intertwined with Israeli identity and security.
The Orthodox Christian churches are ancient, yet they are embroiled in twenty-first-century geopolitics. Two Orthodox-majority states, Russia and Ukraine, are locked in a devastating conflict that seems to be reshaping the world order. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Samuel Noble, a historian of Orthodox Christianity. We ask him: Are we seeing the emergence of NATO and non-NATO strands of Orthodoxy? And have recent events proved that Samuel Huntington’s idea of an “Orthodox heartland” was prescient - or not?
In this special episode of Reflections from Budapest, we had a discussion with His Excellency Yacov Hadas-Handelsman, Israeli Ambassador to Hungary. We asked Mr Hadas-Handelsman about his diplomatic career and the relationship between Hungary and Israel. Mr Hadas-Handelsman detailed Hamas’s brutality on the October 7th massacre and the implications of the war in Gaza. He also shared his insights on the future of the process of Israel establishing relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states and the failure of Palestinian governance. We concluded by discussing the prospects for rescuing the hostages and the future of the Middle East in the aftermath of October 7th and the war in Gaza.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Professor Yaakov Ariel, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Ariel specializes in the study of Christian-Jewish relations. We asked Professor Ariel about whether incidents of violence in Israel by radical Jewish groups against Christian communities have increased considerably since the formation of the current government. We also talked about whether the Israel-Hamas war changed the traditional American support of Israel. To conclude, Professor Ariel shared his insight on the emergence of anti-Semitism and lack of empathy toward Jewish people in US universities.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Professor Yaakov Ariel, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Ariel specializes in the study of Christian-Jewish relations. We asked Professor Ariel about the Christian-Jewish relationship in the US as well as in Israel. We also discussed Christian Zionism and American Christians' support of Israel. To conclude, we asked Professor Ariel whether the notion that the assimilation of American Jews is the greatest threat to the Jewish people in the US is true.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Dr. Jürgen Bühler, the President of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ). In our conversation, Dr. Bühler explained the importance of Christian Zionism and the Biblical approach of Israel and shared his insights on Messianic Judaism. To conclude, Dr. Bühler shared the ICEJ’s plans to continue supporting Israeli communities in need, building bomb shelters, providing aid, and organizing pro-Israel marches in 50 other countries to show support for the Jewish state.
Inthis episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Dr. Jürgen Bühler, the President of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ). In our conversation, Dr. Bühler walked us through his fascinating family story and the history and work of ICEJ. Dr. Bühler shared his insights on the importance of the Christian-Jewish relationship in Israel. He also detailed how Israeli Christian communities were affected by attacks they faced from radical Jewish groups, with a particular emphasis on the possible historical causes of this hostility. To conclude, Dr. Bühler shared the importance of their Feast of Tabernacles celebration, which attracts several thousand Christians from more than 80 nations annually.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Or Yissachar, the Head of Research Department at the Israel Defence and Security Forum. We asked Mr Yissachar about the future of Gaza, how the infrastructure would be rebuilt and who would fill the vacuum if Israel eliminates Hamas. We also talked about the refugee question of Palestinians. To conclude, we discussed the war's effect on Europe, the motivation of pro-Hamas demonstrations, the upsurge in anti-Semitism and how Israel will recover from the war.
In the special episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Or Yissachar, the Head of Research Department at the IsraelDefence and Security Forum. In our conversation, Mr Yissachar walked us through the deep historical background of the current conflict in Gaza and how the war affected the West Bank. We also talked about Hezbollah's involvement in the Israel-Hamas war. To conclude, we talked about why Hamas's brutality on October 7th was aimed mainly at peace-seeking left-wing Israeli civilians.
An interview with Dr. Gadi Taub historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on the war in Gaza, the character of Hamas' terror state and the problematic western reaction to the atrocity of 7th October.
