#yeah this is about the french elections but also just about europe/the west in general

[videoworm]

democracy is going to shit

[bustedbernie]

I don't think it's fair to attribute statements from his voters/supporters directly to Mélenchon. And using France's place in the EU to renegotiate the treaties and reform the EU to a more social institution was actually his plan if he was elected. I personally doubt it would have succeeded since many countries have no interest in that and I doubt his negotiation skills. Regarding patriotism I was specifically refering to the concept of "xenocentrism" mentioned by another anon. I would be very 1

Distrustful of such concept which looks very close to an argument to dismiss local leftists as under the influence of foreign ideologies and reminds me of McCarthy. That's why I brought up patriotism as used to dismiss ideas as foreign anf by attacking the speaker's relation to the us. I would still argue that US patriotism is particularly loud and expansive (to absurdity imo). The US not alone in that phenomenon and I actually think what made me jumped at this concept of xenocentrism is that 2

We're seeing something to the same effect in France with many newcomers in research, especially in political science and sociology, being accused of parroting anglo-saxon doctrine to destroy the local ethos. Their work are dismissed as incomplete, unscientific, subjective and biased because they don't refer on locally approved concepts and I feel like the same mechanism is at play with this notion of xenocentrism tied to left leaning ideas and people. I hope I was clearer :)

Well I’d disagree to an extent with the first bit. I think a politician is at least partly responsible for their followers statements and behaviors. That’s been a big part of this blog, but also I think on the right-wing we saw how violent things can become when leaders don’t shut up their vocal supporters (McCain vs Trump might be a good example, or Obama vs Bernie in the left). And yeah, on the EU, I don’t know that he was really willing to negotiate things in a fair way. His statements were very aggressive. 

On your other points, yes it is much more clear. I do think the context of that anon as in how leftists in the USA use a mythological Europe as an ideal being for Americans to obtain. Much of the critique to this isn’t that there aren’t good ideas from European nations - there are - but that it is divorced from the history of Europe as a constituent whole as well as a continent of many nations. More importantly, it is used to attack the Democratic Party in the USA as “right-wing” based on an imaginary political spectrum which isn’t useful or cogent. I think this is the crux of the anon, because the Democratic Party IS quite left-wing, even in comparison to its European analogs (yes, even economically hah) and this meme also separates the Democrats from their context (American politics, two-party system, federalism, republicanism, etc). 

I do think on the broad-left there is a large thirst for foreign ideas and policies, so there are limits to a lot of this. In urban planning, American planners are finally starting to get research that backs up data about bike lanes and infra, housing policy, road design and transport. The USA has a gigantic blindspot toward essentially anything outside its borders and I think that is starting to change for the better. 

A lot of my academic background studies some of the issues you highlight. There are lots of friction points in what you speak of between the Anglo-American viewpoint and the francophone, one. I do think many in France are right to worry, though I also think some of it is a bit much. On the other hand, I do think there are lots of holes in the way that thought and research is done in Anglo nations that ought to be considered as well. The antagonistic form of writing and research in America is not something I am happy to see creeping into Canada and France, and writing my own research in the USA I still hate the ways in which a problematique is handled in the American format. But I think there is a virtue to both systems and perhaps the solution is in allowing some fluidity between them. But I think in France this is felt so strongly because the theoretical frameworks of some political and social thought is a bit shifted from the Anglo-American perspective. To generalize, I think the Anglo-American fascination with the individual is part of the reason why there is such friction on topics such as laïcité, feminisme and gender studies. I was recently reading an article that posited that the French philosophy on these matters was an adaptive marxist formulation that simply tends to view collectivities as more legitimate than in the Anglo-American formulation which often separates individuals from collectives. Although a lot of this is really just relevant to academia.

I think I agree that there is a danger though as you underline and there is always the need to outline exceptions, generalities, etc. 

On the point toward patriotism, yes I think most American nations have a much more forceful patriotism than (west) European nations. Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil... It’s very different. But I still find Europeans, or at least French, Spanish and British folks, to simply express patriotism differently. But I do remember the collective eye-roll in France when Macron stated he wanted schools to start the day with La Marseillaise hah. He does get called an American a lot, anyhow haha.

