Why Coups Fail
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recently, in both Europe and the United States, there have been serious attempts to overthrow elected governments by force.
History is full of examples of coups d'etat succeeding, going all the way back to Ancient Rome. But these latest coup attempts failed. And they left a strange impression: of events that were part-horrific, part-absurd.
In this programme, the novelist and classicist Natalie Haynes takes three examples of power grabs from Ancient Rome - one by the military, one by senators, and one conducted by stealth - and uses them to try to make sense of recent events in France, Germany and America.
With the help of leading scholars of the dark art of the coup, she probes why these assaults on power flopped, and what all this tells us about where power now lies. And she asks where the subtler threats to democracy are lurking, against which we now need to be on guard.
Contributors include: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Alexander Clarkson, Rory Cormac. Producer: Phil Tinline
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Come on in and get comfy. |
| 0:42.0 | This is seriously from BBC Radio 4 and I'm Vanessa Casile. |
| 0:47.0 | Each week this podcast brings you two of the best documentaries the audio world has to offer. Here's the most interesting thing |
| 0:55.2 | you'll hear all week. A protester is sitting there in the well of the US Senate. |
| 1:03.2 | John, who would have ever believed? |
| 1:04.2 | To Germany next, police have made 25 arrests against members of a far-right terror |
| 1:08.7 | group suspected of planning an attack on parliament. |
| 1:12.0 | Supporters of former President Jayir Bolsonaro |
| 1:15.2 | launched their own assault on the seat of Brazilian democracy. |
| 1:18.6 | Soldiers prepare to overthrow the government, a mob invades the Senate, and behind |
| 1:26.7 | all this, perhaps subtler machinations against democracy. |
| 1:30.6 | I'm Natalie Haynes, a novelist and a classicist, which means I tend to see the world through |
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