MCC Brussels Podcast

This week, MCC Brussels’ John O’Brien sits down with Leonardo Orlando. He is an  evolutionary psychologist, co-author of Sex, Science and Censure, and one of the harshest critics of gender ideology in Europe.Orlando makes a simple but devastating point: you can’t understand society if you pretend biology stops at the neck. Yet universities have built entire “gender” departments on the denial of basic human nature. The result? A flat-earth worldview masquerading as scholarship, and an academic culture terrified of the truth.In this Deep Dive, we explore:Why evolutionary science is now taboo in universities.Researchers are punished for stating biological facts, while ideologues with tenure churn out theories that collapse on contact with reality.How the censorship works.Orlando explains how hundreds of cancelled events and silenced researchers point to a global pattern, not isolated incidents, where dissenters are pushed out of academia altogether.What the science actually shows.Across cultures and across time, behavioural sex differences are robust, measurable, and rooted in evolution. The evidence is overwhelming, which is precisely why activists work so hard to suppress it.Why ignoring biology leads to bad policy.From domestic violence to fertility decline to the gender-neutral toy obsession, policymakers burn public money because they refuse to accept basic human nature.And the heart of the argument:Biology isn’t destiny — unless you ignore it.For anyone tired of ideological propaganda dressed up as scholarship, this conversation is a breath of fresh air.Follow MCC Brussels on social media:https://twitter.com/MCC_Brusselshttps://facebook.com/MCCBrusselshttps://linkedin.com/company/mcc-brussels/website:https://brussels.mcc.hu

This week, Jacob Reynolds is joined by Pieter Cleppe and Anthony Gilland to review 2025 – the populist surge, the elite fightback on speech and elections, and Europe’s growing weakness from Washington to Ukraine.Populists surge – and the public stops whisperingThe conversation opens on the mood-shift of 2025: farmer protests across Europe, citizens stepping in where the state won’t (including border pressure), and parents scrutinising what schools are teaching. They run through the electoral and polling picture – from anti-centralisation politics in Czechia to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, and a Germany where broken promises and a spending splurge fuel a protest mood and push the AfD higher in the polls.The elite fightback – Democracy Shield, “pre-bunking”, lawfareAs pressure rises, the panel argues Brussels reaches for control: the Democracy Shield’s language of “safeguarding” and “protecting” elections, and a wider push to police online discourse. They dig into “pre-bunking” as proactive narrative management (AI plus NGO fact-checkers), link it to the Digital Services Act, and discuss headline-grabbing interventions – including a major fine on X and the pattern of legal-institutional moves around high-stakes elections (from France to Romania).US–EU reality check – then the Brussels scandals pile upOn the global stage, they frame EU–US relations as a clash over regulation and values – with America increasingly hostile to Europe’s speech regime and Europe looking strategically irrelevant. Ukraine exposes that weakness: arguments over sanctions, Russian assets, and the EU’s limited leverage. Then the year’s “unmasking” theme returns via scandals – NGO funding and influence operations, Jean Monnet-style academic patronage, PfizerGate, and the College of Europe affair.Follow MCC Brussels on social media:https://twitter.com/MCC_Brusselshttps://facebook.com/MCCBrusselshttps://linkedin.com/company/mcc-brussels/website:https://brussels.mcc.hu

This week, Jacob Reynolds is joined by Philipp Siegert, Deputy Research Director at MCC Brussels, to unpack the EU’s migration pact blow-up, a College of Europe fraud probe, and the vandalism of Brussels’ Grand Place nativity scene. Pay up or take migrantsThe Commission sells the Pact on Migration and Asylum as “solidarity” – but the rollout is exposing open fractures across Europe. The Council is discussing relocation quotas (around 21,000) and a “solidarity contribution” of €20,000 for states that refuse to accept relocations, with Central European governments signalling pushback. The result is a policy that’s legally adopted, politically contested, and heading towards a confrontation that could run well past its planned June 2026 start date. A ‘quiet’ tender, then the real moneyA new scandal centres on the College of Europe and an EEAS-linked tender that allegedly stayed below a transparency threshold (around €143,000), before larger sums followed. The episode walks through how a dormitory requirement narrowed the field, how funding then jumped via additional grants (including ~€650,000) and later a much larger figure (~€960,000), and why investigators are now circling figures connected to the project. Defaced nativity, stolen JesusBrussels’ Grand Place nativity scene went “inclusive” – with faceless figures – and then got desecrated: the baby Jesus figure’s head was stolen and the tent was tagged “Free Palestine”, alongside reports of a major demonstration and clashes around the Christmas market opening. Philipp argues it’s not just vandalism, but a wider cultural pattern – a politics of deconstruction that leaves Europe’s Christian heritage permanently on the defensive. Follow MCC Brussels on social media:https://twitter.com/MCC_Brusselshttps://facebook.com/MCCBrusselshttps://linkedin.com/company/mcc-brussels/website:https://brussels.mcc.hu

Denmark isn’t “closed.” It’s controlled.In this Deep Dive, MCC Brussels’ John O’Brien sits down with Danish MEP Anders Vistisen from the Danish People's Party, to dissect the one European immigration model that actually works. Denmark’s approach is blunt, unapologetic, and stubbornly democratic: strict external controls, serious integration demands, honest statistics, and politicians who answer to voters.For decades, Danish governments—left and right—ignored the polite illusions pushed in Brussels and instead listened to the public. The result? Fewer illegal crossings, fewer ghettos, higher trust, and a country that refuses to tear up its social fabric to placate elite sentiment.What we cover:• How Denmark tightened asylum and family reunification rules—because voters demanded it• Why integration means language, values, responsibility and participation, not bureaucratic box-ticking• The cost of mass migration when skills don’t match the labour market• Free speech as Denmark’s pressure valve vs EU-style speech policing that drives grievances underground• Why dispersal, breaking up ghettos and preventing parallel societies actually works• What countries like Ireland can learn before social cohesion snaps under the weight of unmanaged inflows.If you want immigration to succeed, you need control, candour and a sense of national interest. Denmark shows what happens when a country refuses to sleepwalk into disaster—and chooses sovereignty over slogans.

This week, Jacob Reynolds is joined by Agnieszka Kolek and Richard Schenk to break down Brussels’ assault on X, Washington’s blunt verdict on Europe’s decline, and the Commission’s extraordinary pressure campaign against Belgium over frozen Russian assets.Brussels fines X to tame the last free platform.The Commission has slapped a €120 million penalty on Elon Musk’s platform, dressing it up as “transparency” enforcement. In reality, X is the only major network Brussels cannot control. It allows unfiltered footage, dissenting voices and inconvenient facts to circulate. So the EU is trying to discipline it through fines. America calls Europe a civilisation in decline.Washington’s new national security strategy says the quiet part out loud: Europe is losing confidence, population, and purpose. For all the EU’s grand rhetoric, the US sees a continent heading for demographic crisis and cultural fragmentation, while Central and Eastern Europe now look more stable than the West. The battle over Belgium’s Russian assets turns surreal.EU leaders insist Belgium must take on the entire financial risk of seizing frozen Russian funds to help Brussels fund the war in Ukraine.  A liability no other member state is willing to share. When Belgian leaders object, they are smeared as “pro-Russian.” It is less strategy than headless panic.  Brussels needs money for Ukraine, has none of its own, and is now bullying individual member states.