[sophiecmn772-blog]

Considering Eastern European Right Wing Populism

A Conversation with Professor Susan Siggelakis

According to Judis (2016, p. 4) “some European populist parties have been around for decades”. He gives, for example, the French Front National led by Marine Le Pen, but in eastern Europe some of these populist parties are just emerging. In Hungary, populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban took office in 2010 (Bugaric, 2008), and in the Czech Republic populist President Milos Zeman was elected in 2013. In the short time period that these actors have been in office, they have met incredible political success. The following interview discusses some of the broader themes of populism in Eastern Europe, and why it has risen in popularity over the last ten years. 

Professor Susan Siggelakis is a Professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, Durham campus. Professor Siggelakis holds a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers University, and a Masters and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Professor Siggelakis specializes in constitutional law, but has followed politics and current events in Eastern Europe through her role as the director of the UNH justice studies study abroad in Budapest program. In addition to several shorter trips, Professor Siggelakis has spent two full semesters in Budapest with her students, including one during the height of the refugee crisis in 2015. The purpose of this interview was to gauge the current political climate as it relates to populism in Eastern Europe, with Professor Siggelakis drawing heavily on her experience from her time in Budapest and her own historical knowledge of the region.   

For more on Professor Siggelakis, visit her faculty homepage.

A full transcript of the interview can be found below.

For the edited audio version, follow this link.  

ST = Myself, Interviewer and student at the University of New Hampshire

SS = Professor Susan Siggelakis, Ph.D., Interviewee

April 15, 2019 - Horton Hall, University of New Hampshire Durham Campus

ST: So, just to start off could you tell me, for those who don’t know you, what your focus of study is and your specialty here at UNH? 

SS: My area is like, constitutional law in the United States and Canadian politics and stuff. So I’m not really a comparative politics person but because of my involvement as a faculty member in the justice studies Budapest program and then I became the director, I became more involved in Hungary. So I spent two different semesters in Hungary and then I’m the director of the program. And so that means I’ve gone there, besides being there for two semesters also had a couple of trips over and back. I did write an article which got published which was about Hungary but it was about a work of fiction and sort of looking at it from a political thought angel so it’s not really topical in terms of politics. So, my level of expertise is just from living there. 

ST: From your experience. 

SS: And reading about it. I try to keep up on the news about Hungary, you know on the web and stuff. 

ST: So, and how familiar are you with the idea of populism in general? 

SS: I mean yea I get it. Sure, Sure. 

ST: Are you familiar with it in the context of Eastern Europe at all or just more in general? 

SS: Well, from what I’ve seen in Hungary, yeah. I mean, I think Orban who’s he Prime Minister he’s a populist and he’s very appealing to the people. You know, he’s pursued�� uh a kind of -I wouldn’t necessarily say separatist but his job is to represent the interests of the Hungarian people, not to worry about the EU, not to worry about the people in the Middle East, you know that’s his job.

ST: Yeah! 

SS: And the people respond to it. I mean his party, the Fidesz, they’ve been in power since, god 2006, I mean for a very long time, and they control almost all the majority of the seat in the Parliament. 

ST: Yea and that brings me to one of my questions I had. I know he’s been, Prime Minister right, since 2010 in Hungary and then in the Czech Republic which I’m studying their president – he’s a populist who’s been here since 2013 and then the Prime Minister has been in power since 2017 and they’re both considered populist. 

SS: Yea, and also in Poland, I mean you have similar things going on in a lot of those former eastern block countries.

ST: Yea, so do you have any idea why this sort of short time period recently has been- like what factors have contributed to the populists gaining… 

SS: Well, I’m not a big expert but I would say you know just like the membership in the EU. Speaking for Hungary is that – and even whether you’re in France or England or whatever, I mean all the sudden you’re in this large-scale ruling organization which makes rules that might not particularly fit your particular country and you’re forced to abide by them. So I think it’s just as the EU sort of web or amount, number of regulations has grown over the years there’s a tipping point I think at which people say “you know we have to be able to govern our own affairs the way we want to, even if we are in the EU”. So I think it’s a combination of that and I think it’s a reaction to globalization more generally, the fact that borders don’t matter anymore. I mean look at the debate we’re having. Oh, oh we shouldn’t have borders everybody should be able to come and go. 

ST: And in the EU they sort of can with anyone being in the EU can go… 

SS: Well they can once they get in.

 ST: Yeah! 

