Enemy Encounters

To kick off the semester, we are joined by Paula Simon, a PhD candidate at the RTG 'Ambivalent Enmity', who presents some key insights from her project on anti-Roma racism in Yugoslavia from the interwar era to the Nazi occupation. During her discussion with Dr Fabian Baumann, Simon outlines the challenges of recovering Roma voices from the archives, while also tracing some of the ambivalences within racist discourse surrounding 'gypsies'. Why did Gypsylorists and gendarmes portray Roma as both 'primitive' and a well-organised threat? How did race and class feature in the negative stereotyping of Roma? How did their fate differ in wartime Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia? Tune in to find out.

In this episode Dr. Uri Rosenberg grants us a sneak peek into his forthcoming book "If you can’t beat them, join them': Millî Görüş’s view of 'the West' from entering Turkish politics until reaching power." In his conversation with Dr. Fabian Baumann, Rosenberg traces the shifting attitudes of the Turkish nationalist and Islamist movement Millî Görüş vis-à-vis "the West." From castigating the West's supposed cultural degeneracy to admiring its industrial prowess and welcoming its protection under NATO, Millî Görüş's relation towards its professed enemy is full of ambivalences. How did Millî Görüş establish itself in the Turkish political scene? To what extent did it influence Erdoğan's AKP party? Did its ongoing entanglement with western political culture foster a gradual integration or a deepened animosity? Listen in!

In our tenth episode, Professor Sebastian Harnisch, Principal Investigator at the RTG 'Ambivalent Enmities' and Professor of International Relations and Foreign Policy at the University of Heidelberg, discusses the exfiltration of Nicolás Maduro by US armed forces. During his conversation with Dr Barend Noordam, Prof Harnisch contextualises the US intervention in Venezuela within the broader scope of US foreign policy under Trump, analysing its significance in the context of geopolitical power struggles and competing national interests. How does Trumpian transactionalism shape US power projection? Does the intervention imply tacit acceptance of a division of the world into spheres of influence? What kind of political arrangement might emerge in Venezuela following Maduro's removal? Tune in to find out!

In the first episode of 2026, we welcome Urvashi Butalia, a feminist writer, historian, and Mercator Fellow at the RTG 'Ambivalent Enmity' to discuss the oral history of the Partition of India in 1947 and its violent impact on women's lives. During her conversation with Dr Fabian Baumann, she delves into the genesis and key findings of her seminal work, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (1998). Starting from her own family history, Butalia uncovered memories of sexual violence, abduction, and expulsion that had been suppressed by societal stigma and nationalist narratives in both India and Pakistan. How did violence erupt between Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in Punjab? And why did women come to symbolise national purity, making them targets of sexual violence at the hands of male nationalists? Did familial ties survive the separation of states? Listen in!

In this episode, Professor Paul Hanebrink of Rutgers University unpacks the history of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth and its echoes in today's political discourse. In conversation with our very own Dr Fabian Baumann, he traces the myth's "fungal" proliferation across interwar Europe, sheds light on its evolving uses and invocations, and examines its Cold War legacy. What constitutes this 'racial theory of communism'? And why did the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism stimulate the imaginations of Central and Western Europeans so powerfully? Do we still see traces of it in contemporary politics? Tune in to find out!