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A recent viral TikTok video by a 19-year-old woman named Ava has been viewed millions of times. “I’m a 19-year-old wife, married, no degree, no 9-to-5, and I am exactly where I want to be,” she tells her followers, before describing a life centred on her husband, her home and the family she hopes to build. The backlash was immediate. Most feminist critics online saw it as evidence that young women are increasingly embracing tradwife content and questioned why an almost teenage girl with no independent income could ever truly be secure or free. In response, some of Ava’s supporters accused feminists of looking down on women who do not necessarily see careers, professional success or climbing the corporate ladder as the highest form of liberation.

The panic surrounding tradwives has become so familiar that it is often treated as one of the most defining feminist questions of our time. Yet there is remarkably little evidence that large numbers of women are abandoning feminism for traditional gender roles. A 2025 King’s College London and Ipsos survey across 29 countries found that Gen Z men and women are more divided on feminism and women’s rights than any other generation surveyed: 53% of Gen Z women identified as feminists, compared with just 32% of Gen Z men. If anything, the findings suggest that one of the most significant political developments of recent years is not a mass rejection of feminism by young women but a growing ideological divide between young men and women.

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The words are: "I support Palestine Action." 

Following the group's proscription under UK terrorism law, expressing support can now constitute a serious criminal offence.

This week on The Tea, we're joined by Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori to examine one of the most controversial political decisions in modern Britain. Why has Palestine Action been placed in the same legal category as ISIS and neo-Nazi organisations? And what does that mean for democracy, civil liberties and the future of political protest?

From the Filton Four case to the government's use of counterterrorism powers, we ask: where is the line between criminal damage, civil disobedience and terrorism? Is this about protecting national security—or expanding the definition of terrorism to encompass political dissent?

Also in the show:

⚡ How Palestine Action was formed: Ammori’s path to direct action

⚡ Can BDS change the system? The power of political campaigning

⚡ Is Palestine treated differently? Zionist influence in British politics

⚡ The Filton Four case explained

⚡ From Greta Thunberg to Massive Attack: the policing of dissent

⚡ Arms companies, accountability and the ethics of activism

👉 Subscribe for independent, unfiltered conversations

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

#TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #HudaAmmori #PalestineActionBan #Gaza #PoliticalActivism #BDS #IsraelPalestine #Protest 

DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this video, nor in any associated social clips, should be interpreted or deemed to constitute support for, endorsement of, or affiliation with any proscribed organisation.

AUDIO CREDITS

Presenter–Producer: Dr. Myriam François

Guest: Huda Ammori

Senior Producer: Sara Farolfi

Producer: Nadège Bizimungu

Assistant Producer: Poppy Jacobs

Research: Constance Creswell

Video Editor: Max Bubnov

An MPWR Productions show.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the guest(s) on The Tea YouTube series and podcast are their own and do not reflect those of MPWR Productions or its licensees. The appearance of this YouTube programme and podcast on social media platforms does not imply endorsement by MPWR Productions. MPWR Productions disclaims any liability for damages arising from the use of the podcast and its recordings to the fullest extent permissible by law. This video is intended for informational and commentary purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the guest and creators. The inclusion of public figures or journalists is based on publicly available information and does not imply guilt or wrongdoing. The views in this video do not establish a professional relationship with viewers and do not constitute legal, professional, or personal advice. Viewer discretion is advised.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So what’s really driving this shift? This week on The Tea, we’re joined by bestselling author and feminist activist Laura Bates to unpack the growing backlash against feminism, the rise of the so-called manosphere — and the emerging “womanosphere” — and how algorithm-driven radicalisation is reshaping ideas about gender, power and truth.

From the attention economy to masculinity politics, we ask: is this a culture war between men and women — or something deeper being engineered beneath the surface? And who is profiting from it?

Also in the show:

⚡ Institutional misogyny across policing, politics, media, and justice

⚡ Violence against women and girls — a public health crisis

⚡ Algorithms, social media, and misogynistic radicalisation

⚡ Andrew Tate and the mainstreaming of the manosphere

⚡ UK Online Safety Act — protection or mass surveillance?

⚡ Men’s mental health crisis

⚡ The Gisèle Pelicot case and global “rape academy”

⚡ Manosphere meets the far right

⚡ From Narah Smith to Savannah Stone: the rise of the “womanosphere”

⚡ Freya India and feminism’s blind spots

Our guest argues that we’re not passive users of big tech — we’re active citizens with real choices to make about the technologies we use, the AI tools we adopt, and how we embed them in our lives.

👉 Subscribe for independent, unfiltered conversations

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

#TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #LauraBates #GenderPolitics #Feminism #GenZ #Manosphere #womanosphere #GenderEquality #UKPolitics #USPolitics #CurrentAffairs #news

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed by the guest(s) on The Tea YouTube series and podcast are their own and do not reflect those of MPWR Productions or its licensees. The appearance of this YouTube programme and podcast on social media platforms does not imply endorsement by MPWR Productions. MPWR Productions disclaims any liability for damages arising from the use of the podcast and its recordings to the fullest extent permissible by law.

This video is intended for informational and commentary purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the guest and creators. The inclusion of public figures or journalists is based on publicly available information and does not imply guilt or wrongdoing.

The views in this video do not establish a professional relationship with viewers and do not constitute legal, professional, or personal advice. Viewer discretion is advised.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So what’s really driving this shift? This week on The Tea, we’re joined by bestselling author and feminist activist Laura Bates to unpack the growing backlash against feminism, the rise of the so-called manosphere — and the emerging “womanosphere” — and how algorithm-driven radicalisation is reshaping ideas about gender, power and truth.

From the attention economy to masculinity politics, we ask: is this a culture war between men and women — or something deeper being engineered beneath the surface? And who is profiting from it?