SS: If you’re in the Schengen Zone. So, you can be in the EU without being a member of the Schengen Zone. Ok, the Schengen Zone is a treaty obligation that some of the EU countries have signed. So what that means for Hungary, for example, and I’m sure for Czech Republic as well I – so remember in 2015 whe nthe big refugee crisis in Hungary and they were all coming from Serbia, through Serbia and they all wanted to go to Germany, they didn’t want to stay in Hungary, that was their goal. 

ST: Yea and Serbia now has a wall between them and Hungary. 

SS: Well Hungary does. But the point being, Hungary got a very bad rap in that situation because their obligation was to, if you’re in the Schengen treaty, when a person crosses that border into your country you have to establish who they are, you have to – they have to have documentation, you have to have a complete information that you would have for immigration. And most of these people didn’t have it and so Hungary was like well what the hell are we supposed to do. Our obligation is to establish who they are and we can’t do that when we have thousands of people crossing our border. And it was a big crisis and I think they were portrayed, I think very unfairly in the press actually because they weren’t living up to what they were supposed to do. And, all they were like “well why aren’t you letting people just you know live there” and whatever .They were like “we don’t even know who these people are”. They don’t have passports. The don’t have documentation. They don’t have anything, and they didn’t even want to stay in Hungary to begin with. And so the thing is once they get into Hungary then they can travel freely throughout the rest of Europe so if you can, as a refugee it’s worth your while if you can do that, right? Because then you can go anywhere within there. So, that was when Orban really said “we have to” you know “we really have to clamp down, we have to”. And again there were a lot of those border cities like I know there’s the city of Paech which was in the south which was under a state of emergency. I mean it was, it was very bad in the southern part of Hungary, not so much in Budapest. Although, they ended up walking or traveling somehow to Budapest and they occupied the train, like all the international train stations for several weeks and so we couldn’t even travel on international trains. 

ST: and you were there in Hungary? 

SS: We were there in 2015 fall. That was when the big surge came, yea. So that’s when… you know I think Orban was poplar before that but I think that was the beginning of more attention to securing their own borders. I mean that’s not the only aspect of populism, I think that’s one aspect of populism, right? 

ST: yea, it is a big aspect I feel like especially in right wing populism when a lot of their rhetoric has sort of taken on a nationalistic tone. Where the Czech Republic which I’m studying, the President Milos Zeman, he ran on a campaign where one of his slogans was like “no to Islam” and things like that.

SS: Well, one reason you have to think about this in the broader historical context is – you don’t think about this – but Hungary and Eastern Europe was the dividing line between Christian Europe and Muslims throughout the Medieval – in act Budapest was conquered numerous times by, well they called them the Turks but they were the Muslims. And so they see themselves as a Christian sort of back stop and I don’t know if this is true as much in the Czech Republic but I would assume it is because that’s why you had all those castles and you had all these knights and things was to protect against that. It was an invasion, I mean they got all the way to Vienna. So, you have to think about that as sort of the larger tradition or value of Christian Europe which they are saying is under threat now just as it was in the Middle Ages. So if you look at it more broadly I think you can understand it. 

ST: And you said you think it’s been portrayed sort of unfairly? 

