In Solidarity - by openDemocracy

Is Reform fascist, far-right or merely right wing? And do we really need to get into this? Our guest on this episode, thinks we should: Daniel Trilling is a journalist, a long-time openDemocracy contributor, and the author of a new Book: If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable. Daniel has spent decades covering the wild west of right-wing politics in Engla...

The climate crisis is changing the way nations think about food, energy, resources, war and peace. Melting ice caps are opening up new trade routes fought over by the world's great powers, conflicts are waged over food and mineral resources, shifting climates are fuelling migration – and Donald Trump says it's all just a scam. Join Arthur Snell as he discusses his new book Elemental: the new geogr...

"My ultimate vision... was to achieve by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his panopticon." — UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. When the state openly admits it wants its eyes on you at all times, how do citizens fight back? In this episode of  In Solidarity , Matthew Linares sits down with Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group. We cut through...

As the US-Israeli war on Iran continues to escalate, the effects of the conflict are spiralling outwards across a world already whiplashed by cross-border violence, global tariffs, and the unravelling of regional alliances. There is much that we do not know: How will spiking energy prices affect developing economies in Asia and Africa? What are the long term impacts of the destabilisation of the G...

Why are British and European politicians obsessed with Denmark's immigration strategy? We uncover the dark reality of the "Danish Model" and how it punishes asylum seekers by design. Politicians across Europe - including the UK government - increasingly point to the so-called "Danish Model" as the ultimate solution for controlling borders, immigration, and asylum. But beyond the political talking...

Are anti-rights movements infiltrating high schools? We uncover the deliberate, decades-old strategy the far-right is using to target young people, weaponise their insecurities, and build a pipeline of extremist power. In this episode of In Solidarity , openDemocracy’s Senior Investigations Reporter Sian Norris sits down with Jamie Vernaelde, Senior Researcher at Ipas. They dive deep into a chilli...

Over 71,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war began on Oct 7 2023, in what a UN inquiry has described as a “genocide”.  When a US-brokered ceasefire was declared in October last year, the world's attention moved on to the next crisis. Since then at least 463 Palestinians had been killed by Israel as of Jan 21 this year, of whom 100 were children, according to the UN Relief...

If the US once claimed it was “defending Democracy” to justify attacking countries without pretext, the current administration has made no such excuses.   Last week US security forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from a compound in Caracas in an operation that killed 70 people. Maduro was presented in a courtroom in Manhattan, on charges of supposedly “importing t...

Waring factions have dominated the headlines, but inside the Your Party conference the embers of hope for a different kind of politics were still burning.  Investigative reporter Ethan Shone tells what the mood was like among the party members following months of public spats and PR disasters.  https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/newsletters/ In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about p...

We’ve normalised the idea that the world is ending, that society is tearing itself apart, that our countries — wherever we live — are falling apart. But what does that really look like? What does it feel like? What emerges in the aftermath? In this episode host Aman Sethi speaks to Renata Salecl,  a Slovenian philosopher, sociologist and political theorist to decode how the experiences of pos...

Earlier this year, Labour overwhelmingly voted in favour of an amendment that would end the criminalisation of women and pregnant people seeking abortions outside the 1967 Abortion Act exemptions. As the debate went through the Lords, we sat down with MSI Reproductive Choices’ Louise McCudden to discuss why we need decriminalisation now - and what this win means amid a global backlash against abor...

What can we learn about the future of consumer rights from the merger between Microsoft and Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard? When Labour came into power in 2024, they accused regulators like Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of inhibiting growth and appointed influential figures from the business world into key positions and advisory roles. This includes a former Amazon boss being...

Did Western media manufacture consent for Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza? In the last two years since Hamas' attack on Israel, and the latter's bombardment of the territories of Palestine it partially occupies, mainstream media particularly in the U.S. and Europe have broken their own rules of fairness, accuracy, conflict of interest, objectivity and so-called "neutrality" in th...

In early September, Nepal witnessed massive protests under the banner of GenZ protests to demonstrate against what they viewed as a hopelessly corrupt and sclerotic regime.  The immediate trigger was a government ban on social media apps, but as the protestors themselves have made clear – their grievances run much deeper.  The protests in Nepal bear parallels to similar uprisings in Sri...

The world is rightly horrified by how US President Trump is deporting people, including minors, without due process. Something similar is underway in India, but worse and under the radar. Even since the border skirmishes between India and Pakistan this year, Indian authorities have been rounding up Muslim citizens and deporting them on the spurious grounds that they either Pakistani or Bangladeshi...

As Labour marked a year in government, Fawcett Society's Penny East asks: what has Labour done for women? And what needs to happen next?  — https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/newsletters/ In Solidarity is openDemocracy’s podcast about people, power, and politics. Support the show by visiting https://www.openDemocracy.net/donate/ Credits: Presented by Sian Norris Edited and produced by James Bat...

Patriarchy refuses to die. In every country of the world, women are oppressed by male violence, patriarchal religions, and ideas of the family. But women are resisting, as Rahila Gupta explains, in a fascinating analysis that takes us from Riyadh and Russia, to Rojava.  Buy Planet Patriarchy: Global Tales of Feminism and Oppression: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/8711/9781805262879 — https://www.o...

Content warning: This episode discusses sexual assault, rape and trauma. When our investigative reporter Sian Norris heard worrying claims about a Silicon Valley-style start-up targeting rape survivors at universities in Bristol, she knew she needed to uncover what exactly was going on. Over the next six months, Sian interviewed more than a dozen people on and off the record, sent multiple FOI req...

This is the first episode of our new mini-series exploring the financial interests of political parties in England and Wales.  Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has banked almost £5m from wealthy donors since 2023, including those with links to fossil fuels, the financial services industry and tax havens. It has also received significant financial investment from the general public in the form of part...

On 17 June 2025 UK Parliament voted to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales, reversing a Victorian-era law. The amendment will prevent women from being prosecuted for ending a pregnancy after 24 weeks or without approval from two doctors. We spoke to our senior investigative reporter Sian Norris, author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global .&nbs...

Earlier this year, openDemocracy explored how successive governments had cracked down on protest rights. Now, with Just Stop Oil activists facing lengthy sentences for "conspiring" to commit protest offences, the impact of these laws is being felt more than ever. We sat down with human rights lawyer Katy Watts to discuss the sentencing, and how she and the NGO Liberty won a legal challenge against...

Boomers ruined everything, Millennials are work-shy and Gen Z can’t comprehend anything that isn’t a TikTok dance. Generational language defines the way we think about broad cohorts of society, but is this way of viewing the world dividing us further at a time when solidarity has never been more important? Tom Nicholas, a writer, filmmaker and YouTuber, joins us to discuss his latest film Boomers:...

This week on In Solidarity, we're in discussion with openDemocracy's senior investigative reporter and feminist activist, Sian Norris. Sian joins us on the podcast to reveal how recent laws are quietly dismantling the right to protest in the UK. Drawing on six months of in-depth reporting, Sian breaks down the true impact of the Public Order Act 2023 and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Ac...

As a young woman in 1980s Iran, Nasrin Parvaz was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Iranian regime. In this moving interview, she shares her experience of torture and incarceration, reflects on the successive women's revolutions in Iran, questions the West's ideas of regime change, and offers a powerful call for global sisterhood. http://www.nasrinparvaz.org/web/tag/https-www-victorinapress...

For many years, politicians have sold the public a simple story: The answer to undocumented immigration is a strong, fortified border. This story has a seductive, common-sense reasoning — but it is also wrong.  Decades of research has shown that people determined to move, find a way to move.  And when States respond with border controls, people turn to smugglers to circumvent these...