99: Georgia's democratic uprising against the 'Russian law'

The Another Europe Podcast

A huge protest movement has taken to the streets in Georgia against the "foreign agent" law. This new legislation would require all organisations that receive foreign funding to declare it on a national register. Protestors have argued that this is the thin end of the wedge amid an increasingly authoritarian climate in the country for human rights advocacy and civil society organisations.
To discuss what this uprising tell us about our changing world, hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams reached out to an old friend of the Another Europe Is Possible campaign, Alex Scrivener, who campaigned with us back in the 2016 EU referendum. Today, he is the Director of the Democratic Security Institute, an organisation based in Tblisi that faces being declared a 'foreign agent' by the Georgian government. On this podcast he discusses the parallels between his activity on the streets of Georgia today, fighting a Putin-backed nationalist campaign, with the 2016 EU referendum in the UK, and what this tells us about the new imperialism engulfing our world. For some background reading from Alex, see his piece on 'hard power' here and his argument for a values-based foreign policy here.
An extended version of this podcast is available to members of Another Europe is Possible. To join and support our work go to anothereurope.org/join. On this podcast's extra time, we change the topic altogether to talk about the UK General Election.