Mehdi Hasan

speaker

4,624 appearances 9 recordings 7 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 9 Jul

Mehdi Hasan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

Appearances

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The Rest Is Politics · 552. Trump's Red Card Saga and Germany's Far-Right Machine · 8 Jul 2026 podcast

I'm not going to change his supporters' mind or his mind, obviously.

And you mentioned the firewall with Mertz.

I mean, that is the big question.

Will the German mainstream political establishment say, well, actually, the public love the AFD, so we just got to get on board with them?

And I think some of us have to resist that and say, well, actually, 72% of Germans think the AFD is an extremist group.

They are polling number one, but they're polling at, what, 30% in a PR electoral system?

Well, first of all, Alistair, be careful what you wish for when you say they should just say openly.

I think they will very soon.

I think they're building to that moment where they will just very openly mainstream the AFD and say, well, why wouldn't we do a coalition with them?

This is what the public wants.

And I think we need to have a broader conversation as well about the role of mainstream liberals and conservatives in mainstreaming the far right, whether wittingly or unwittingly.

You know that in Marxist political thought on the left, there is this line, a derogatory line, which is scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.

This idea going back to the Weimar Republic in the 1930s, that it was mainstream liberal centrists who welcomed Hitler and the Nazis into the political system, thinking we can control this guy.

And I think, you know, you don't want a repeat of that, obviously, where you think Matthias Döpfner and Friedrich Mertz think we can control Alice Vidal and the AFD.

I mean, look, this is a guy who, just to give context to your viewers and listeners, this is a guy who sent text to his senior editorial staff ahead of the 2020 election saying we should all pray for Donald Trump's re-election, right?

This is a guy who runs Politico, which is kind of in the US, I know you have Politico in the UK now as well, but in the US, it is seen as the gold standard for

of kind of impartial Westminster beltway political journalism.

He bought Politico in 2022.

He writes in Politico, as you say, Politico staff have objected internally to him turning their outlet so partisan and going out and giving these partisan statements about politics, about Islam, about Israel.

I should also point out to your listeners and viewers that if you work for Axel Springer, one of the core values, it's called one of the essentials, is to defend Israel's right to exist.

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