The Elementary Articles—#26 (Feb. 2023)
The future of publishing, launching EuroCon in Brussels and Spain's presidency of the EU Council.
Dear reader,
Welcome to another edition of The Elementary Articles, where I get to share with you my latest work laced with the odd nugget of personal news.
You may have noticed that recent editions of this newsletter have featured important changes, and those changes may continue in the near-future. My attempt to keep you abreast of my work in the least time-consuming way is a constant work in progress. Some monthly editions may carry a lot of content, others less so—but all will seek to optimize the time you spend reading.
As always, I look forward to your feedback by replying below or on Twitter (@JorgeGGallarza). Happy reading!
The future of publishing
On January 25 and 26 in Budapest, Hungary's Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC)—where I have been a visiting fellow in the past—hosted the second edition of its annual international conference on the state of the media, this time focusing on “The Future of Publishing”. The event was marked by an opening speech by Balazs Orbán where the Hungarian MP and political director to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stressed that the media is “a matter of national sovereignty”. Naturally, the event didn't fail to put the oft-alleged deficiencies of Hungary's media market in the spotlight. The country is often lambasted in EU spheres for the concentration of its newspaper industry in the hands of magnates friendly to PM Orbán. The conference's content was otherwise topical in a larger, global sense. On a panel with Kevin Anderson and Antonio O’Mullony towards the end, I was able to reflect on the revolutionary potential of this very platform—Substack—whilst also sharing some thoughts on the challenges and opportunities in the podcasting genre, where I have been active with Uncommon Decency since 2020. The recording of the panel doesn't seem to be up yet, but I will share it in due course.
Sitting at Orbán's table
The aforementioned conference itself was hardly the highlight of the week I spent in Budapest. On the conference's final day, a group of us international guests were hosted at the Carmelite Monastery for a meeting with PM Viktor Orbán that quickly turned into a media firestorm. Orbán was remarkably transparent in sharing his thought process about each of the policy areas we successively asked him about—the war on Ukraine, dealing with the Biden administration or acting as a force for moderation and common sense in an increasingly left-liberal European Union (EU). One of Orbán's comments, however, provoked an unexpected firestorm. When asked about Ukraine, he decried NATO's hopes of turning it into an “Afghanistan-like no man's land". The comment was supposed to have been made off-the-record (as we were duly warned), but one of the meeting's attendees, US conservative author Rod Dreher, soon after published it on his blog at The American Conservative. Consequently, Ukraine expelled Hungary's ambassador in Kiev, but Orbán didn't walk back his comment. For a fuller—though biased—picture of what happened, you can read this piece over at The Bulwark. You can also read my honest recollection of the meeting in an essay of my own I published at The European Conservative.
Launching EuroCon in Brussels
You may have noticed that a lot of my written output these days appears in The European Conservative, a fantastic print and digital magazine based out of Budapest that launched, on February 9, its new newsroom in Brussels. Although the magazine's main beat remains long-form commentary and reviews, it is increasingly carving out a niche in the more competitive segment of news also. At the half-day conference marking the launch at a ritzy hotel in downtown Brussels, I reflected on the state of the mediascape in Europe and the opportunities for right-of-center publications like EuroCon to disrupt the way news is covered in the EU. Although no right-of-center media is likely to marshall enough resources to seriously compete with POLITICO's news operation, I argued that offering a different framing on the main news stories of the day is not a hopeless endeavour. Furthermore, I argued that EuroCon's niche—thoughtful commentary and reviews from a right-of-center, euroskeptic angle—remains a terrain of opportunity. You can watch my remarks here, from 1:30:00 till the end.
Testifying in Spain's Parliament
On February 14, I war privileged to testify before the Spanish Parliament's Select EU Affairs Committee (you can watch it in the video below, from 1:14:00 to 1:48:30). I had been invited by Vox's backbencher José María Sánchez García, a much lower profile in the media than his legal chops would warrant. Formerly a magistrate in Spain, at the EU Court of Justice, a law professor at the University of Sevilla and a senior partner at a blue-chip law firm, Sánchez García deserves ample credit for risking his distinguished credentials in a party that Spain's left-liberal establishment deems beyond the pale. The subject of the hearing was Spain's upcoming turn at holding the presidency of the EU Council in the latter semester of 2023. Though fully aware that a progressive government like Pedro Sánchez's is unlikely to ever make them a priority, I highlighted three areas that any government should act on, provided it subordinated the opportunity to the national interest (not so evident a hypothetical these days). The three areas were: (1) neutering the so-called conditionality mechanism to pare back EU funds when the Commission alleges rule-of-law violations, (2) resisting calls to lower the threshold of support from unanimity to qualified majority voting in the EU Council and (3) shepherding a new EU framework for asylum and migration.