An interview with Dr Tim Williams on the impact of Covid 19 on the modern city and how cities adapt to the post pandemic world. Tim Williams is practice leader, Cities, for Grimshaw International Architects and has served as special adviser to five UK Ministers for Cities.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our discussion with Elie Pieprz, the director of International Relations of the Israel Defence and Security Forum. Following the first part of this broadcast, we discussed why it's important for Israel to reject calls for an immediate ceasefire. In our conversation, we also asked about the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas's responsibility for the poor situation in Gaza. To conclude, we asked Mr Pieprz about the Yesha Council and the Israeli settlement movement.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Professor Asbed Kotchikian, an Associate Professor of Political science and International relations at the American University of Armenia about the Armenian presence in Iraqi Kurdistan. He shared his own experience in Kurdistan as well as the struggles and the current reality of Armenians living in Kurdistan and Iraq.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Elie Pieprz, the director of International Relations of the Israel Defence and Security Forum. In our conversation, Mr Pieprz walked us through what happened to Israel on October 7, Black Saturday, when Hamas brutally attacked Israel, killed over 1200 Israeli civilians and took around 240 more as hostages. We also talked about the intelligence failure of Israel and whether the attack could've been prevented. To conclude, we talked about the Israeli invasion of Gaza and how the IDF tries to minimise civilian casualties.
What is cosmopolitanism? What is its history? Can there ever be a truly universal culture? And how do European and East Asian cultures think differently about these questions? In this episode we talk with David Tse-Chien Pan, Professor of European Languages and Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and editor of Telos Journal in New York. For more on his publications and research, see here.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we continued our conversation with Professor Joas Wagemakers, an Associate Professor of Islam and Arabic at Utrecht University, who specializes in the intellectual history of modern Islam and Salafism. Following the 1st part in this broadcast, we discuss the history of theconfrontation between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the current situation and how these two sides are perceived in the EU and the Islamic world.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Professor Joas Wagemakers, an Associate Professor of Islam and Arabic at Utrecht University, who specializes in the intellectual history of modern Islam and Salafism. By listening to the discussion, we can get an overview of Salafism and Hamas and their historical and ideological sides. Also, how do other religions and countries in the Middle East relate to them?
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Jeremy P. Barker, the Director of the Middle East Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute, about the current situation of the Christian communities in Iraqi Kurdistan. Mr. Barker spoke in detail about the factors, such as violence against women that adversely affect Christians in Iraq today. He also expressed his opinion on whether the Christian community has a future in Kurdistan and Iraq.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Jeremy P. Barker, the Director of the Middle East Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute, about his fieldwork in Iraq. By listening the discussion, we can get an overview of how the situation of the Christian communities in Iraq has changed in recent decades. Mr. Barker also expressed his opinion on the effectiveness of Hungary Helps.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Father Rifat Bader, director and editor-in-chief of the Jordan-based Catholic Center for Studies and Media, about Jordanian Christians' situation. Father Rifat has overseen research, journalism, and social media productions focusing on the Christian Arab experience in the Middle East, aiming to support and empower those of the Catholic or other Christian faiths in the region, as well as constructive and positive dialogue between political and religious groups therefore; he gave an insight how Jordan in the Middle East is a "safe house in the midst of a burning avenue". We also asked how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affects Jordanians and how Christian women are treated in the country. To conclude, we asked how common the emigration of Jordanian Christians to Western countries is.
Has the Cultural Revolution that Mao Zedong headed – his attempt to suppress the “Four Olds” in China – shaped Westerners’ hostility to their own “old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits”? In this episode we talk with David Martin Jones, Director of Research at the Danube Institute and Visiting Professor at King's College London. For Martin Jones’s book on Maoism in the West, see here.
Has the “Asian century” started? And will it be a “Chinese century,” as The Economist recently suggested? In this episode we talk with David P. Goldman of the celebrated Asia Times column “Spengler”. For Goldman’s book on the resurgence of China, see here.
Can great powers have catastrophic blind spots? In this episode we talk with Edward Luttwak, a historian of grand strategy and a strategist who counts many governments among his clients. In his 2013 book The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy, Dr. Luttwak coined the phrase “great state autism” to describe Russia, China, and the United States. For more of his analysis, see “Limitless Empire” in London Review of Books, and “The Clue China is Preparing for War” in Unherd.
