Bungacast

UNLOCKED: /418/ Neoliberal Order Breakdown System, German-Style ft. Gregor Baszak

This episode, originally published in June 2024 only for subscribers, is crucial backdrop to this Sunday's (23 Feb 2025) snap elections in Germany. 

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On German political derangement.

Independent researcher and writer Gregor Baszak joins us to talk about German centrism being squeezed under pressure from both left and right — Sahra Wagenknecht and the AFD. Meanwhile the German economy is getting squeezed between the US and Russia, and NATO pressures Germany to up its defence spending.  

• Is German public life remilitarising? 

• What are the prospects for Sahra Wagenknecht’s new ‘left-conservative’ politics? 

• What was the original political vision behind the Nordstream 2 pipeline? 

• Why are Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni trying to carve the AFD out of pan-European national-populist cooperation? 

• Where does Germany now stand in relation to the Ukraine War? 

Links:

• Europe After America, Gregor Baszak, The American Conservative 
• What’s the Matter With Germany?, Gregor Baszak, The American Conservative
• The Left-wing maverick who could stop the AfD For many, Sahra Wagenknecht is a tribune of the people, Gregor Baszak, UnHerd

/470/ Political Reaction to System Failure ft. Tim Pendry

On the world under Trump, and British responses. 

Tim Pendry, author of the Unstable Times substack, as well as an international affairs consultant, talks to Alex H and Lee Jones about the world under Trump II, the massive shifts underway, and his own policy work with the Workers Party of Britain.

• How has intra-bourgeois struggle shaped the past decades in politics?

• What is "American imperial nationalism (MAGA)" plus a "real-estate negotiation style"?

• Who are the winners & losers of a "rational" return to classical great-power, sphere-of-influence politics?

• Why are the UK's tensions and problems an extreme version of what may soon apply to any ostensible American ally?

• What is the Workers Party of Britain's pitch and strategy?

• Are the bulk of British people really "left on economics, right on culture", and how does the WPB try to appeal to workers?

• What are the practical challenges of building and organising a new party?

Links:

• Manifesto – Britain Deserves Better, Workers Party of Britain

• The Foundations of the Liberal Polycrisis, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

• Taking Trump Seriously, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

• Trumpism and Geo-Politics, Unstable Times, Tim Pendry

/469/ Draining Europe ft. Anton Jäger

On European decline and inertia.

[For full episode: patreon.com/bungacast]

Anton Jäger is back, talking to Alex and George about Belgium's new right-wing government, American hyperpolitics, and the lack of a European future.

• The radical right has prevailed in Belgium, despite having factors that should impede this, like higher union density, lower inequality and so on. Why?

• Why is the US particularly 'hyperpolitical'?

• Are those who say hyperpolitics is over correct?

• Why is Europe now a pale imitation of authoritarians in the East and the unbridled capitalism to its West?

• Is it Europe's capitalists – not its workers or pensioners – who are in need of strict market discipline?

Links:

• Things Are Terrible in Europe, and They’re Only Going to Get Worse, Anton Jäger, NYT

• Goodbye, ‘Resistance.’ The Era of Hyperpolitics Is Over, Ross Barkan, NYT

• My Country Shows What Europe Has Become, Anton Jäger, NYT

• Hyperpolitics in America, Anton Jäger, New Left Review 

• Is Trump 2 the End of ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome’?, Lee Jones, The North Star

• /454/ The Last Man at the Euro Tango ft. Michael Wilkinson

/468/ Reading Club: Place 4 – Harvey

On David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity (1989).

[Patreon Exclusive - subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast]

We focus in particular on Part III: The Experience of Space and Time – and reflect on the general themes of this section. The central question is:

How do we rescue a sense of ‘place’ – in a political, forward-looking and future-oriented way – after the age of globalisation?

• The age of globalisation generated and emphasised placelessness. But if oppositional struggles need to start from a definite place, where is that?

• And how do they not get restricted by that same sense of place – that is, not becoming particular, nostalgic or backward-looking?

• And if walls are now being put up, halting globalisation, then does this provide a more propitious scenario for struggle?

/467/ Mosques & Malls & Nation-States ft. Djene Bajalan

On Syria, the fall of Assad, and nationalism in the Middle-East.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Historian Djene Bajalan talks to Alex about a major rearrangement in the Levant. We discuss:

• Who are Syria's new rulers HTS, and what is their vision – if any?

• Did geopolitics really determine the fall of Assad and the Ba'ath Party?

• How HTS's victory is so profoundly different from Islamism in Iran 1979

• Why 2025 finally closes the book on the Arab Spring – and on secular Arab nationalism

• Were the Kurds wrong to rely on US protection?

And in the full episode we continue by discussing...

• Is Turkey the big winner of the decade?

• What the Left gets wrong on nationalism

• Civic versus ethnic nationalism, revisited

• What was democratic, liberal and revolutionary about nationalism – and whether it can be again

• How conservatives recuperate left-wing ideas, which were always conservative from the start

Links:

• Djene's writing at Jacobin

• /95/ The Fall of Rojava? ft. Dani Ellis / Alexander Norton

/466/ Regime Change in the West?

On disinformation, NATO vs Russia, terrorism + more.

[Full episode for subscribers only. Go to patreon.com/bungacast]

We look back at a turbulent last month or so with the help of guest and "disinformation bot" Tara McCormack. We put it all in the context of Trump's return, post-neoliberalism and deglobalisation.

