EU Scream

Georgia Meloni was 19 and speaking to French TV when she praised Italian dictator and Hitler ally Mussolini. Back then the likely next prime minister of Italy was dressed all in black and flanked by burly men. Twenty-six years later things look very different. Meloni favours bright white pant suits and presses the flesh with European dignitaries. The normalisation of the neofascist far right in Italy seems complete. Part of the answer as to how this happened lies with an international political party, the European Conservatives and Reformists or ECR. Meloni is the president of the ECR party which has significant representation in the European Parliament — and branding that's disarmingly centrist. In fact the ECR is led by representatives of ultraconservative and radical right parties from Poland and Spain and by Meloni's own party: the Fratelli d'Italia or Brothers of Italy. Other key allies include Trumpist US Republicans. So should Meloni still be considered neofascist? She insists she's a patriotic conservative. And indeed, if she's prime minister, she's expected to respect Italy's democracy — if only to keep money flowing from the EU. She's also vowed to keep up support for Ukraine and NATO. Yet Meloni has shown scant if any remorse for her past. She congratulated Vladimir Putin for an "unequivocal" election victory in 2018. And only last year she was lauding Russia's defence of European values. And so, questions remain about how much Meloni has really moderated. Valerio Alfonso Bruno is a senior fellow at the UK-based Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right who is writing a book on the Brothers of Italy. Valerio says there could be troubling times ahead — and not just for Italy. Meloni and her international allies still want a Europe that deprives LGBT+ people of civil rights; that tells women what they can and can't do with their bodies; and that falls into line with racist conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement. With Meloni, it's not like we haven't been warned.Support the show

There are many things to love about France. But a stated policy of colour blindness is not one of them. Among those leading the charge against a French conception of universalism that makes discussing race so awkward is Grace Ly. Her Chinese Cambodian parents fled the Khmer Rouge during the late 1970s for France, where she has found success and celebrity with books like Jeune fille modèle and the podcast Kiffe Ta Race that she co-hosts with Rokhaya Diallo. The French still preach that everyone is equal in the eyes of the Republic, but Grace says the reality is very different. She cites a notorious incident where a former French interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, was caught saying in reference to immigrants of North African descent that, "when there is one it's OK,” but that, "when there are lots of them that there are problems." Grace is from an Asian European community that's often portrayed as a model minority. But she says that's a corrosive stereotype, and she too has to navigate double standards. "When I walk out in the streets, people see me, they actually see me very well because they still say ni hao to me, so they do see me. But it's what they want me to be. They want me to be invisible." Grace is in conversation with journalist and think tanker Shada Islam and commentator Helena Malikova. Support the show

Europeans howl about U.S. backsliding on abortion rights but they don't exactly have their own house in order. Take the case of Bianca. She's a Romanian. She was studying medicine in Germany. And she discovered she was pregnant in Korea. Bianca eventually made her way home to Romania to terminate the pregnancy. But the doctor at her regional hospital was obstructive and barely paid attention to the medical code. Bianca was, to all intents and purposes, left to fend for herself.  Support the show

Legal scholar Sahar Aziz says people who identify as Muslim are often perceived in racial terms, like black and brown people, in white-dominated societies. That makes Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic the subject of similar forms of racism. She also says protecting observant Muslims in Europe may be more difficult than in the United States, where religious observance is more commonplace. In this episode: Sahar Aziz in conversation with the journalist and think tanker Shada Islam.Support the show

Was Emmanuel Macron right to talk so much with Vladimir Putin before and after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine? And did Macron cross a line from well-intentioned engagement into something like naive appeasement? French journalist Guy Lagache spent the first six months of this year in close proximity to Macron, making a film that ended up focusing on the French president's Putin strategy.Support the show

Author Rafia Zakaria turned the feminist world upside down with her bestselling book Against White Feminism. White feminists, she writes, fail "to cede space to the feminists of colour who have been ignored erased or excluded from the feminist movement." In this episode Rafia talks with the Brussels-based journalist and think-tanker Shada Islam about the prevalence of white feminist thinking in Europe — and in France in particular.Support the show

Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine has threatened to be a public relations disaster for hard-right gatherings like CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Previous editions featured Putin supporters — and a CPAC meeting getting underway in Budapest will feature Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who remains on highly cordial terms with the Kremlin. So what playbook can participants at CPAC — which is being held for the first time in Europe — use to put a cordon sanitaire between them and Putin?  A similar conference of National Conservatives, who met in Brussels in March, offers clues.Support the show

Would you pick up a gun and fight for Ukraine? The injustice of the Russian invasion has led white-collar professionals like Florent and Tomas to trade suits and ties for camouflage and Kalashnikovs. Florent, who is French, and Tomas, a Lithuanian, met for the first time in February at the Ukrainian embassy in Belgium. They teamed up for the trip to Ukraine and they're now back in Brussels to tell their story.Support the show

When Thomas left Brussels for Ukraine to train as a foreign fighter, he joined up with the Georgian Legion, a paramilitary group that's fought for years to stop Russian aggression. In this episode Thomas and his unit arrive in Kyiv, as part of efforts to try to stop Putin's army from taking the capital. Please note: this is a reedited version of the episode Foreign Fighter Diaries — Part 2. Listen to Part 1. Support the show

Thomas lives in Brussels. But last week, seemingly out of the blue, he upped sticks and left. He was already heading into Ukraine when he began sending his first dispatches — simple but captivating voicemails. Thomas is now in the international brigades, which are comprised of foreign fighters from all over the world. Like Thomas, many of the fighters were responding to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's call to help his country in its hour of need. And, like Thomas, they now are patrolling Ukrainian streets against Russian incursions, on Europe's new frontline.Support the show