Joanna Williams and Viv Regan join the podcast to discuss the current fashion for appealing to 'lived experience' in debate. They explain how a deference to identity allows an often privileged minority to present themselves as victims and silence opposition. In the media, universities and the workplace, hurt feelings routinely justify censorship, and those who cry loudest about their suffering can wield considerable power. How has this situation come about? And how can the importance of free speech be reasserted? Is it fair to brand a younger generation ‘snowflakes’? Is being offended really all that empowering?
Maria Engström joins the podcast to discuss Russia's 'dark conservatism': it's origins in 19th century European thought; its core tenets; and its relevance today, both in the context of the Ukraine war, and political trends in both Russia and the West.
In a special episode of Reflections from Budapest, dedicated to the remembrance of the Hungarian victims of the Holocaust, we asked László Bernát Veszprémy, a journalist and historian about his book titled Bereft of Council: The Jewish Leadership in Hungary and the Holocaust, 1944-1945 which was published this year. In our conversation, we talked about the Jewish leadership of Hungary during and after the Holocaust. To conclude, we discussed the present-day situation of the Hungarian Jewish community and different perceptions of anti-Semitism in Hungary.
In this special episode of Reflections from Budapest Sáron Sugár, a researcher at the Danube Institute asked her colleagues Prof. Jeffrey Kaplan distinguished research fellow, Logan West visiting fellow, and Virág Lőrincz researcher, about their findings and experiences of their two-week-long fieldwork trip in Iraqi Kurdistan. We talked about the current and past challenges of Christians in Iraqi Kurdistan, with a special emphasis on how the violence of ISIS affected Christian women and families and their current challenges in the post-ISIS era. We concluded with a discussion about the worrying future of Christians in Iraq.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Jonathan Andrews, Middle East Monitor for the Persecution Intelligence Unit of Global Christian Relief and writer of several books dealing with the situation of Christians in the Middle East. In our conversation, we talked about the challenges of those Christians living in Middle Eastern countries who chose to convert from Islam to Christianity and the situation of Christian communities in Lebanon and Sudan. We concluded by discussing how the mass migration of Christians from the Middle East to Western countries affects the future of Christian communities who chose to remain in the region.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked David Curry, the president and CEO of Global Christian Relief, an international ministry that advocates for those persecuted for their Christian faith. In the second part of our conversation, Mr Curry explained the situation of Christian communities in Egypt, Sudan, and Lebanon. We concluded by discussing how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict impacts Christians in Israel and the West Bank.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked David Curry, the president and CEO of Global Christian Relief, an international ministry that advocates for those persecuted for their Christian faith. In the first part of our conversation, Mr Curry shared how he was called to dedicate his life to supporting Christians in the most oppressive countries in the world and how Brother Andrew van der Bijl founded the worldwide known organization Open Doors. He also explained the situation of Christians in need in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. We concluded by discussing the Western world's responsibility in addressing the underlying causes of violence and discrimination against Christian communities worldwide.
In this episode of Reflections from Budapest, we asked Juliana Taimoorazy, who is the founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, leading international advocate and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, about the situation of Christian communities in Iraq. In our conversation, Ms Taimoorazy shared her connection as an Assyrian Christian to Iraq and her experiences with the Iraqi Christian communities. She also explained the current and past challenges of Iraqi Christian women, men, children and families. We concluded by discussing the worrying future of Christian communities in Iraq.
How does Hungary become the focus of interest for a French historian? What are the dangers for the Western world and why can Hungary and Central Europe be an inspiration for Europe? A new episode of the Chain Bridge podcast looks at Thibaud Gibelin's book "Why Viktor Orban Plays and Wins - the resurgence of Central Europe". The author is interviewed by Ákos Bence Gát, Head of Communications and External Relations at the Danube Institute.
In the seventh episode of our new series, ’Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Hungary,’ we are joined by Dr. Jehuda Hartman, born in Budapest and currently lives and works in Israel; he specializes in the history of Hungarian Jews in modern times. In this episode, we talked about the history of Hungarian Jewry from the communist period to the present day. We concluded with a discussion about how Hungary is perceived in Israel today.