SS: Well I’m talking about the Hungarian reaction in 2015. I do think it – I think Orban in general is portrayed poorly by everybody in the West. Like if you read the BBC or any of those things I think he – but you know I mean I’m agnostic about it I’m not a Hungarian citizen. But um for example I went to the October 23rd celebration which, I don’t know if you know, is the anniversary of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 where they tried to throw off the communists and then were put down by Soviet tanks. It’s a huge national holiday. And um so they closed off the streets and they had a big – there’s a museum it’s called the House of Terror which was where the Nazi party would torture all the Hungarians when they occupied Budapest and then when the Soviets took over the Soviets would use it to. It’s a torture house basically and now it’s a museum. And again, for the Hungarian people they’ve always been invaded, right? You have to think about that. Right? You’re in this crossroads of people just like the Czechs right. They were ruled by the Soviets for so long, these foreign powers which dominate them and they want to have their own indigenous country so I think looking at it in the longer history as well as in the more contemporary 20th century history. You would not want to live in Eastern Europe. I mean that was a horrible place to be throughout most of the 20th - when you think about world war one, world war two. I mean it’s just horrible what these people have lived through and so I think you know, trying to establish the integrity of their own country even though as they’re part of this larger European EU sort of center, it’s hard for them. They don’t want to blend. Do they want to be as people are in France? Do French want to be the same as people are in Hungary? no. I mean they want to retain their identity. But anyway, long story short, so at the celebration they closed off street after street after street and they had some old film clippings of the revolution, they had some other speakers whatever and then Orban came on and of course I can’t understand Hungarian very well but I mean the level of support for Orban is extremely high. Now there is dissent in the community, in the nation as well. In fact, even at the Parliament there were several times where I would walk by and there would be a poster or like a banner and it would say Putin, uh who’s the guy from Turkey, Erdogan, Orban, like they were the three thieves or the three whatever and there have been anti-Fidesz and anti-Orban demonstrations, for a variety of different reasons. You probably heard about the George Soros situation? He was a Jew from Hungary and there was a kind of an interesting back story to the whole thing but basically him and his family cooperated with the Nazis and he began this wealthy billionaire and he sort of has advocated for sort of globalist causes and then he has a University that he funds it was called Central European University it was in Budapest and it gave out American college degrees even though it wasn’t on American soil and wasn’t associated with an American University. And Fidesz and Orban they hate Soros. They feel that Soros is trying to undermine the integrity of Hungary and make it just another sort of European sort of globalist kind of place. So there’s a lot of anti- Soros agitation I would say from Fidesz and in fact even if you go in the subways they usually hand out, those little piles you know how the weekly paper some of that’s free and usually it has a picture of Soros and some negative article about him, and some people interpret that as anti-Semitism. On the other hand Hungary also has – in fact just the other day they had a holocaust remembrance day and they had hundreds of thousands of people and you know they have a holocaust museum they have – I mean it’s part of what they’re trying to do. They do reparations like a lot of the European countries. So, you know you don’t know. I think to some extent I can see why certain people in the west portray him very negatively on the other hand there’s also a lot of go do things that are going on as well that the people want. So it’s a question of who the hell am I to sit here and say well you Hungarians shouldn’t want that. It’s not my job, you know so I think that’s how I look at it but. Ithink there is a larger concern among sort of the European Union and the elite that it’s going to fragment the EU. That eventually like with Brexit that these countries are just gonna say that enoughs enough we wanna do more of our own thing and we’ll cooperate on some things but we’re not going to follow all these rules. Like one thing that Hungarians were especially agitated about and said they wouldn’t do was that Merkel’s plan was that there would be a quota of refugees for each country that they would have to take and the Hungarians were like no we’re not doing that, you know. And actually, Budapest is a very diverse city, like if you’re there there’s middle eastern restaurants there’s Asian people. It’s very, very diverse certainly not in the country side I would say but in the city it’s like any other big city. So it’s not like they don’t have legal immigration, they do, but they don’t have – you know as far as I know they definitely are very tight on their immigration. 

ST: Yea, I looked up the statistics for how many registered refugees they have and so in 2017 it said Hungary had fifty six hundred and the Czech Republic had even less at like thirty five but then when you look at countries like Germany they had like almost a million. 

SS: Right, and but Germany’s a lot bigger country too if you think about it and very industrialized. Hungary is a very still very agricultural country so – and you know it’s only the size, if you think about how small Hungary is, Hungary is about the size of Ohio and has about the same amount of population as that. So, you know comparing France or even Germany to Hungary it’s a scale difference. Quite a lot of difference there. So that’s how I see it. I mean, you know I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the long run but I don’t think the populism train is going to stop any time soon. I mean you could ask the question, are human beings suited to an identification with people who are not like them, ultimately right? When you think about it the more you broaden – even if you had friends, the more you broaden your circle of friends the weaker those ties are, right? Your very close friends tend to be like you or have a lot of similarities so I think the Eu is kind of an experiment just like any other global kind of institution I mean there’s always this centripetal tendency for things to fly apart and I think it’s rooted in human nature, people want to be with people like themselves and it’s very hard to change that. That doesn’t make it good or bad it’s just a fact. Czechs want to hang out with Czechs they want to do business with Czechs. That’s my take, I don’t know what’s particularly going on in the Czech Republic though but…

ST: So right now I know in Hungary at least it’s ranked like 74th … 73rd by Reporters Without Borders on like a list of 180 countries as freedom of the press and Czech Republic is listed 35th right now… or 34th. So, I’m wondering if you have any idea about what has happened in recent years to make that ranking go down? 