Also in the show:

⚡ Institutional misogyny across policing, politics, media, and justice

⚡ Violence against women and girls — a public health crisis

⚡ Algorithms, social media, and misogynistic radicalisation

⚡ Andrew Tate and the mainstreaming of the manosphere

⚡ UK Online Safety Act — protection or mass surveillance?

⚡ Men’s mental health crisis

⚡ The Gisèle Pelicot case and global “rape academy”

⚡ Manosphere meets the far right

⚡ From Narah Smith to Savannah Stone: the rise of the “womanosphere”

⚡ Freya India and feminism’s blind spots

Our guest argues that we’re not passive users of big tech — we’re active citizens with real choices to make about the technologies we use, the AI tools we adopt, and how we embed them in our lives.

👉 Subscribe for independent, unfiltered conversations
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

#TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #LauraBates #GenderPolitics #Feminism #GenZ #Manosphere #womanosphere #GenderEquality #UKPolitics #USPolitics #CurrentAffairs #news

You can find Laura Bates’ book, The New Age of Sexism, here https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-New-Age-of-Sexism/Laura-Bates/9781471190513

00:00:00 Introduction – The online backlash against feminism
00:02:25 What Feminism Really Means
00:04:09 Laura Bates on Everyday Sexism and Feminist Awakening
00:06:46 Are Women Equal Yet? Debunking the Myths
00:09:23 Why Awareness Hasn't Ended Violence Against Women
00:13:09 Gen Z Men, Social Media and the Rise of Misogyny
00:16:08 How Algorithms and Big Tech Amplify the Manosphere
00:22:20 Online Safety, Censorship and Regulating Social Media
00:29:05 Why Young Men Are Drawn to the Manosphere
00:38:22 Is Feminism Alienating Young Men?
00:45:03 Tradwives, Conservatism and the Far-Right Connection
00:55:26 Girlboss Feminism, AI and the Future of Women's Rights

AUDIO CREDITS

Presenter–Producer: Dr. Myriam François

Guest: Laura Bates

Senior Producer: Sara Farolfi

Producer: Nadège Bizimungu

Assistant Producer: Poppy Jacobs

Research: Constance Creswell, Martha Missingham

Video Editor: Max Bubnov

An MPWR Productions show.

Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed by the guest(s) on The Tea YouTube series and podcast are their own and do not reflect those of MPWR Productions or its licensees. The appearance of this YouTube programme and podcast on social media platforms does not imply endorsement by MPWR Productions. MPWR Productions disclaims any liability for damages arising from the use of the podcast and its recordings to the fullest extent permissible by law.

This video is intended for informational and commentary purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the guest and creators. The inclusion of public figures or journalists is based on publicly available information and does not imply guilt or wrongdoing.

The views in this video do not establish a professional relationship with viewers and do not constitute legal, professional, or personal advice. Viewer discretion is advised.

There is nothing voluntary about leaving a place where hospitals have been destroyed, doctors have been detained or killed, medicine is running out and thousands of patients are unable to access treatment that exists only a few kilometres beyond a sealed border.

Yet this is the language Israeli officials increasingly use when discussing the ongoing Genocide in Gaza. In recent months, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has reiterated support for what he calls the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the territory, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken about expanding Israeli military control over large parts of Gaza This framing turns ethnic cleansing into a matter of personal choice, obscuring the extent to which Israel has spent years systematically dismantling the conditions that allow Palestinians to remain in Gaza in the first place, particularly through the destruction of its healthcare system.

This is the subject of our conversation this week with Norwegian emergency physician Mads Gilbert, who has worked alongside Palestinian doctors for more than four decades. Gilbert first arrived in Gaza during the First Intifada and later became one of the most recognisable international medical voices documenting Israeli assaults on the territory. During Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, when Israel barred most foreign journalists from entering Gaza, his reports from Al-Shifa Hospital became one of the few accounts reaching audiences globally.The conclusion he drew from those experiences is one he has spent years returning to: Israel’s attacks on hospitals are not simply about the immediate casualties they produce. They are part of a broader ethnic cleansing project that seeks to make Palestinian life in Gaza impossible.

For more than sixteen years, before October 7th, Israel’s blockade restricted the movement of people and goods into and out of the besieged Gaza strip, shaping almost every aspect of life, including healthcare. Patients requiring specialist treatment unavailable in Gaza often needed Israeli permits to leave. According to the World Health Organisation, one in five patient permit applications in December 2022 was either delayed or denied, including requests from cancer patients, cardiac patients and children requiring specialised care. Access to chemotherapy, surgery or advanced diagnostics was often dependent on Israeli approval rather than medical need alone. The blockade also restricted the import of equipment, spare parts and materials needed to maintain hospitals and medical infrastructure.

Medical workers have also been targeted long before October 2023. During the Great March of Return protests in 2018, Israeli forces killed 21-year-old volunteer medic Razan al-Najjar while she was treating wounded protesters near the fence. Earlier that year, paramedic Musa Abu Hassanin was shot and killed while assisting the injured. Even at the time, these incidents reflected a broader pattern in which Israeli forces repeatedly targeted ambulances, healthcare workers and patients, despite the protection afforded to them under international humanitarian law.

What Israel has done to Gaza’s healthcare system since October 2023 represents an escalation of that pattern on an extraordinary scale. By August 2025, the World Health Organisation reported that Israeli attacks had damaged 34 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals. Médecins Sans Frontières has gone further to describe Gaza’s healthcare system as being “systematically dismantled, while WHO officials have repeatedly warned that it is approaching collapse.

The assault has extended far beyond buildings, targeting the very people responsible for keeping the system functioning. Dr Adnan al-Bursh, head of orthopaedics at Al-Shifa Hospital, died in Israeli detention in 2024. Before his death, he had reportedly been beaten in prison, with his body showing signs of torture. Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, remains imprisoned after Israeli forces raided the hospital and detained him in December 2024. This week, he appeared by video link at an Israeli Supreme Court hearing in Jerusalem, where relatives said he showed visible signs of torture and severe physical decline, underscoring growing concerns about the treatment of Palestinian healthcare workers in Israeli detention.