Recent writings
When Europe Mirrors Nigeria, The Critic [01.02.23]
Throat-Slitting of a Priest Fails to Reignite Spain's Debate on Immigration, UnHerd [01.02.23]
The Spanish Samuel Paty, The European Conservative [01.02.23]
Shoulder-Shrugging Conservatism, The European Conservative [07.02.23]
The Meaning of Locke, The Critic (reviewing Claire Rydell Arcenas’ book on Locke, America's Philosopher) [14.02.23]
Irreverent Shofet, The European Conservative (reviwing Bibi Netanyahu's autobiography) [17.02.23]
UnDecencyPod, your favorite euro-realist podcast
Here’s the usual line-up of Uncommon Decency’s recent episodes. Please remember you can contribute to the show by donating through our Patreon page. Any help will be much appreciated!
75. 2022—Year in Review [BONUS]: It’s that time of the year again—a time to look back on the year lapsed and make resolutions for the coming one. At episode 75, Uncommon Decency readies to enter its third calendar year—we launched in October 2020—with a potent mix of hope and derision. For the first time this year, we are greeting 2023 with a very special series of Uncommonly Decent awards and gifts. Who claims our “Brutus” award for betrayal of the year—Rishi Sunak, Giuseppe Conte or the Pakistani military? Who’s our “Gorbachev” spectacular collapse of the year—Liz Truss, BoJo, Putin or the European Parliament? Who pulled the “De Gaulle” political comeback of the year—Leo Varadkar, Bibi Netanyahu, Anwar Ibrahim or Lula? Who wins the “how-do-you-still-have-a-job” award—Berlusconi, de Kirchner or Sergei Shoigu? To hear us bestow these funnily-titled awards, listen to this special bonus episode marking the new year—and make sure to tell us how you’d have voted by reaching out through the usual channels?
76. Putin's Eyes and Ears: Into Russia's Spy-State, with Andrei Soldatov: "The Soviet State Security Service is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries”. Those were the words of Allen Dulles, the long-time head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), but they may just as well describe the security services of today's Russia. Welcome back to a new season of Uncommon Decency where this week, we are starting with a conversation about the Chekhist state that Russian President Vladimir Putin has created. Joining us for this episode was Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who has been covering the security services and terrorism issues since 1999. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and he has written a number of books on the Russian state including his most recent work, The Compatriots: The Russian Exiles Who Fought Against the Kremlin (2022). This episode covered a lot of ground and referenced a lot of groups so let's start by outlining some of the abbreviations and names you’ll hear: KGV, SVR, FSB, GRU, Wagner Group.
77. How the Muslim Brotherhood Cracked the EU, with Florence Bergeaud-Blackler & Tommaso Virgili: «With your democratic laws we will colonize you, and with our koranic laws we will dominate you». This rather bellicose warning for Europeans came from a 2002 speech by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the key intellectual leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). It’s a great insight on what the MB is—a strictly religious and conservative reaction to modernity that was launched in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan El-Banna. It’s also an insight into its modus operandi. The MB works in the shadows and builds its strength slowly through a complex maze of sister organisations to push its narrative and its pawns. Two decades after that speech, a series of controversies around EU institutions funding MB-adjacent organisations have highlighted the MB’s influence in Europe. We tried to stay light on acronyms but we mention FEMYSO a few times: that’s the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisation, which is one of these glossy organisations that get a lot of visibility in Brussels but that have strong ties with the MB’s web of organisations. To cover this issue we have invited Florence Bergeaud Blackler, an anthropologist at the French CNRS who has been working on these issues for a while and just released in French «Le Frérisme et ses réseaux, l’enquête» (The Brotherhood and its networks, an investigation). On the other side of the line we have Tommaso Virgili, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the WZB Social Center in Berlin where he works on modernization movements within Islam in response to the challenge of fundamentalism. He co-authored in 2021 a report for the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) on the MB in Europe entitled «Network of Networks, the MB in Europe».
78. Spycraft: How the West Battles Chinese Balloons & Russian Agents, with Dan Lomas: "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety". These words by American statesman Benjamin Franklin are often paraphrased into “those who sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither”. Franklin was talking about taxes, but don’t worry—that’s not what we’re going to cover today. We’re diving back into the world of espionage. This episode originally would have been combined with the one on Russia's security services, but we finally decided to keep them separate because we had so many interesting things to discuss with Dan Lomas. Dan is a senior lecturer in intelligence and security studies at Brunel University. This week, we asked him to comment on the role of intelligence agencies in democratic societies. We talked about the war on terror and how it affected the public's view of the security services, as well as the debate over Huawei and other forms of Chinese espionage. For those of you listening in February, we had a brief discussion about the infamous Chinese spy balloon and what it says about the country’s security posture. For our Patreon subscribers, you will be able to hear Dan discuss the effects of surveillance capitalism on the security services and how the collection of personal data by companies is reshaping intelligence work. Naturally, any conversation on Western spies must include a debate over who is the best James Bond—subscribe to hear Dan’s answer!
What I have been reading
Joel Kotkin for UnHerd on the fall of the Jewish gangster.
Matthew Schmitz for The American Conservative on Hungary's lonesome advocacy of a Russo-Ukranian ceasefire.
Andrew Roberts for The Spectator on Britain's depleted military.
The end
Thank you all for reading! I look forward to your replies (including on whether or not you liked this shorter new format). See you at the next issue!