SS: I think one thing in Hungary was that some of the big players like industrialists who are aligned with- it’s like any kind of consolidation of media, right, that rich people buy the media right, and so because they have less national media so they control the television. I know that. I forget what channel it is but I think it’s channel one or something which many people accuse of being just pro Fidesz pro Orban all the time. So I would just say that the media outlets that they have are not controlled by Orban or the government but they are bought and owned by people who are supportive of them. 

ST: OK, so not by the political parties or the political players themselves? 

SS: Not directly, no no no. But like anything else you might say there’s a close symbiotic relationship let’s put it that way. But now with – especially with the internet and other things there are a lot of dissenting news outlets and things like that but I think the major TV stations at least for news I guess I would say are not excessively critical, that’s my understanding. However, there are some where just like you would be watching TV here there will be a panel like McNeil Lair or whatever, they’ll be arguing back and forth about different things. So, I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t, that it’s terrible. It’s not like North Korea. But some people would say that there’s too much, there’s too much closeness I guess is what they would say.

ST: Are there any like legal protections or laws that sort of thing? 

SS: Well, Hungary has a constitution, a very fulsome const- so they have free rights just like we have, freedom of the press, whatever and there have been lawsuits and just like there would be here that sort of thing. I mean they have courts they have legal processes so it’s not like they can just you know snap their fingers and this is how it’s gonna be. But you know mounting legal challenges are hard and expenses and they take time, you know those kinds of things so in the short run I think you know that’s what you’re getting. And I think a friend of mine there said especially people in the country side they only get one or two channels of TV so that’s what they’re gonna see, you know.

ST: What would you say are the biggest political issues right now, just in your opinion? 

SS: I would say, like I would say the economy in Hungary because they are having a down turn. I would say the economy I would say that, you know, the role of Fidesz. There’s opposition in Hungary to Fidesz, they’re not strong enough to win many seats that’s the problem in the Parliament. I just think sort of the nature of the polity. I think also the birth- what do they call it the birth drain. They don’t have enough population. So what they’re doing, Fidesz has offered like they do I think in Canada, any country does it, but to try to get people to have more kids they have a tax abetment and those kinds of things. So they’re trying to promote people having more kids because you know they have a pretty good social welfare state and you need people to pay into it and if you don’t have people who work and have children then the next generation isn’t paying for that generation. So I think the population boom, bust, cuz in fact in Budapest most people only have one kid. And I think for some reason that’s an – you have to remember it’s not a very long time ago that they threw off the Soviets. 

ST: Yea, 1989. 

SS: Yea into ’90, I mean it didn’t even really happen until ’91, and so people are always insecure, I mean financially. Salaries there are so much lower, like even our secretaries here are like three times the salary of somebody who works in a university. People who teach probably make a third to a quarter of what I make. So people don’t have all the crap that we have and they don’t have the consumer- I mean they’re starting to but you know it’s really a relatively recent kind of thing. People don’t have excess stuff I would say in terms of great wealth. You know there is this group of people who they say are aligned with Orban who are sort of the plutocrats who are the folks who really have made a killing and a lot of it they say it’s because of these dirty deals or cronyism and you know whatever. But I think the average Hungarian you know doesn’t starve to death but they don’t have luxuries that we would sort of take for granted. So I would say it’s always the economy, uh having more children to pay into social, you know all the social programs that they have. Immigration I think it is an issue it’s not as hot probably as it was a couple years ago because they’ve pretty much remedied the situation. I mean even for us to go there as students and as faculty the immigration process is extremely bureaucratic and extremely, uh you have to provide all these different documents. Just like anywhere else I mean I can’t go live in France and just say I want to stay here, right? All these countries have to have these things. So I think that in general it’s not a crisis like it was maybe in 2015 I think that they’ve settled it essentially, but the question is how much is the EU going to force them to do things that they don’t want to do. Like what are the conditions for that. So I think that’s the other issue is our place in the E. how much do we get to control? Of our own society of our own economy of our own way of living. So I would say that’s the big issue and that’s where Orban is very popular, particularly. Because he, again he’s a nationalist, he’s saying Hungary is for Hungarians, you know we’re a Christian nation, we’re gonna keep that going and we’re not gonna compromise and if they do like it you know we may – I don’t know that he’s actually said we may leave but I think that’s sort of implicit. Which you know puts the fear of god into the EU because if the Czech Republic does it, if Hungary does it, you know, then the dominoes are starting to fall already. And then what replaces it could be better could be worse, we don’t know. In terms of economics or military, you know we just we don’t know what it will be because the whole reason that apparently the EU was originally conceived of was purely as an economic relationship between the countries not social relationship and now you have international legal processes like the European arrest warrant. You have you know these sort of fundamental rights approach that every country has to sign on to and so it’s gone beyond the original idea of what – it wasn’t even called the EU, I forget what it was called but it was called the – I forget. When it was started it wasn’t that. So it’s kind of morphed, you know. And then the question becomes how representative is the EU council because the smaller countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic only elect so many people whereas the larger countries elect more people because they have a greater population, right. So the policies of the Eu are more slanted towards like France and Germany than they are towards these other countries, so that’s another issue. But I would saying general the idea of sovereignty is the issue, the main issue for most of these countries. 