In the sixth episode of our new series, ’Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Hungary’, we are joined by Dr. Jehuda Hartman, born in Budapest and currently lives and works in Israel; he specializes in the history of Hungarian Jews in modern times. Dr. Hartman is a recipient of the Israel National Defense Prize. In the first part of our discussion, we talked about Dr. Hartman’s and his family’s unique early experiences from the Second World War and the history of Hungarian Jews from the 1920s to the Holocaust.
In the seventh episode of our new series, ‘Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Hungary’, we are joined by Ádám Schönberger, the head of the large Jewish youth cultural organization MAROM, which is based in Budapest, as well as the founder and owner of the popular Hungarian youth festival Bánki-tó. In this episode, we talked about the organization MAROM and its relationship with a wide range of Hungarian and international Jewish organizations. We discussed Mr. Schönberger’s point of view about anti-Semitism in Hungary based on his personal experiences.
In the fifth episode of our new series, ’Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Hungary’, we are joined by Virág Gulyás, a non-Jewish Zionist activist and journalist who is well-known for her blog called the Almost Jewish. We talked about how she became a Hungarian non-Jewish activist who fights against anti-Semitism in the US. In our discussion, we covered topics related to anti-Semitism in Hungary, such as the misperception in the US and Western countries regarding the level of anti-Semitism in Hungary, the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism if there’s any, and the question of why it’s important to fight against anti-Semitism.
In the fourth episode of our new series ’Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Hungary’, we are joined by Rabbi Róbert Frölich, chief rabbi of Hungary and the chief rabbi of the Dohány Street Synagogue since 1993. In the second episode of our conversation with Rabbi Frölich, we talked about the reasons why the Hungarian Jewish community is so divided, and there is conflict between MAZSIHISZ and EMIH leaders. We concluded with a discussion about anti-Semitism in Hungary.
In the third episode of our new series ’Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Hungary’, we are joined by Rabbi Róbert Frölich, chief rabbi of Hungary and the chief rabbi of the Dohány Street Synagogue since 1993. In the first part of our discussion with Rabbi Frölich, we talked about the history of the neolog Jewish movement in Hungary, the MAZSIHISZ neolog Jewish organization, and the distinction between the Chabad/Lubovicher and the neolog Jewish movement in Hungary. We concluded with a discussion about secularization and assimilation of Judaism in Hungary. In the second part of our discussion, we will speak about anti-Semitism in Hungary from a neolog perspctive.
In the second episode of our new series ’Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Hungary’ we continue our conversation with Rabbi Baruch Oberlander, chief leader of the Chábád/ Lubavich community and the head of the Budapest Orthodox Rabbinate. In this episode, we talk about the different perceptions of anti-Semitism in Hungary and about the conflict between the Jewish communities MAZSIHISZ and EMIH. Although in Western media, Hungary is often portrayed as still having a major problem with anti-Semitism, it turns out to be one of the safest European countries for Jews to live in.
In the first episode of our new series ’Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Hungary’ we are joined by Rabbi Baruch Oberlander, chief leader of the Chábád/ Lubavich community and the head of the Budapest Orthodox Rabbinate. In the first part of our discussion with Rabbi Oberlander, we talk about Jewish history in Hungary, the Chabad/Lubovicher movement, the establishment of Chabad in Hungary, and the secularization of Judaism. In the second part of our new series, we will speak about the situation of Jews and anti-Semitism in Hungary.
This episode of the „Broad Abroad Podcast” offers a glimpse behind the scenes of the rule of law debates between Hungary and the European Union, and intelligible explanation on the US Supreme Court’s decision on abortion rights, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
Why does Brussels constantly criticise Hungary on the field of the Rule of Law?
What are the underlying political and institutional interests behind European rule of law debates?
Has the US Supreme court decided in favour of restricting abortion rights?
Thought-provoking discussion by Melissa O’Sullivan, deputy executive director, and Ákos Bence Gát, head of communications and international relations of the Danube Institute.
In the third episode of our new series 'Religious Diversity in Hungary' we are joined by Abouna Youssef Khalil, a former medical doctor and priest currently serving as the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Hungary. In this episode, we learn about Abouna Youssef's journey from the streets of Cairo to the boulevards of Budapest, and discuss how this ancient faith has found a new home - and a new voice - right here in Hungary. We speak about issues of doctrine, discrimination, and discuss the future of this ancient faith here in Central Europe.
