On the 7th of July 2017, 122 countries voted in favour of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Countries that don’t have nuclear weapons but live under their threat voted

On the 7th of July 2017, 122 countries voted in favour of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Countries that don’t have nuclear weapons but live under their threat voted for a ban. Without the knowledge of most of their citizens, the governments of the world’s nuclear powers didn’t vote, and yet the ban went ahead. Something new is happening. This documentary film about efforts to bring a nuclear weapon ban treaty into international law and the role of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, is told through the voices of leading activists from several different organizations and countries and the president of the negotiating conference. This 56 minute documentary film takes the viewer through a brief history of the bomb and the anti-nuclear activism that has pushed to eliminate them ever since their invention. It moves into a consideration of the humanitarian initiative that successfully challenged the dominant security narrative and the historic steps taken since 2010 to turn the treaty from a dream into a reality. Finally, the film shows what can be done by anyone to help bring the treaty into force and to stigmatise nuclear weapons until they are finally eradicated. Extracts of fourteen interviews are woven into the story that will leave you feeling inspired

This is a podcast that re-aired this episode that originally published in November 2022, because it offers exactly that kind of theory. Pippa Norris is a political scientist at Harvard’s

This is a podcast that re-aired this episode that originally published in November 2022, because it offers exactly that kind of theory. Pippa Norris is a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She’s written dozens of books on topics ranging from comparative political institutions to right-wing parties and the decline of religion. In 2019, she and Ronald Inglehart published “Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism which gives the best explanation of the far right’s rise that I’ve read. And it feels so much more relevant now in this country, after Trump’s decisive election. 

In this conversation, we discuss what Norris calls the “silent revolution in cultural values” that has occurred across advanced democracies in recent decades, why the “transgressive aesthetic” of leaders like Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is so central to their appeal, the role that economic anxiety and insecurity play in fueling right-wing backlashes and more.

Published on Sep 29, 2016