These cases matter not just because they reveal the suffering of individual doctors, but because they also represent the removal of some of Gaza’s most experienced medical professionals at the very moment they are needed most. Hospitals cannot function without people. By killing, imprisoning or disabling senior clinicians and hospital leaders, Israel is deliberately hollowing out the expertise needed to sustain healthcare during genocide and erasing expertise that often takes decades to build.

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians continue to wait for treatment that cannot be provided inside Gaza. According to the UN, more than 18,500 patients, including approximately 3,800 children, currently require urgent medical evacuation for life-saving care unavailable in the territory. In February, Save the Children warned that at the existing rate of evacuations, it would take more than four years for all those requiring urgent treatment to leave Gaza. The organisation reported that more than 1,200 patients had already died while waiting for permission to access medical care elsewhere.

Taken individually, a denied permit, a destroyed hospital, a detained doctor or a patient unable to access care might appear as separate developments. But healthcare, especially during Genocide, is what makes it possible to manage chronic illness, survive cancer, receive emergency surgery, give birth safely and recover from injury. Once those systems disappear, the consequences extend far beyond the immediate victims. Entire communities begin to lose the conditions necessary for life itself.

This is why the destruction of healthcare cannot be understood as a secondary consequence of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Under the Genocide Convention, genocide includes the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part. The International Court of Justice has recognised the plausibility of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, while a UN Special Committee concluded that Israel’s methods of warfare in Gaza were consistent with the characteristics of genocide. The destruction of hospitals, the restriction of medical care, the targeting of healthcare workers and the prevention of medical evacuations must be understood within that context.

This is also why discussions of “voluntary migration” deserve far greater scrutiny than they usually receive. By the time Israeli ministers began openly discussing the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, Israel had already destroyed much of the infrastructure that allowed Palestinians to remain there. The assault on Gaza’s healthcare system is not separate from that project. When hospitals are destroyed, doctors imprisoned, medical evacuations blocked and essential treatment rendered inaccessible, displacement ceases to be a freely made decision. The destruction of healthcare is therefore not only one of the ways Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza, but part of the broader project of ethnic cleansing, which creates conditions intended to push Palestinians from their land while presenting their displacement as a choice.

Eight months on from the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, the headlines may have moved on — but Israel's assault has not. The siege remains. The starvation continues. The displacement continues. The destruction continues.

This week on The Tea, we speak to Dr Mads Gilbert, the award-winning Norwegian doctor and long-standing advocate for Palestinian liberation. Having worked in Gaza for decades, Gilbert offers a devastating account of what he describes as a deliberate campaign of deprivation — one designed to destroy the very foundations of life.

Water and food supplies have been strangled. Hospitals have been besieged and bombed. Doctors have been detained and killed. Every university in Gaza has been attacked. Schools, ambulances, and civilian infrastructure have all come under fire.

This is not collateral damage. It’s a deliberate process of deprivation — one that has systematically targeted the very foundations of life.

Also in the show:

⚡ A remarkable story of survival: the world record in resuscitation from hypothermia

⚡ The Oslo Accords: corruption allegations and links to Jeffrey Epstein

⚡ The mystery of the missing Oslo documents

⚡ The so-called ceasefire? It’s a re-occupation line

⚡ UNRWA and the blockade preventing aid from reaching Gaza

⚡ Israel's impunity and the failure of Western governments to act

⚡ The systematic targeting of hospitals, doctors and medical infrastructure

⚡ Horror and abuse inside Israeli prisons

⚡ Israel and the “weaponisation” of solidarity

⚡ Palestinian resistance and the right to resist occupation

"The Palestinian people, with their heroism and sacrifice, are fighting a struggle for all of us against a new wave of brutal colonialism.” Our guest argues that “if we are to take our responsibility seriously, we have to stand with them."

👉 Subscribe for fearless, independent conversations

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts]

#TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #MadsGilbert #Gaza #Palestine #Israel #UNRWA #WestBank #genocides #CurrentAffairs #News #Politics #HussamAbuSafiya

AUDIO CREDITS

Presenter–Producer: Dr. Myriam François

Guest: Mads Gilbert

Senior Producer: Sara Farolfi

Producer: Nadège Bizimungu

Assistant Producer: Poppy Jacobs

Research: Constance Creswell

Video Editor: Max Bubnov

An MPWR Productions show.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed by the guest(s) on The Tea YouTube series and podcast are their own and do not reflect those of MPWR Productions or its licensees. The appearance of this YouTube programme and podcast on social media platforms does not imply endorsement by MPWR Productions. MPWR Productions disclaims any liability for damages arising from the use of the podcast and its recordings to the fullest extent permissible by law.

This video is intended for informational and commentary purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the guest and creators. The inclusion of public figures or journalists is based on publicly available information and does not imply guilt or wrongdoing.

The views in this video do not establish a professional relationship with viewers and do not constitute legal, professional, or personal advice. Viewer discretion is advised.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Uygur, the founder of The Young Turks, and his nephew Piker, one of the world’s most watched political streamers, were due to speak at SXSW London and the Oxford Union, not at some underground militia gathering. They were not accused of planning violence. They were not travelling to organise unrest. According to The Guardian, their electronic travel authorisations were cancelled after political pressure, including from Labour MP David Taylor, who had called for Piker to be prevented from speaking. Uygur said he was told he posed a “serious risk to public order” because of his criticism of Israel, including his argument that pro-Israel lobbying shapes American politics.

But what exactly is it about what Uygur and Piker have to say that is so dangerous? And how did criticism of Israel, a foreign state, become something the British government treats as a threat to public order?