ST: For most of those Eastern European countries…

SS: Yea. How much we control and how much controls us from the outside. In fact a lot of these Prime Ministers and Presidents from different countries, I mean they do get together they are allies in certain ways and you know it’s like any other ideology or movement. You know, people in one country see what the other country’s going and say “hey maybe we can do that too”. So I do think that Eastern Europe’s a lot different than Western Europe but you have to look at it in that broader historical context that they’ve had to suffer under for so long and, I do think that the West is overly judgmental because we haven’t had to live like the people in Hungary in the 20th century. We’ve been lucky We haven’t been under anybody’s domination fundamentally and, uh, so we can have a different attitude about the strengths of multiculturalism and globalization but if you’ve lived under these systems of oppression then you know you don’t want that. You don’t want foreign influence you want your own indigenous influences. So that’s my take.

END INTERVIEW

Judis, John B. (2016). Us vs them: The birth of populism. The Guardian 

Bugaric, B. (2008). Populism, liberal democracy, and the rule of law in central and eastern Europe. Communist and Post Communist Studies. 41 (191-203) 

[depechemodespiritera]

As Depeche Mode’s principal songwriter looks forward to playing in front of 70,000 people in their biggest ever UK show at the London Stadium, Tim Burrows talks to him about new album Spirit, his Essex roots and what it feels like to grow up as a British European

If there’s one thing Depeche Mode isn’t it’s favourite sons. A few years ago I went on a bus and walking tour of the band’s hometown, Essex’s (no longer) New Town of Basildon. In our party were Germans, Scandinavians, east Europeans - but if memory serves, no British people, and certainly no one from Essex. As we crept around the former garage of Vince Clarke, where the band rehearsed in their early days, a neighbour pulled up and smilingly explained she’d never heard of Depeche Mode. The Europeans were astonished at the fact this multi-platinum band who’d filled their lives were not known in the place where it all started

Depeche Mode have sold millions and millions of records, but they are still considered a cultish proposition on these isles. This year the band are on the road again. Five stadium shows in Germany; three in Italy. Three in France. But only one in the UK, at the London Stadium, the new home of West Ham. Yet this is still a triumph. It feels as if the band have struggled to escape their Basildon days in this country, the synthpop and the hair, the patterned shirts and the cheesy grins.

Only now does Martin Gore feel like the band are being taken seriously in the country they grew up. We’re in the kind of Mayfair hotel you’d expect a band like Depeche Mode to be ensconced in, fulfilling the last of the band’s press obligations in the promotional push for latest album Spirit. Gore seems relieved that he’ll soon be back in Santa Barbara, California, where his 13-month old and two-week old daughters are – he has only been with his youngest for 24 hours of her life due to band obligations. Spirit is emphatically humanist. A state-of-world summary that sounds like it could be about Trump or Brexit but was written and recorded before both were material game-changers, it gives apathy short shrift, calling for “revolution” no less. There is a beautiful lullaby ('Eternal'). It sounds like a record by a new father and all the more interesting for it.

