HEIST

When an AfD candidate was criticized for referencing a concentration camp badge on a campaign billboard, the party’s defense was immediate: "How dare you accuse us of being homophobic? Our leader, Alice Weidel, is a lesbian." It’s a perfect, toxic blend of strategic provocation and plausible deniability. But it points to a much deeper, more disturbing mutation within European politics.

In this episode, founding HEIST editor Peter Matthews talks with Ben Miller, historian, writer, and co-host of the podcast Bad Gays to talk about right-wing queer politics.

In this episode, HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews sits down with Berlin-based journalist Yossi Bartal to discuss the rise and fall of Hudhaifa Al-Mashhadani - a seemingly pathological liar who became the German media and political establishments’ darling. But this isn't just a story about a single grifter. It’s an indictment of German media’s failures, a patriarchal style of inter-Neukölln governance, and a multi-million-euro antisemitism industry.

In the inaugural episode of the HEIST Podcast, Peter Matthews and Ben Schuman-Stoler sit down with journalist Hebh Jamal to discuss her reporting on what it feels like to live as a Palestinian in Berlin. She details the dystopian reality of building infrastructure in a city that would rather pretend you don't exist.

The HEIST podcast is coming soon. We'll launch on 6 July with three episodes at once: interviews with Ben Miller, Hebh Jamal, and Yossi Bartal. Subscribe to this feed and pass it around - help us spread the word.