Defenders of the ban will say Britain has also barred far-right figures, which is a fair argument. In April and May, the Home Office barred far-right activist Valentina Gomez and several other foreign far-right activists from entering Britain to attend Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally. But the distinction here is that Gomez is not just “controversial”. She has, among other things, called Muslims terrorists, campaigned to “kick every dirty Muslim out of Texas”, burned a Quran with a flamethrower while declaring she would “end Islam in Texas”, and was travelling to the UK to address a street movement built around anti-Muslim grievance, led by Robinsion, a convicted criminal with a record of violent engagement with the police. Other banned figures include Dutch far-right influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who has promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory and “remigration” policies, and Dominik Tarczyński, a Polish Member of the European Parliament known for his hardline anti-immigration views.

It is fair to draw the line at organised racist mobilisation, particularly when it is attached to movements that portray minorities as an existential threat to the nation and encourage violence towards Muslims and migrants. But that is precisely why the Cenk and Hasan ban is so revealing. The state is taking a power first presented as a shield against fascistic agitation and stretching it over anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine speech. It is collapsing the distinction between inciting hatred against a minority and criticising a state committing mass violence with Western support. Once that distinction goes, there is nothing stopping the government from labelling almost any form of dissent a threat.

But contrary to popular belief, none of this is new. Historically, western democracy has always had an exception clause. It was there when colonial subjects were denied the rights Europeans claimed for themselves. It was there when anti-apartheid activists in Britain were secretly monitored by Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch, with files kept on meetings, leaflets and campaigns against South African apartheid. It was there when Nelson Mandela and the ANC were still on US terrorism watch lists until 2008, more than a decade after apartheid had ended. It was there during McCarthyism in the 1950s, when suspected communists, trade unionists, artists and political dissidents were blacklisted, surveilled and portrayed as threats to the nation rather than citizens with legitimate political demands. Most importantly, it was there during the Iraq War, when critics of an illegal invasion were smeared as unpatriotic, blacklisted, and accused of giving comfort to “America’s enemies.”

But Palestine has exposed something even more troubling. When Britain and the United States invaded Iraq, the political establishment closed ranks behind a disastrous war, but there were still powerful institutions willing to challenge it. Newspapers splashed leaked government documents across their front pages, and some outlets, including the New York Times, admitted they were wrong and exposed false claims about weapons of mass destruction. Millions of people marched in the streets and to some extent, found that at least some of their concerns were reflected in the media they consumed.

The response to Gaza has felt different. As the death toll has climbed and public opinion has shifted, much of the political and media class has remained remarkably resistant to changing course. The result is a growing sense that the argument taking place among ordinary people is not the same argument taking place inside Westminster, Washington, or many of the institutions meant to hold power to account.

But it’s important to understand that the tools now being deployed against pro-Palestine activism were not built overnight, and long before Gaza, the line between protest and extremism was already being blurred. The legal architecture was built years earlier, as governments responded to disruptive climate protests by granting police broader powers through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Act. Rights groups like Human Rights Watch have warned that these measures have resulted in arbitrary restrictions, arrests and prosecutions of peaceful protesters. In 2019, counter-terrorism police included Extinction Rebellion, a non-violent climate movement, in anti-extremism guidance alongside National Action, a banned neo-Nazi terrorist group. More recently, organisers from the climate campaign group Just Stop Oil have received prison sentences of up to five years for non-violent direct action. Once those powers and precedents were established, it was only a matter of who would be targeted next, culminating in the government’s proscription of Palestine Action.

For decades, Western governments could support Israel while claiming to represent liberal values because the contradiction was hidden behind language of “peace process, self-defence, shared democracy.” Gaza has shattered that language. The public has seen hospitals bombed, children starved, aid blocked, journalists killed, families erased, and Western governments continue to arm, defend and excuse the state responsible.

That is why Palestine is the litmus test. Not because Western democracy was ever as free or principled as it claimed, but because Gaza has stripped away the pretence. Millions have marched, organised, spoken out and demanded an end to mass slaughter. Yet governments have largely ignored them, while critics have faced censorship, surveillance, arrests and smears.

What makes this decision so significant is not simply that two pro-Palestine voices were barred from entering Britain. It is who those voices are. Uygur is one of the most prominent left-wing political commentators in the United States, with an audience of millions and a decades-long presence in mainstream political debate. If someone of that profile can be excluded for his views on Israel, the bar has moved. What was once presented as an exceptional power reserved for extremists is now being applied to figures operating squarely within democratic political discourse.

The lesson, then, is not that Britain is suddenly becoming authoritarian. The lesson is harsher: the machinery was already there, waiting for the right cause to justify its use. Palestine has exposed where the boundaries of permissible speech really lie, which freedoms are real, which are conditional, and how quickly they can disappear when they challenge power

.

Our guest this week, political commentator and founder of The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, was barred from entering the UK, alongside Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, after criticising Israel, in a move that has sparked alarm over the future of free expression itself.

When does criticism of a state become "a question of public order"? Who gets to decide which opinions are acceptable? And why are some voices increasingly being shut out of public debate?

In this explosive episode of The Tea, Cenk joins us to discuss the power of pro-Israel lobbying networks, the campaign to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and why Western governments are becoming increasingly hostile to dissenting voices.

Also in the show:

⚡ Israeli influence and pressure on universities

⚡ How TYT has become a target in the war over Israel criticism

⚡ Why the US can fund Israel’s wars but struggles with basic healthcare

⚡ Larry Ellison, media consolidation, and control of political narratives

⚡ How the history of Israel-Palestine is framed in mainstream media

⚡ After Iran: Is Turkey the “next threat”?

⚡ “Greater Israel” and the ideological battle over Zionism

⚡ Valentina Gomez and the framing of Israel criticism as extremism

⚡ New law linking US and Israeli military more closely

⚡ The role of lobbying and money in shaping US congressional priorities

As Cenk argues: Israel is not the root cause but a symptom of a deeper system—where money and influence shape policy, and multiple lobbies exert outsized power over democratic decision-making.

