Ideas Matter

What comes after liberal democracy? In this bold, idea-rich lecture, Kolja Zydatis explores the global political topography of our time – a murky, volatile “interregnum” where the old order is collapsing but the new has not yet arrived. Drawing from his and Mark Feldon’s new book, Zydatis offers a panoramic, polemical tour of what he calls hyper-liberalism – a runaway version of liberalism obsessed with borderlessness, identity, and control – and the strange new regimes it has birthed: the Diversity State, the Green Leviathan, and the Biopolitical Machine.

Is the postwar liberal order finally coming undone? And if so – what comes next? The liberal order is dying – not liberalism as an idea, but the postwar regime of managed decline, elite control, and fake freedom. This talk exposes how that order hollowed out real autonomy, smothered politics, and bred a generation of anxious, atomised subjects. But if it's ending, what replaces it? Populist parties are rising – but do they have the stomach for revolution, or just nostalgia and slogans? With five sharp tests – from institutional guts to faith in ordinary people – this lecture challenges any would-be populist movement to prove it stands for freedom, not just power.

This lecture explores the emergence of the American New Right – a diffuse and provocative intellectual tendency gaining visibility in the wake of the populist revolts of 2016. Focusing on figures like Patrick Deneen and Curtis Yarvin, it examines their critiques of liberalism, meritocracy, and democracy, as well as their visions of authority, order, and political renewal. While often dismissed as marginal or extreme, these thinkers articulate deeper dissatisfactions with modernity, autonomy, and the liberal elite consensus. The talk considers whether their ideas offer a serious response to the current political malaise – or reflect a more inward-looking, aristocratic impulse seeking meaning in a post-liberal age.

What if the most radical act today is remembering who we are? In this brilliant, rousing address, political strategist and historian-in-spirit Gawain Towler argues that British history is not a relic – it’s a shield, a compass, and the last line of defence against tyranny, technocracy, and cultural amnesia. From Kipling to Alan Macfarlane, from the Glorious Revolution to Brexit, this lecture traces the deep roots of English individualism and the unique political culture that has helped Britain resist the ideological storms of the continent. It’s not superiority – it’s memory. And when history is forgotten, freedom soon follows.

Is populism enough? Or is the real crisis deeper – moral, spiritual, civilisational? In this sweeping and provocative lecture, theologian and political philosopher John Milbank argues that post-liberalism is not a reactionary impulse or a right-wing fad, but a serious and British-born intellectual tradition rooted in the thought of Alasdair MacIntyre, John Gray, and religious communitarianism. Milbank critiques both market liberalism and cultural liberalism, showing how they converge into a nihilistic uniparty – a cold, technocratic system with no room for virtue, rootedness, or the common good.

Can a generation obsessed with authenticity even recognise what’s real anymore? This wide-ranging and incisive talk explores Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, a haunting millennial rewrite of Georges Perec’s Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965). What begins as an exercise in literary homage becomes something far deeper: a cultural diagnosis of a generation adrift.

What does it mean to belong – to a country, a culture, a civilisation? In this provocative and wide-ranging talk, we explore the deep tensions between citizenship and belonging in modern Britain and the West. From the strange status of “Britishness” to the hollowing out of national identity under liberal universalism, this talk challenges the idea that citizenship is just a passport or a legal status. It asks what kind of real community sustains a nation – and whether we still have one.

What happens when everything becomes public – our thoughts, our feelings, even our intimacy? In this sweeping and brilliant talk, we trace the collapse of the boundary between public and private life, showing how an idea once central to Western freedom – the right to a private self – has quietly disintegrated. From 17th-century sermons warning against “doing in private what you’d fear in public,” through the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the novel, to the cultural revolution of the 1970s and the surveillance anxieties of today, this is the story of how privacy was born, deformed, and finally dissolved.

Alienation. Estrangement. A loss of voice. Across the West, millions feel like strangers in the very places they once called home – but are told they're not allowed to say it. Frank Furedi cuts through the noise and exposes the silent war on language, belonging, and common sense. This is not just cultural drift – it's a deliberate attempt by elites to sever our connection to community, tradition, and truth. From the censorship of patriotic feeling to the vilification of “common sense,” Furedi reveals how we’ve been robbed of the words to describe what we’re living through – and how a new political language rooted in shared reality is urgently needed. This talk is a wake-up call. If you feel silenced, if you’re tired of being gaslit by technocrats and media elites who mock your love of country as “hate” – this is for you. This video is a lecture from The Academy 2025. The subject of the weekend event was "Upheaval: Why politics needs a new language". You can find out more here: https://ideasmatter.org.uk/upheaval-why-politics-needs-a-new-language Professor Frank Furedi is executive director of MCC Brussels and a renowned writer and commentator.

The concept of high culture has come under sustained attack. Once understood as a repository of human achievement, high culture is now dismissed as elitist, exclusionary, or worse—merely the expression of dead white European males. The modern academy, far from upholding cultural excellence, now works to deconstruct it. But high culture is not merely a reflection of power. It is a source of intellectual and imaginative expansion, a means of transcending the present, and a vital counterbalance to the shallowness of mass consumer culture. A world without cultural traditions is a world without identity—one that is intellectually impoverished, emotionally stunted, and incapable of producing greatness.