2025 Year in Review

Amid controversy surrounding Zohran Mamdani’s rise to power in New York City, Hussein Mansour tells Thomas all about the history of Third Worldism — where it comes from, what it originally meant, and why the term has resurfaced. Thomas and Hussein discuss: Zohran Mamdani as a symbol, not a cause, of a broader elite transformation The Third Estate, the French Revolution, and the revolutionary inheritance of modern radical politics Interwar Paris and the emergence of Third Worldist intellectuals Négritude, anti-colonial humanism, and the promise of historical redemption Decolonisation, revolutionary violence, and the crisis of postcolonial states How ideological failure was reinterpreted as structural oppression The migration of Third Worldist ideas into Western universities and institutions Edward Said, postcolonial theory, and the institutionalisation of grievance Third Worldism today less as a political programme than an elite posture Subscribe to Hussein’s Substack The Abrahamic Metacritique here: https://critiqueanddigest.substack.com Follow Hussein on X here: https://x.com/HusseinAboubak Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm  Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The war in Ukraine is back in the headlines as a peace agreement appears increasingly probable - though with major concessions to Russia. So as a Christmas present to our listeners, we’ve brought this episode from August out from behind the paywall. In it, Thomas speaks with his old university friend Jakub - a former Slovak Army officer who volunteered to fight in Ukraine - about the lived reality of modern warfare, from trench fighting to FPV strike drones. Drawing on nearly eighteen months at the front, Jakub offers an unvarnished account of combat, morale, fear, boredom, and survival - and challenges many popular assumptions about how this war is actually being fought. Thomas and Jakub discuss: Why Jakub left academia to fight in Ukraine Life as a foreign volunteer inside a regular Ukrainian infantry battalion The psychological reality of trench warfare How artillery, drones, and attrition have reshaped the battlefield The limits of NATO doctrine when confronted with peer warfare What this war suggests about the future of European security Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm  Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is ‘the Christmas story’ really? And how does it change when you tell it from within a different religious tradition? In Conflicted’s first-ever Christmas Special, Thomas and Aimen retell the Nativity as it appears in the Gospels and in the Qur’an.  They discuss: Who were the Magi? Zoroastrian priests or Nabataean nomads? How the Nativity story differs between the Bible and the Qur’an A controversial theory about how local Christian traditions may have shaped the Qur’anic telling The overlooked reason why Qur’an presumes its audience already knows the underlying stories Christ’s ‘unfinished business’ in Islam: the Second Coming and the fight against the Antichrist The sharpest divergence: the Crucifixion and what it implies about Jesus’ mission Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/  Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with global finance and security analyst Giri Rajendran about the Trump Administration’s newly published National Security Strategy — what it signals, what it omits, and what it suggests about America’s role in a multipolar world. Thomas and Giri discuss: How this report differs from previous US National Security Strategies The end of the old rules-based order of liberal internationalism The Middle East: a phase shift toward deeper economic engagement China: economic and industrial competition, not ideological crusade Europe: NATO burden-sharing, culture-war politics, and coercion by inducement Russia as a potential ally, no longer an enemy Whether global governance can exist without global institutions Follow Giri on X here: https://x.com/Trajan1898 Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm  Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does the future hold for the Middle East — and the world — in 2026? In this special episode of Conflicted, Thomas instructs Aimen to peer into his crystal ball and offer his forecasts for the year to come. In this episode, Aimen and Thomas discuss: How professional geopolitical analysts make forecasts The impossibility of foreseeing Black Swan events Why an end to the war in Ukraine could reshape Middle Eastern geopolitics The likelihood of a U.S. war against the Houthis in Yemen Renewed hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon The strategic importance of the Gulf states Iran’s nuclear programme, proxy network, and the risk of renewed confrontation Add your predictions to your 2026 Forecast Card here: https://forms.gle/sMCbRFmFTBdcfEDd8  Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/  Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices