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My guest today is Manisha Tailor, the CEO of Swaggarlicious, an organization that uses football to create social cohesion and help with mental health problems. She is also a coach at the academy of Queens Park Rangers (QPR), a London football club that plays in The Championship. Manisha is a celebrated activist and speaker on issues related to football, and was awarded a prestigious MBE for services to football and diversity in sport in 2017. She tweets at @swaggarlicious_Manisha and I talk about football and mental health as well as gender and race in football.< Apologies for the poor sound quality, which was on both sides. Will be better next time >

My guest today is Stanislav Vysotsky, who is an associate professor in Criminology at the University of Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of the book, American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism, which came out with Routledge earlier this year. His current research is focused on analyzing the dynamics between protesters, counter-protesters, and police at fascist rallies as well as looking at the dynamics of targeted harassment of antifascists by supremacist activists.Stas and I talk about the history and current structure of Antifa in the US, about its views on the use of violence, its effectiveness, and whether or not it constitutes a threat to the fabric of American society .;-)

My guest today is Nicole Hemmer, an associate research scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History project at Columbia University. She specializes in the history of conservative media in the United States from the 1940s to the present, and the role of right-wing media in American electoral politics. In 2016 she published Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of US Politics, one of the key texts on the topic, with the University of Pennsylvania Press. Nicole is also an incredible public communicator. She is a columnist at CNN Opinion, the founder of the Made in History section of the Washington Post, and co-host of the podcast Past Present. Finally, Nicole did a 6-part podcast on the Unite the Right rally and its historical context, called A12. Nicole and I talk about the roots of conservative media in the US, the international connections, the current main players, and the Trump effect and legacy. Everything and everyone are discussed from Breitbart to Fox News to Sinclair and from Glenn Beck to Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr. 

My guest is Amarnath Amarasingam, an assistant professor in the School of Religion at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Amar is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, both in London, England. His research interests are in radicalization, terrorism, diaspora politics, post-war reconstruction, and the sociology of religion. He is the author of Pain, Pride, and Politics: Sri Lankan Tamil Activism in Canada, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2015, and co-editor of Sri Lanka: The Struggle for Peace in the Aftermath of War, published by Hurst in 2016.Amar and I talk about religion and terroris, about Canadian foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, and far right terrorism, and about... Eminem!

This  week RADIKAAL has a premiere, as I will be interviewing two guests, at the same time. Carles Viñas is a researcher in the Department of History of the University of Barcelona, who has published extensively on the far right, skinheads, and ultras, mostly in Catalan and Spanish. Natxo Parra is a labor lawyer and cooperative partner at Col.lectiu Ronda. Together they wrote the excellent new book St. Pauli: Another Football Is Possible, which just came out with Pluto Press. We will talk about the German cult club and the role of radical politics in contemporary football. 

My guest is Louis Wierenga, a former US Marine who went to study in Canada befoire moving East. He is currently a junior Research Fellow at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies of the University of Tartu, where he works on a PhD on the far right in contemporary Estonia and Latvia. You can follow him on Twitter at @louis_wierenga.Louis and I talk about far right politics in Estonia, in particular the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), currently a member of the national coalition government, and its "alt-right" youth branch, Blue Awakening. We also discuss the link to the "alt-right" in the US.

My guest is Lisa Nandy. Lisa has been a Member of Parliament for Wigan since 2010. Earlier this year she came third in the election to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. She is currently the Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and, given the state of Britain and the world, extremely busy.Lisa and I talk about post-Brexit Britain, about post-Corbyn Labour Party, about populism and progressive patriotism, and about the importance of saving Wigan Athletic. You can follow Lisa on Twitter at @LisaNandy.

My guest is Sophia Solomon, a PhD student in political science at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. Her current research focuses on civil-military relations in Britain, Canada and Israel, with a particular focus on so-called “shooting soldiers”, i.e. soldiers who killed suspected terrorists after they were captured. However, Sophia and I talk about her previous research, for her MA thesis, which focuses on the Israeli football club Beitar Jerusalem, its infamous ultras/hooligans La Familia, and the connections to and significance for the far right in Israel. 

My guest is Tara Martin Lopez. Tara is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Chair of Humanities and Social Sciences of at Northern New Mexico College. Her work focuses on the intersection between gender, race, and social movements with a particular focus on the US punk movement. She also wrote a book on one of the most tumultuous period in postwar British history, entitled “The Winter of Discontent: Myth, Memory and History”, which was published by Liverpool University Press in 2014. Tara and I talk about the "winter of discontent" in the UK, about "the greatest punk rock band in the world", and about the punk scene in El Paso, Texas.

My guest today is Daphne Halikiopoulou. Daphne is Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Reading in England. She has published extensively on nationalism and far right politics in Europe and her latest book, co-authored with Sofia Vasilopoulou of York University, is “The Golden Dawn’s ‘National Solution’: Explaining the Rise of the Far Right in Greece”, which was published by Palgrave in 2015. If you want to know more about Daphne Halikiopoulou, you can follow her on Twitter at @halikiopoulou. 

My guest today is Shannon Reid, an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. She has published extensively on youth culture and gangs in the US and her latest book, co-authored with Matthew Valasik of Louisiana State University, is “Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White”, which has been published by the University of California Press. She tweets at at @MourningShannon. 

My guest today is Guilherme Casarões, a Professor of Public Administration, Political Science and International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. He has mostly published on Brazilian foreign policy, but his more recent interest is in the far right in Brazil, most notably Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Together with two colleagues he runs the Twitter account Observatório da Extrema Direita (Observatorium of the Extreme Right) at @oedbrasil.His personal Twitter account is @GCasaroes. 

My guest today is Sithembile Mbete, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she teaches on International Relations and South African politics. She has published several articles on the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and is at the start of a book project on populism in South Africa. You can follow her on Twitter at @sthembete.

My next guest will be Kacper Rekawek. Kacper is an affiliated researcher at the Counter Extremism Project and a GLOBSEC associate fellow. Between 2016 and 2019 he led the latter’s national security program and has published on a broad range of extremist and terrorism groups. Since 2014 he has been monitoring the topic of foreign fighters in Ukraine and earlier this year published a report titled “Career Break or New Career? Extremist Foreign Fighters in Ukraine” for the Counter Extremism Project. He tweets at @KacperRekawek.

My guest today is Evan Smith. Evan is a Research Fellow in History in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University in Australia. His academic work focuses on Australian, British and South African politics and history. He has published on a broad variety of topics relevant to RADIKAAL, including British Communism, counter-terrorism, as well as fascism and anti-fascism. His latest book is the very timely “No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech”, published by Routledge this year. He tweets at @evanishistory.

My guest is Winnie Wong. Winnie has been at the forefront of almost every major progressive campaign in the US in this century. She was a leading organizer for Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Sandy, and the Women’s March on Washington. She co-founded People for Bernie, and helped develop the viral hashtag “Feel the Bern”. After serving as a Senior Political Advisor to Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, she is now an Advisor of the Once Again PAC, which strives for “the continuation of everything we’ve been fighting for”. She tweets at @WaywardWinifred.

My guest is the singer songwriter and activist Billy Bragg. Billy started his music career in the late 1970s in the band Riff Raff, had a short flirt with the British Army, before embarking on a solo career that has led to twelve albums so far. He is also a tireless political activist for a broad range of progressive causes and groups, including my friends at the anti-racist group Hope not Hate. Finally, he has written several books, including his latest booklet “The Three Dimensions of Freedom”, published with Faber last year. He tweets at @BillyBragg.

My guest is Justin Salhani. Justin is a freelance journalist who has written on both radical politics and football for many different outlets. He lived and worked for several years in Lebanon, where he also almost had a football career. Two of his most recent ventures are also football-related. The first is Guerrilla FC, which started as a football team in Washington DC, but has since evolved into a creative studio and streetwear brand inspired by football culture. The second, founded last month, is the podcast “The Streets Will Remember”, which assesses the legacies of the greatest footballers on and off the pitch. He tweets at @JustinSalhani.

My guest is Nicole Curato. Nicole is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra in Australia. Her academic work focuses on deliberative democracy as well as on populism in the Philippines. She is also a much sought-after commentator on politics in the Philippines. Last year she published the book Democracy in a Time of Misery: From Spectacular Tragedies to Deliberative Action with Oxford University Press. You can follow Nicole on Twitter at @NicoleCurato. 

My guest today is Matthew Oware. Matthew recently left DePauw University for the University of Richmond in Virginia, where he will be the Irving May Professor of Human Relations in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. Matthew’s work centers on the intersections of race, class, and gender in popular culture with a particular focus on hip hop music. In 2018 he published the book I Got Say Something to Say: Gender, Race, and Social Consciousness in Rap Musicwith Palgrave.