Danube Institute Podcast

We talked to Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish politician, former chairwoman of the Christian Democrats, and former Minister of the Interior of Finland at Axioma Center’s conference in Budapest, about the criminal proceedings initiated against her and the status of freedom of religion and freedom of expression in Finland.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.The recording was made with the help of Axioma Center.

On a chilly May morning in 1618, four Catholic lords regent, arrived at the Bohemian Chancellery at 8:30 am, to meet their Protestant counterparts. The agenda was to clarify whether the four regents were responsible for persuading the Emperor to stop Protestant church construction on royal lands.It did not go well. A fracas followed. At the end of which, two regents, plus their secretary, were defenestrated - literally thrown from a third storey window. Miraculously, all three survived the 70-foot fall. Millions would not be so lucky. The Thirty Years War that followed The Defenestration of Prague was one of the most destructive events in human history. By its end, a fifth of the German lands’ population was dead. Far more than the Second World War. In all, the Reformation’s wars of religion lasted around 120 years, and shattered the peace of the continent. Surveying the carnage, early liberal thinkers saw the new political ideology of liberalism as a solution: religious toleration, baked into the state. Yet for every Enlightenment thinker who genuinely sought to promote plurality, there was one who was actively hostile to religion itself. Voltaire and Rousseau preached religious toleration, but when the French revolutionaries carried their program to what they saw as its logical conclusion, they tried to institute a state-backed Cult of Reason and installed a prostitute in Notre Dame cathedral.Today, be it on abortion, assisted suicide, or freedoms of association, the debate has turned to whether liberalism and religion are compatible with one another. Pure liberalism - what you might call hyper-liberalism, has grown increasingly authoritarian in nature. And some are questioning whether it is itself compatible with a pluralistic society. Liberalism has had a good two hundred years — but as the world moves past US hegemony, is it doomed to become a victim of its own contradictions? Philip Pilkington is a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute, and author of The Collapse of Global Liberalism: And the Emergence of the Post Liberal World Order. To discuss this question, he is joined by Andrew Koppelman. Andrew is Professor of Law, Political Science and Philosophy at Northwestern University — and author of several books, including The Tough Luck Constitution; Gay Rights vs Religious Liberty: The Unnecessary Conflict; and Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed. And by Jacob Williams, a PhD student at Oxford University, specialising in post-liberal thought.

We talked to Sara Mohammad Amin Falaknaz, a member of the UAE Federal National Council and Chairman of the UAE-Hungary Friendship Committee, about gender equality, the geopolitical stance of the UAE, and the UAE-Hungary relationship.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.The recording was made with the help of the UAE Embassy in Budapest.

For years, we were told to obey the science, and seek the facts. Well, the facts are in. No dispute. Mortality from Covid was .25 percent of the global population. The 1919 Spanish Flu epidemic killed between 2.5 and 5 per cent. It is an order of magnitude smaller. The same ratio of 10:1 applies to the infection fatality rate. In fact, for a 40 year old, it had the same Infection Fatality Rate as the now forgotten Hong Kong Flu of 1968. Factually, we can now see that Covid was serious, but not catastrophic. So why have those who spoke out in the early days of the pandemic to urge proportionality, remained on the wrong side of history? In recent weeks, a UK national inquiry into the pandemic reached the second stage of its conclusions. Their findings? That Britain should have locked down harder, earlier. The inquiry’s chair, Baroness Heather Hallett, even put a number to this claim: locking down a week earlier, she said, would have saved 23 000 lives. Yet for Daniel Hannan and the small band of Covid-impact skeptics like him, who opposed lockdowns from the off, the right side of history continues to elude them. Five years ago, there must have been a sense that they only had to wait for the data: that validation would arrive by now. Sadly, the inquiry has only been a turgid, expensive means to amplify the old narrative. Its general quality poses broader questions: what is it to inquire, at a national, statutory level? How can we drill down to truth, when so many establishment interests stand in the way? Do we still have an elite class capable of putting aside their priors? Daniel Hannan now sits in the House of Lords, as Lord Hannan of Kingsclere. He has continued to be a thorn in the side of British bureaucracy, and to speak out on the Covid response. In this episode of Danube Politics, he talks to Visiting Fellow Gavin Haynes about Covid, inquiries, and the things we have forgotten to remember.

Tomohiko Taniguchi, a distinguished fellow at the Ludovika Public Diplomacy Hub and former advisor to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, discusses Japan's geopolitical challenges. He emphasizes the vital US-Japan alliance against regional threats, alongside Japan's response to China's rise. Taniguchi also explores the balance between traditional values and modern social changes, touching on Japan's immigration policies and the potential of stronger ties with India. He assesses Prime Minister Takaichi’s approach and the longstanding cultural ties between Japan and Hungary.

We asked Jacques Sapir, a French economist and expert on Russia at the School of Economic Warfare in Paris and at the Moscow School of Economics, about the state of the Russian war economy.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.

Peter Caddle, a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute and former Brussels reporter, discusses the alarming state of Europe's tech landscape. He identifies a lack of coherent strategy in EU tech policy, leading to confusion and missed opportunities. Caddle highlights the negative impacts of the AI Act on small innovators and explains why European startups are flocking to the U.S. for better prospects. He critiques Europe’s regulatory approach compared to China's, emphasizing that without major reforms, Europe risks falling behind in the global tech race.

Just as Boomers like Steve Jobs once remade America in their own liberal image. Just as the Millennials gave us Woke and Hustle Culture: what happens when the Zoomers get into the saddle?This month on View from the Danube, we’re looking at youthquakes.In Britain, a younger set seems to be throwing off the old softly-softly of their political culture, calling out migrant crime and brazenly leading the charge towards mass deportations.Meanwhile, in America, Tucker Carlson has interviewed Nick Fuentes. Fuentes has a massive online audience who call themselves Groypers. But for years, the mainstream right has kept him out of the conversation, because of his bizarre shock jock behaviour, Holocaust denial, and attacks on, quote-unquote, “world Jewry.”The interview, which was notoriously soft, has caused a ruckus inside the MAGA tent. Tucker says he merely wants to hear the arguments.But others ask : is there any future for the American right if it lets the likes of Fuentes in? Even on the other side - the election of 34 year old Zohran Mamdani as New York mayor - a man who wants government-run grocery stores and regularly quotes Karl Marx — suggests that the youth are breaking about as far left as they ever have. Take all this foment and fast forward fifteen years — can the old mode of liberal democracy even hold it together in the face of what’s pushing it from underneath?The groypers, Mamdani and the future: this time on View From The Danube.

We talked to Hall Gardner, Professor Emeritus in the Department of International and Comparative Politics at the American University of Paris, about the analysis of the three major geopolitical conflicts in the world.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.

Professor Jacques Sapir is a leading expert on the Russian economy, and part of the Institute of Economic War in Paris. In this wide-ranging historical discussion with the Danube Institute's resident economist, Philip Pilkington, he talks through the long view on Russia's strengths and vulnerabilities. From Stalin doing the impossible to repel the German invasion, to the possibility that collapse could have been avoided in the late '80s, through the desolate '90s, into the dynamics of the fortress economy that Vladimir Putin has developed, post-2014.