Gore cracks a wide Californian smile before launching into a unaffected yet still controlled guffaw that punctuates time spent with him (I’m told to expect it so am relieved when it first appears in our conversation). I’m telling him about the Depeche Mode cover band Speak And Spell that I caught at last September’s Essex Architecture Weekend, part of the Radical Essex project put on by Southend gallery, Focal Point. Their version of Dave Gahan performed in front of some blue Fosters cans that lined the front of the stage, a tiny barrier between the tribute frontman and the locals, architecture fans, Essex geeks and arts press all dancing to the ‘Mode’s early hits. Tribute acts are the real “folk” musicians, the dancing and singalongs they inspire keeping some kind of collective spirit alive in pubs and village halls nationwide. But it’s a fractured collective these days in the UK.

'The Worst Crime', the third track on Spirit, sounds like it is about Brexit, but wasn’t it conceived before that?

Martin Gore: It wasn’t written for that at all. For me, it’s a song about humanity hanging itself and the worst crime being the destruction of the planet, because there are so many crimes that we’re committing on a daily basis, but this is the worst crime because we are not just doing it to ourselves but we’re also doing it to future generations. And, like I say, we’ve had so much time to implement things, to put things right.

You recently had a daughter, did that affect the songs?

MG: I had one 13 months ago and one two weeks ago. I have five children, four daughters and one son. I think that has definitely affected me. A lot of the songs would definitely have been written before my 13 month old was born but while my wife was pregnant. There is one song on the album actually about her, 'Eternal', which talks about caring for a child, but which also mentions the black cloud rising and the radiation falling.

How pessimistic are you about the future with Trump being elected?

MG: I was really pessimistic up until a few weeks ago. I now have a glimmer of hope because maybe the American system works, because the the Muslim ban obviously didn’t get through, the judges stopped that. And then now his repealing of Obamacare got scrapped. So now I am just hoping that everything that he wants to implement is just going to get rejected.

You live in Santa Barbara. How did you end up moving from Basildon to Berlin to there?

MG: I think I was in Berlin 85-86, 86-87. Then I came back to London, from 90-95. And then I moved to Hertfordshire until 2000 and that’s when I moved to Santa Barbara.

I once spoke to Alison Moyet, who also moved Hertfordshire. I remember she told me how in Basildon the milkman would come round to get autographs and wouldn’t stop hassling her so she had to move away.

MG: Yeah I used to live not too far from Alison. We only left Hertfordshire as I was married to an American [Suzanne Boisvert] and she had lived here for 11 years wanted to move back to America. I thought, 'OK, I can’t really get out of this one.' It wasn’t my choice at the time. We got divorced almost immediately, but we have children together and my son is still only 14 so I see him every other week when I am at home.

England never felt claustrophobic for me at all. I think it would feel more difficult for me if I lived in mainland Europe. America I think is really easy because Los Angeles has film stars everywhere and musicians and Santa Barbara a lot of people have homes there even if they don’t live there. You are kind of inconsequential, no one cares.

How do you view political changes in the UK. Do you feel you get a sense of what is happening?

MG: Obviously I understand the bigger changes, but I think it’s more the smaller stuff that’s going on ... I don’t feel part of it and I don’t think I have a right to. I’ve lived away for 17 years. I didn’t vote in the referendum because I think there was a rule, I think somebody told me was a 15-year limit. But I would have voted Remain.

Did it surprise you that where you were from in Essex voted to leave the EU at such a high rate? Basildon voted over 68 per cent to leave the EU.

MG: Yeah, it does surprise me, but I really think that people were fooled. A lot of people believed in the idea that all the money that was going to be saved from the EU was going to go to the NHS. It was a lie. And, in a way, they should redo the referendum as so many people voted on that. And the other thing, Andy in the band said this to me, and he’s absolutely right: even somebody who really understands the world of finance didn’t have any idea about the implications of that vote. If you’re gonna leave that to the general population to make that decision it should have been a minimum of a 60/40 split. It was so close, virtually 50-50. Such a huge decision and so many things hinge on that decision – but that’s it, it’s made.

There’s always been a split with the people in the UK who feel a cultural affinity with Europe and the people who don’t. I guess you always had a cultural affinity with Europe?

MG: Yeah. Most people at school I went to in Basildon didn’t take French very seriously. You would get laughed at even if you just put on a French accent, but taking [the idea of] German was completely laughed at. And then I took German, which was new at the time, one of the first people at the school to. When I was 15 I went to Germany on a school exchange. I felt an affinity with Europe before I was in the band.