👉 Subscribe for fearless, independent conversations

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

#TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #CenkUygur #HasamPiker #Israel #travelban #Palestine #freedomofspeech #USPolitics #UKPolitics #HomeOffice #news #currentaffairs

AUDIO CREDITS

Presenter–Producer: Dr. Myriam François

Guest: Cenk Uygur

Senior Producer: Sara Farolfi

Producer: Nadège Bizimungu

Assistant Producer: Poppy Jacobs

Research: Sana Serrouk, Martha Missingham

Video Editor: Max Bubnov

An MPWR Productions show.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed by the guest(s) on The Tea YouTube series and podcast are their own and do not reflect those of MPWR Productions or its licensees. The appearance of this YouTube programme and podcast on social media platforms does not imply endorsement by MPWR Productions. MPWR Productions disclaims any liability for damages arising from the use of the podcast and its recordings to the fullest extent permissible by law.

This video is intended for informational and commentary purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the guest and creators. The inclusion of public figures or journalists is based on publicly available information and does not imply guilt or wrongdoing.

The views in this video do not establish a professional relationship with viewers and do not constitute legal, professional, or personal advice. Viewer discretion is advised.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

America has learned nothing from its wars. Not Iraq. Not Afghanistan. Not 9/11. And now, with Iran, the cycle is repeating itself. For 23 years, Michael Scheuer served inside the CIA. In this week’s episode of The Tea, he joins us to pull back the curtain on what he calls America’s “imperial hubris” — a foreign policy driven by arrogance, endless intervention, and political capture.

From Israel’s influence on Washington to the failures of the War on Terror, Scheuer argues the US keeps repeating catastrophic mistakes — while the cost is paid in blood, instability, and permanent war.

“America is still trapped in a cult of World War II, acting as though it remains the unchallenged power of 1945, despite decades of global backlash.”

Also in the show:

⚡ 9/11, bin Laden & missed opportunities

⚡ Israel’s grip on US foreign policy

⚡ The CIA rendition program

⚡ Iran — another example of American hubris

⚡ Trump’s “anti-war” promises — and the reality

⚡ The business of war — and who benefits from endless conflict

⚡ The cost of being under Israel’s thumb

⚡ Sanctions as a failed policy

⚡ AIPAC’s deep influence on Congress and the Senate

⚡ Is America drifting toward another civil conflict?

“Trump’s words and actions are a reminder that we’re at the bottom of the barrel. How long can we keep voting for people who don’t do what they say they’re gonna do?”

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🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

#TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #MichaelScheuer #Trump2026 #USPolitics #Iran #CIA #Israel #Zionism #MiddleEast #news # #currentaffairs

AUDIO CREDITS

Presenter–Producer: Dr. Myriam François

Guest: Michael Scheuer

Senior Producer: Sara Farolfi

Producer: Sana Serroukh

Assistant Producer: Poppy Jacobs

Research: Constance Creswell

Video Editor: Max Bubnov

An MPWR Productions show.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed by the guest(s) on The Tea YouTube series and podcast are their own and do not reflect those of MPWR Productions or its licensees. The appearance of this YouTube programme and podcast on social media platforms does not imply endorsement by MPWR Productions. MPWR Productions disclaims any liability for damages arising from the use of the podcast and its recordings to the fullest extent permissible by law.

This video is intended for informational and commentary purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the guest and creators. The inclusion of public figures or journalists is based on publicly available information and does not imply guilt or wrongdoing.

The views in this video do not establish a professional relationship with viewers and do not constitute legal, professional, or personal advice. Viewer discretion is advised.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And yet the rhetoric has not changed. Stability. Security. Preventing a greater threat. The underlying assumption beneath all of it, the one that never gets named directly is that American military force can contain the violence it unleashes.

That assumption has shaped American foreign policy for decades. The results are not ambiguous.

Vietnam was framed as a fight for freedom against communism. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson told Americans that “the independence of South Vietnam” was essential to the security of the free world. More than 58,000 American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese civilians would eventually die in a war that the Pentagon Papers later revealed successive administrations privately knew was failing.

The same logic returned after 9/11. Bush declared that “freedom and fear are at war” and warned the world that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” That framing transformed a horrific attack into an open-ended global war with almost no geographic or legal limits. Afghanistan became the first battlefield. Twenty years later, after more than 170,000 deaths and nearly $2.3 trillion spent, the Taliban returned to power within days of the American withdrawal. The Afghanistan Papers, published by The Washington Post, later exposed how deeply U.S. officials had misled the public throughout. One senior official admitted: “We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.” Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served under both Bush and Obama, confessed: “We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan.”

Yet the war continued for two decades.

For many who lived through the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the current confrontation with Iran carries haunting echoes of that era. On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath a banner reading “Mission Accomplished” and declared that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” and that “the United States and our allies have prevailed.” In reality, the war had barely begun. The nearly decade-long occupation that followed killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destabilized an entire region. The Iraqi state collapsed, unleashing sectarian violence that tore through the country for years. The abuses at Abu Ghraib became a global symbol of torture and impunity. The chaos and power vacuum helped give rise to ISIS. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates the post-9/11 wars would ultimately cost the United States roughly $8 trillion.

Before the first bombs fell, millions of people had marched against the war in what was then described as the largest coordinated anti-war protest in human history. UN weapons inspectors repeatedly said they had found no evidence that Iraq possessed active weapons of mass destruction. Mohamed ElBaradei, then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, publicly challenged claims that Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons. Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix warned that inspections were still ongoing and that war was not justified.

They were ignored anyway.

Libya followed a similar trajectory. In March 2011, Barack Obama justified military intervention by warning that forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi were advancing on Benghazi, where a massacre of civilians could “stain the conscience of the world.” Gaddafi was overthrown within months. Libya soon descended into militia warfare, political fragmentation, arms trafficking and competing foreign interventions. Obama would later describe the failure to plan for the aftermath as the “worst mistake” of his presidency.