In the second episode of our new series, 'Religious Diversity in Hungary', we continue our conversation with Peter Morvay, the communications and international relations officer of the pentecostal-charismatic Faith Church, Hit Gyülekezete. In this episode, we asked Mr Morvay about Christian-Zionism, how and why Faith Church has a vital role in fighting against anti-Semitism in Hungary, and why is it important for Christians to support Israel and the Jewish people as Christian. In our discussion, we also talked about the international activities of the Faith Church, including their advocacy and relief work for at-risk communities in Israel, Ukraine, and countries where Christians are persecuted.
In the first episode of our new series called ‘Religious Diversity in Hungary’, we had a two-part discussion with Peter Morvay, the communications and international relations officer of the independent pentecostal-charismatic Faith Church, Hit Gyülekezete. In the 70-80s Faith Church was an underground church that had to have all of its worship meetings illegally during the Communist era. We asked Peter Morvay about how Faith Church was founded, how it was able to grow even under the Communist era when Christians were oppressed in the country and about its role as one of the largest Church in Hungary.
In the fifth episode of Reflections from Budapest, we discussed the situation of Christians and churches in Poland with Jerzy Kwaśniewski, President of the Board and co-founder of Ordo Iuris Institute, Chairman of the Ordo Iuris Foundation Council. Even though around 90% of Polish society is Catholic, many young Poles started to turn against the institutional church. We asked him how he sees this phenomenon in Poland and how the government reacted to the growing number of attacks on churches.
We asked Juliana Taimoorazy, founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize nominee about how she escaped from Iran to the US and what it was like to grow up in Iran as a Christian. She told us about how she was called to start her work to help persecuted Christians in Iraq and why she believes it’s crucial more than ever for more countries to follow the examples of Hungary and Poland to stand up and help Iraqi Christians in need.
We asked Father Rev. Prof. Piotr Roszak and Dr Przemysław Komorowski from the Laboratory of Religious Freedom about the situation of the Catholic Church in Poland. According to a report made by the Laboratory of Religious Freedom, in 2020, there were 280 cases of violations of the right to religious freedom throughout Poland. In 2021 the number of these attacks was over 150. The question may arise: how is it possible that there are violations against Christians in a country where, according to statistical data, 87 percent of the population is Roman Catholic?
We asked Chris Costa, former special assistant to President Trump and senior director for counterterrorism at the White House, about the possible strengthening of Ukrainian identity as a result of the war, the Hungarian government’s position versus Russia, the revival of NATO’s Cold War containment policy, the crisis management strategy of the Orbán government and the new avenues for U.S. intelligence opened by the Ukrainian situation.
We spoke with Chris Costa, former special assistant to President Trump and senior director for counterterrorism at the White House, about his military and intelligence work, his experiences in the Middle East and North Asia, his work on tribalism, and his years with Donald Trump.
Religion, state and society - where we look at issues of religious conflict, religious violence and reconciliation. How did Hungary help more than 500.000 persecuted Christians to return or remain in their homeland? We asked the distinguished special guest of the first episode, Tristan Azbej, State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians and the Hungary Helps Program.
Mark Krikorian, the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington DC, discusses with Calum Nicholson, a Fellow of the Danube Institute, in Budapest, and John O'Sullivan, the Institute's President, how the experience of mass immigration into the United States and other Western countries since the Cold War ended in 1989 has changed American and European society, challenging earlier concepts of national identity and international law, re-defining the relationships between citizens, non-citizen residents, and the state, and creating a new set of post-national institutions and treaty obligations that compete with the nation-state in determining and enforcing expanded ideas of human rights. Has the nation-state lost the power to determine laws that govern its own society to UN bodies, the EU, NGOs, and international courts? How is the nation-state handling the problems of mass immigration in this new post-national context? Can it regain some or all of the powers it has lost to post- and trans-national bodies? Is this new structure of post-national law and political authority viable? Or democratic? Or capable of functioning effectively without the traditional tools of the nation-state? And how is democratic politics coping with these new and fundamental challenges to nation and democracy?