A few years ago I wrote about a Depeche Mode themed guided tour of Basildon put on by Vince Clarke’s former girlfriend Deb Danahay. It was striking how many German, east European people there were, whereas the locals were nonplussed.

MG: I know Deb. I don’t know what it was that made us take off in those countries. If you go into the eastern bloc countries we are huge, and in Russia. Maybe there is something about the depressing nature of our music and lyrics that some people find an affinity with.

Do you think the UK has a cultural need for stasis and nostalgia, which means people don’t pick upon your messages so much?

MG: I don’t know. When I first started writing this album I realised that I was going down a dangerous route, because it is more about social commentary/politics. But funnily enough, 99.9% of the reviews I have seen have been amazing. I don’t know if it is just this album but gradually over time we’ve become more accepted and acknowledged in the UK, whereas in Europe we were embraced much quicker and for longer. The fans who get on the bus to go round Basildon, they’ve travelled there. I don’t know if they’re expecting to see Graceland but believe you me I didn’t live in Graceland!

It fits with this idea of Depeche Mode as the biggest cult band in the world but there currently seems to be a new wave of critical reevaluation for the band.

MG: I’ve noticed it particularly with this album, like I said. I think we have slowly got better press over the years [in the UK]. One of the things we did wonder about is if we were trying to lose the albatross of the early pop days. We were bigger here with Speak And Spell than we were in Europe, we were bigger in Europe around Some Great Reward, so they don’t remember that. So that embarrassing point still haunts us - that’s one of the things we think about but it’s probably nothing to do with that. But people probably don’t really care.

What songs are we talking about?

MG: We were really bubblegum pop when we started out. So Speak And Spell, A Broken Frame, 'See You', 'Meaning of Love'.

When Vince left just before that period was there a sense that you might have to go back to the commuter job if things didn’t work out?

MG: There were a couple of songs on A Broken Frame that I had written before for another band that we thought were quite good that could be used. Some of them I just made up as I went along in the studio. That’s why it’s my least favourite album. I was dropped in the deep-end with it. But I was young and I did relish it really to be honest - it was fun to do. And it wasn’t like we worried about it when Vince left because of the naivety of youth.

Did you have backing from the label?

MG: Yeah. We were on Mute so it was an independent label, it was Daniel Miller, who is still involved with us to this day, he’s one of out best friends. We never thought about it at the time and fortunately the first thing that we released after Vince left, 'See You', was really successful.

Going back to the album, when you sit down to write, are you writing from a certain character or position, or is it just instinctive.

MG: I think it really is me trying to do something organically as I possibly can. I start playing some chords on a guitar or a piano and get something on the computer and I just start singing along. And that somehow ends up going from a verse to a chorus and then that’s the start of a song. But sometimes I’m not 100 per cent sure where the words are going. They’re not actual noises I’m making, they’re words. I’ll look and I think about where I am going with that. And then start again, the same chords, try and get another verse, get to the chorus... Without wishing to sound like a hippy, sometimes I think that you tap into something.

How did you first start songwriting?

MG: Somebody taught me two chords on a guitar when I was 13 and then I got a book and learned the rest of the chords. I used to buy Disco 45, a magazine that came out weekly or monthly. It had all the chart’s hits in it, the words not the chords. And I used to sit there from the age of 13 to the age of 16/17 or whatever and work out all the songs. At the same time I was writing songs myself. But I think that was great training because you learned the structures of songs subconsciously. By learning everything in the charts at that age when you are like a sponge it must have been good for me.

The London stadium gig - are you looking forward to that as a kind of homecoming as you were born not far from that neck of the woods in Dagenham?

MG: I was actually born in London, Hammersmith hospital. Then we moved to Dagenham, then Basildon. We’re particularly looking forward to it as it’s about time we made the step up from what we’ve been doing for so long. We usually do three nights at the O2 or something. We probably could have done this the last tour or the tour before but even with this one we felt it was a little bit of a risk. But we keep having to extend the capacity: I think we’re up to 68,000 now. My mum’s not very well so I don’t know if she will come this time, but my sisters and my kids and their kids and lots of friends. Because we’re just playing one show, we’ll probably know half the audience!