The point is not that every war is identical. It is that American power keeps relying on the same underlying belief: that the United States has the right to reshape other societies through force while imagining itself somehow insulated from the consequences. Scholars often describe this as American hubris, but stripped of the academic language, it is really the conviction that American power is uniquely moral, uniquely necessary and therefore exempt from the rules applied to everyone else.

But I want to be precise about what this pattern proves and what it does not — because the argument matters, and it is worth making carefully.

The empirical case is damning and clear: American military interventions have, with striking consistency, produced consequences far worse than their architects predicted. That case stands on its own. It does not need to be inflated into a stronger claim to land with force.

The stronger claim, that American militarism is a self-perpetuating machine that produces wars by design, is harder to sustain. It is true that even wars widely regarded as failures still expand defence budgets, enrich arms manufacturers, deepen military alliances and reinforce America’s role as the central security actor in the international system. Those structural incentives are real and they matter. But wars also happen because of genuine strategic miscalculation, bureaucratic momentum, domestic political pressure, and sometimes real security dilemmas that do not have clean solutions. The Taliban really did harbor Al-Qaeda. The weapons of mass destruction assessments were not purely invented they reflected intelligence failures and institutions that could not pressure-test their own assumptions. These were failures of judgment and process as much as failures of interest. Treating them as one unified machine flattens what actually needs to be understood.

This distinction is not academic. If the system produces wars mechanically by design, the only solution is to dismantle the entire machine a project so vast it becomes impossible to connect to specific political action. If wars also emerge from miscalculation, institutional failure and compressed decision-making under pressure, then there are concrete levers: stronger constraints on executive war powers, more independent oversight of the intelligence claims used to justify force, more robust international authorization requirements. The argument for those things is stronger, not weaker, when it rests on what is actually demonstrated.

I grew up in Rwanda during the height of the War on Terror, and long before I understood geopolitics, I understood America as the center of the world. It was in the television we watched, the universities everyone was encouraged to admire, the aid infrastructure embedded across African countries, and the entertainment industry that exported American power as common sense. Shows like Homeland framed CIA operations, drone wars and counterterrorism through the lens of morally burdened Americans trying to protect civilization from chaos. Films like Zero Dark Thirty turned torture and the hunt for Osama bin Laden into stories about American trauma and heroism. Even when American wars went catastrophically wrong, American culture still positioned the United States as the main character of the story.

But people in the Global South experience these wars differently, because we live with the consequences long after American attention moves on.

The World Bank warned earlier this year that a wider regional conflict involving Iran could sharply increase fuel, fertilizer and food prices globally, with import-dependent countries likely to be among the hardest hit. That means a war discussed in Washington through the language of “deterrence” or “regional stability” can translate into rising transport costs in Kigali, higher food prices in Nairobi and worsening debt pressures across countries already struggling with inflation, climate shocks and IMF austerity programs.

Vietnam did not stop Iraq. Iraq did not stop Libya. Libya did not stop Iran.

Each intervention was introduced as historically unique. Each one was framed as an unfortunate necessity. Each one arrived wrapped in the language of freedom, security, civilization or humanitarianism. And each time, the people paying the highest price were the ones with the least power over the decisions being made.

That pattern does not require a conspiracy to explain it. It requires only that powerful institutions, operating under political pressure, with genuine but systematically distorted beliefs about what their power can achieve, keep making the same kind of mistake. Understanding why, clearly, specifically, is the only way to argue seriously for stopping it

.

The Tea with Myriam François

“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” — Angela Davis

What happens when one of the most dangerous political theories of our time goes mainstream?

This week in San Diego, two teenagers opened fire at a mosque, killing three people, in an attack reportedly tied to a manifesto driven by “Great Replacement Theory”— the belief that immigrants, Muslims, and minorities are “replacing” white populations.

But San Diego is not an exception. From Christchurch and El Paso to Buffalo, the GRT has become the ideological spine of modern mass violence.
In this episode of The Tea, historian and bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi joins us to unpack how an extremist conspiracy theory evolved into one of the world's most influential political narratives.

The GRT transforms demographic change into an existential threat. It turns diversity into invasion, and violence into “defence.” So who is driving this shift — and whose interests are served by its spread?
Also in the show:

⚡ The origins of the GRT — from Renaud Camus to mainstream politics
⚡ The White House, “remigration,” and the normalisation of extremist rhetoric
⚡ GRT and the myth of “Judeo-Christian” that serves Israel’s agenda
⚡ Anti-racism and DEI — the corporate backlash against structural change
⚡ The rise of “Great Replacement” financiers and politicians
⚡ Tommy Robinson, Elon Musk, and the politics of hate
Kendi argues that confronting this ideology requires rejecting the zero-sum logic at its core. And recognising that shared humanity may be the only way to break the cycle of fear, division, and violence.
👉 Subscribe for fearless, independent conversations
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

#TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #IbramXKendi #Islamophobia #IslamicCenter #SanDiego #GreatReplacementTheory #USPolitics #UKPolitics #news # #currentaffairs

AUDIO CREDITS
Presenter–Producer: Dr. Myriam François
Guest: Ibram X Kendi
Senior Producer: Sara Farolfi
Producer: Nadège Bizimungu
Assistant Producer: Poppy Jacobs
Research: Sana Serrouk, Martha Missingham
Video Editor: Max Bubnov
An MPWR Productions show.

Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed by the guest(s) on The Tea YouTube series and podcast are their own and do not reflect those of MPWR Productions or its licensees. The appearance of this YouTube programme and podcast on social media platforms does not imply endorsement by MPWR Productions. MPWR Productions disclaims any liability for damages arising from the use of the podcast and its recordings to the fullest extent permissible by law.

This video is intended for informational and commentary purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the guest and creators. The inclusion of public figures or journalists is based on publicly available information and does not imply guilt or wrongdoing.

