🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life continues at another frontline: culture — where authoritarian power doesn’t just silence dissent, but reshapes the institutions that decide what gets staged, funded, and celebrated.

In this episode, we speak with Piotr Rudzki (dramaturg; formerly of the Polski Theater in Wrocław) and Kristóf Nagy (anthropologist; author of an ethnography of the Hungarian Academy of Arts) about how cultural worlds are reorganized under illiberal rule.

• Why is defunding today’s most effective form of censorship?
• How does co-optation work through grants and patronage?
• What do terms like “culture war,” “cultural takeover,” and “hegemony” clarify—and what do they obscure?
• And where can autonomy still be built: underground, inside institutions, or through collective organization?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 3 — Defund, Co-opt, Replace: How Authoritarians Reshape Culture, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

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🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life continues one another urgent frontline: Serbia.

In this episode, we speak with activist-journalists Anastazija Govedarica Antanasijević and Iskra Krstić about the student-led uprising that has reshaped political life in Serbia. What began with campus blockades after the collapse of a train-station canopy rapidly grew into a nationwide movement demanding systemic change.

How did students introduce direct democracy through plenums and zborovi?
How did they build alliances that cut across class, region, and ethnic divisions—including between Orthodox and Muslim communities?
How did environmental movements prepare the ground for this moment?
And with elections approaching, can a transformational movement survive authoritarian pressure and institutionalization?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 2 — From Blockades to Reclaiming Politics: Serbia’s Student Uprising, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

Further resources:

Read Saša Savanović's piece on the meaning of "systemic change":
https://www.masina.rs/eng/with-largest-protest-in-serbia-behind-us-what-do-we-mean-by-changing-the-system/

Watch the documentary "Wake up Serbia" by director Raul Gallego Abellan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3t4EiRYzHM

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🎙️ Season 2 of This Authoritarian Life begins at one of today’s most tragic frontlines: Gaza.

In this episode, we talk with Guy Shalev, anthropologist and executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, about how medicine has become a political weapon in Israel’s war on Gaza and in the broader occupation of Palestine.

How has Palestinian healthcare been de-developed over the years and what did this mean for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza before the genocide? What were the possibilities and limitations of human rights work before and after October 7? How have Israeli medical institutions been complicit in the destruction of Palestinian lives? And can there still be space for accountability after such devastation?

🎧 To find out, tune into This Authoritarian Life, Season 2, Episode 1 — Politics of Life and Death: Gaza and the Weaponization of Medicine, with Kristóf Szombati and Erdem Evren.

Read more on...

-why the cumulative dismantling of Gaza’s health system amounts to genocide: https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/

-the complicity of the Israeli medical establishment: https://archive.ph/lzxNc

-the torture of medical staff from Gaza in Israel: https://www.phr.org.il/en/torture-of-medical-workers/

-the blocking of medical evacuations: https://www.phr.org.il/en/urgent-call-for-humanitarian-corridor/

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