The views in this video do not establish a professional relationship with viewers and do not constitute legal, professional, or personal advice. Viewer discretion is advised.

What happens when one of the most dangerous political theories of our time goes mainstream?

This week in San Diego, two teenagers opened fire at a mosque, killing three people, in an attack reportedly tied to a manifesto driven by “Great Replacement Theory”— the belief that immigrants, Muslims, and minorities are “replacing” white populations.

But San Diego is not an exception. From Christchurch and El Paso to Buffalo, the GRT has become the ideological spine of modern mass violence.

In this episode of The Tea, historian and bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi joins us to unpack how an extremist conspiracy theory evolved into one of the world's most influential political narratives.

The GRT transforms demographic change into an existential threat. It turns diversity into invasion, and violence into “defence.” So who is driving this shift — and whose interests are served by its spread?

Also in the show:

⚡ The origins of the GRT — from Renaud Camus to mainstream politics

⚡ The White House, “remigration,” and the normalisation of extremist rhetoric

⚡ GRT and the myth of “Judeo-Christian” that serves Israel’s agenda

⚡ Anti-racism and DEI — the corporate backlash against structural change

⚡ The rise of “Great Replacement” financiers and politicians

⚡ Tommy Robinson, Elon Musk, and the politics of hate

Kendi argues that confronting this ideology requires rejecting the zero-sum logic at its core. And recognising that shared humanity may be the only way to break the cycle of fear, division, and violence.

👉 Subscribe for fearless, independent conversations

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

#TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #IbramXKendi #Islamophobia #IslamicCenter #SanDiego #GreatReplacementTheory #USPolitics #UKPolitics #news # #currentaffairs

AUDIO CREDITS

Presenter–Producer: Dr. Myriam François

Guest: Ibram X Kendi

Senior Producer: Sara Farolfi

Producer: Nadège Bizimungu

Assistant Producer: Poppy Jacobs

Research: Sana Serrouk, Martha Missingham

Video Editor: Max Bubnov

An MPWR Productions show.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed by the guest(s) on The Tea YouTube series and podcast are their own and do not reflect those of MPWR Productions or its licensees. The appearance of this YouTube programme and podcast on social media platforms does not imply endorsement by MPWR Productions. MPWR Productions disclaims any liability for damages arising from the use of the podcast and its recordings to the fullest extent permissible by law.

This video is intended for informational and commentary purposes only and reflects the personal opinions of the guest and creators. The inclusion of public figures or journalists is based on publicly available information and does not imply guilt or wrongdoing.

The views in this video do not establish a professional relationship with viewers and do not constitute legal, professional, or personal advice. Viewer discretion is advised.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

That detail matters. This was not just simply anti-Muslim hatred. It was ideological violence driven by a worldview that treats coexistence, diversity, and multiracial democracy as the biggest existential threat of our time.

The same theory haunted Christchurch in 2019, when a gunman killed 51 Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand and titled his manifesto The Great Replacement. It surfaced again in El Paso, Texas later that year, when a gunman killed 23 people after warning of a “Hispanic invasion.”In Buffalo in 2022, an 18-year-old white supremacist murdered 10 Black people at a supermarket after writing about the replacement theory online.

The instinct after attacks like these is often to treat the perpetrators as isolated extremists radicalized in obscure corners of the internet. But that explanation no longer feels sufficient. What makes the Great Replacement theory dangerous is not just that extremists believe it and are willing to kill for it. It is that an idea once confined to neo-Nazi forums has gradually been repackaged into mainstream political language.

The Great Replacement theory, by definition, claims that white Christian populations in the West are being deliberately replaced through immigration, demographic change, multiculturalism, and declining birth rates, often with the help of liberal elites, globalists, or Jews. The modern term was coined by far-right French writer Renaud Camus in 2010, but historians trace the theory’s roots much further back through European antisemitism, colonial racial panic, and Nazi ideology.

After the Second World War and the horrors of the Holocaust, openly biological racism became far less socially acceptable, which pushed many far-right movements to get a makeover. The language shifted from “racial purity” to “culture,” “civilization,” “identity,” and “national survival.” “Race suicide” became “demographic decline.” Jews became Muslims. The swastikas largely disappeared from mainstream politics, but the underlying fear remained remarkably intact.

Then over the past decade, versions of this theory steadily moved from extremist spaces into mainstream politics. In 2021, Tucker Carlson repeatedly claimed Democrats were trying to “replace the current electorate” by bringing in “more obedient voters from the Third World.” Donald Trump described migrants as “invaders” and warned they were “poisoning the blood” of America. In Europe, figures like France’s Marine Le Pen and Hungry’s Viktor Orbán built entire political movements around the idea that national identity was under existential threat from migration and multiculturalism.

The impact of this is visible. In the US, A 2022 poll found that about 1 in 3 Americans believed there was an effort underway to “replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.” In France, a 2021 poll found that more than 60% of respondents believed white Christian populations were being replaced, particularly by Muslims. But are white people actually being replaced?

The uncomfortable truth is that demographic change is real. In the United States, the non-Hispanic white share of the population has steadily declined and is projected to fall below 50% around 2040. In England and Wales, the White British population fell from 80.5% in 2011 to 74.4% in 2021. Birmingham is now one of Britain’s major cities where ethnic minorities make up a majority of the population.

But let’s be clear. Demographic change is not evidence of a coordinated plot. Societies change for many reasons: migration, globalization, urbanization, interracial marriage, shifting birth rates, and generational change. In the US, for example, this demographic shift is happening mostly due to lower birthrates among white Americans, an aging white population, and the fact that younger Americans are already far more diverse than older generations. The conspiracy is the claim that these shifts are being deliberately orchestrated to erase white people politically or culturally.

That distinction is where much of the public conversation collapsed.

The question, then, is why this conspiracy resonates so powerfully in the first place.

Part of the answer is economic. After the 2008 financial crisis, millions of people across Europe and the United States experienced stagnant wages, housing crises, weakened public services, and declining trust in political institutions. Entire towns hollowed out economically while inequality surged. In many countries, people increasingly felt their governments could no longer provide stability, meaning, or control over the future.

But instead of directing anger upward toward austerity, deregulation, or concentrations of wealth, replacement politics redirected that anger sideways toward migrants, Muslims, and minorities.

That is why historian Ibram X. Kendi argues the Great Replacement theory has become “the ideological beating heart” of modern authoritarianism. In his new book Chain of Ideas, Kendi argues that the theory works because it convinces people they are under existential attack, that their identity, culture, and political power are being taken away. Once that fear takes hold, democracy itself can start to feel insufficient. That is where strongmen become appealing because they promise protection and order. We saw versions of this with Donald Trump, who repeatedly framed migrants as an “invasion,” expanded the role of ICE, and justified deploying the National Guard to American cities by portraying the country as under threat from migrants, crime, and “internal enemies.”

What is really at stake here is not just racism or anti-Muslim hatred, even though both are part of it. The deeper danger is that multiracial democracy itself starts being portrayed as the ultimate enemy. Once people are convinced diversity is an existential threat, fascism no longer looks unthinkable. That is exactly the logic Adolf Hitler exploited: convince people the nation is being destroyed from within, and they will accept authoritarianism, repression, and eventually violence in the name of national survival.

And this is where I think many progressive leftists, myself included, got things wrong for years. Too often, every expression of demographic anxiety was dismissed as inherently racist instead of separating legitimate anxieties about social change from outright supremacist politics. That vacuum allowed far-right movements to position themselves as the only people willing to acknowledge changes populations could visibly see around them.

Acknowledging change, however hard it may be, does not require accepting conspiracy.

Yes, societies are changing. Yes, migration can create pressure, especially when governments fail to invest in housing, schools, and public services. Yes, rapid cultural shifts can leave some people feeling alienated. But none of this means Muslims are replacing white people. None of it means immigration is a coordinated civilizational plot. And none of it justifies turning human beings into existential enemies.

The Great Replacement theory became mainstream because it offered people a simple explanation for a complicated world. If democracies want to survive this moment, they will need to address real systemic inequality without turning minorities into scapegoats for it.

.

This is why the public conversation around AI is so disorienting. The technology is producing genuine breakthroughs at the exact same moment many researchers, journalists and even former AI executives are warning that something deeply dangerous is unfolding beneath the surface.

Last year, Amnesty International warned that AI-powered surveillance has ushered in what it called a “golden age of surveillance,” where governments and corporations can monitor people across both their digital and physical lives at unprecedented scale. In Britain, the Metropolitan Police sharply expanded live facial recognition deployments, while in the United States facial recognition systems now touch the lives of an estimated 176 million people. Airports, shopping centres, office buildings and even schools increasingly rely on biometric monitoring systems once associated primarily with authoritarian states.

The issue is not simply that we are being watched more. It is that AI allows institutions to move from surveillance into prediction.

Modern AI systems don’t just collect information. They identify behavioural patterns and generate probabilistic judgments about what people are likely to do next. That logic now shapes policing, hiring, insurance, advertising, border control and warfare. Just recently, rights groups warned that predictive policing systems used across Britain are effectively automating racial profiling because the algorithms are trained on data generated by decades of disproportionate stop-and-search practices targeting Black communities. Facial recognition systems used in British shops have also falsely accused innocent people of theft, while the UK Home Office recently acknowledged Black and Asian people are more likely to be misidentified by facial recognition cameras than white people. According to a recent study, Black people in the UK are about 137 times more likely to be wrongly identified than white people. In the United States, investigations into facial recognition systems have alreadydocumented wrongful arrests of innocent Black men after police relied on flawed AI matches. The problem is not simply technical error. These systems absorb the biases of the institutions feeding them data, then reproduce those same patterns with the authority of mathematics. Yet governments and corporations continue expanding the technology anyway because prediction has become politically irresistible. Institutions increasingly believe uncertainty itself is the problem.

That is the real shift AI introduces: the idea that human behaviour can be continuously forecast, categorised and managed.

The consequences are already becoming difficult to contain. This year, families filed lawsuitsalleging AI chatbots reinforced suicidal ideation and delusions in vulnerable users. Anthropic revealed that during internal testing, its AI model Claude resorted to blackmail in a fictional scenario after being told it would be shut down, threatening to expose an executive’s affair to avoid replacement. None of this means AI has become conscious. It means these systems are increasingly unpredictable, deeply embedded into public life, and controlled by a handful of corporations operating faster than regulation can keep up.

At the same time, AI is becoming inseparable from state power. Microsoft, Google and xAI recently agreed to allow the US government access to advanced AI systems for national security testing. Investigations also revealed AI-assisted targeting systems were used during Israel’s Genocide in Gaza to rapidly generate strike lists based on data analysis and probabilistic scoring.

This is why the central debate around AI is no longer really about technology. It is about political power.

For years, Silicon Valley framed surveillance as the price of convenience. But AI changes the scale entirely. Once enough data is collected, prediction becomes possible. Once prediction becomes possible, behaviour can be shaped. Recommendation systems influence what we read, buy, believe and fear. Algorithms increasingly determine who receives opportunities and who gets flagged as risky before any human decision is made.

In her recent book, Prophecy, Oxford academic Carissa Véliz argues that this obsession with prediction risks hollowing out democracy itself. In essence, democratic societies depend on citizens being free to think privately, dissent openly and act unpredictably. A world governed through constant behavioural prediction moves in the opposite direction. It treats human beings less like citizens and more like probabilities to be managed.

The greatest AI threat, then, is not that machines will suddenly overpower humanity. It is that governments and corporations may quietly build systems powerful enough to narrow human freedom long before most people realise it has happened. - Nadège Bizimungu