• 00:13:52 – Jacob Siegel  talks to Alex about Meta's policy U-turn on censorship and what it means for the public-private partnership on digital surveillance.

• 00:50:11 – How will European powers react to the US's relative withdrawal of its protection? Will France, Britain and Germany double-down on the Ukraine war?

• 01:06:21 – Why is Luigi Mangione not understood as 'terrorism' while the Magdeburg Christmas market attack is? What drives terrorism and is that even the right term to understand explosive anomie?

•  01:15:24 – Letters to the Editors: on the global radical right, and Trump's foreign policy

Links:

• /369/ Information-War and War-Politics ft. Jacob Siegel

• /34/ War Propaganda ft. Tara McCormack

• To the Finland Station, Branko Milanovic, Substack

• Trumpism & Geopolitics, Tim Pendry, Substack

• Class Patricide, Dustin Guastella, Damage

/465/ Quick Coups & Post-Development in Korea ft. Jamie Doucette

On the martial law crisis in South Korea.

For the full episode: patreon.com/bungacast

Jamie Doucette, who researches contemporary political economy and Korea's development at the University of Manchester, talks to Alex and George about December 2024's coup attempt and the past 50 years in the Republic of Korea.

•  Why is South Korea western capitalism's best propaganda tool?

• Did Yoon Suk Yeol want to institute a dictatorship? Did he want to militarise all of society, or only politics?

• How "unreconstructed" is the South Korean right? Do they dream of dicatorship?

• What was the Park Chung-hee regime of the 60s and 70s like? What is authoritarian developmentalism?

• Why did S. Korea democratise? Did the workers win it or did elites concede it?

• What is the post-developmental state, how neoliberal is ROK, and what does the left-right spectrum look like now?

• What was the Candlelight movement of 2016?

Links:

•  /420/ Fertility Freefall & Gender Strife in South Korea ft. Hyeyoung Woo

• The Postdevelopmental State: Dilemmas of Economic Democratization in Contemporary South Korea, Jamie Doucette (OPEN ACCESS)

• The Logic of Compressed Modernity, Chang Kyung-Sup 

/464/ Decline Under The Donald ft. Daniel Bessner

On Trump's foreign policy, the 2nd time round.

Historian and podcaster Daniel Bessner joins Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Lee Jones to ask how this era of rot and decay will proceed under Trump II, from Ukraine to China and beyond. We discuss:

• Will we see "America First transactionalism"?

• Does Trump have a capable cadre to bend the state to his will?

• What will Trump’s relationship be to the deep state?

• How important are generational splits in attitudes to the US empire?

• Will there be a peace deal in Ukraine? Where does that leave 'Atlanticism'?

• Is confrontation with China baked in?

• Is the Middle East the key to world peace?

Links:

• Empire’s Critic: The Worlds of Noam Chomsky, Daniel Bessner, The Nation

• American Prestige podcast

• EU blows hot and cold over Trump, Benoît Bréville, Le Monde diplomatique

• America First, Russia, & Ukraine, Lt. General (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, Fred Fleitz, AFPI

• /171/ Fukuyama & the End of History ft. Daniel Bessner 

• /142/ Dollar Empire (2) ft. Daniel Bessner

/463/ Reading Club: Place 3 – Sennett

On The Fall of Public Man.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus and the first theme, The Future of Place. We ask is politics possible without a sense of place. Here we discuss chapter 13, "Community becomes uncivilised", and deal with listener questions.

• How does the changed relationship between public and private impact notions of community and of place?

• How does the maintenance of impersonal relations signify 'civility'?

• Is impersonality really the summation of all the worst evils of industrial capitalism?

• What is wrong with yearning for community, or specifically “love of the ghetto, especially the middle-class ghetto”

• How does "fratricide" become "logical" when people use intimate relations as a basis for social relations? Why is fratricide "system-maintaining"?

Links:

• 2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

• Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, Christina B. Hanhardt

• The Making of a New Political Subject, George Hoare, Café americain

/462/ Blame Carter ft. Tim Barker

On President Jimmy Carter's responsibility for neoliberalism.

[Patreon Exclusive]

Writer and historian Tim Barker talks to Alex Hochuli and contributing editor Alex Gourevitch about the former president's life and legacy.

• What do people get wrong about Carter? Was Carter, not Reagan, the start of neoliberalism?

• How is Carter's much-admired 'decency' of a piece with his neoliberalism?

• What is 'austerity' and how does it relate to questions of public and private, vice and virtue?

• What was the alternative to the neoliberal pivot in the late 1970s?

• How did the appointment of Fed chairman Volcker change the entire world?

• Did Carter set the script for the Democrats, of being 'noble losers' (but actually on the side of the winners)?

Links:

• Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024, Tim Barker, Origins of Our Time

• Weapons of the Week newsletter

• On neoliberalism and the Cold War: /276/ Broken Promises ft. Fritz Bartel

  Other biographical/obituary episodes:

• Silvio Berlusconi: An Oral History

• /293/ Goodbye 20th Century (RIP Gorby)

• /410/ Reading Club: Deutscher's Stalin

• /435/ Reading Club: Stalin's General – Winning WWII

/461/ Welcome to the World of the Right ft. Michael C. Williams

On radical conservatism and global order.

Professor Michael C. Williams talks to George and Alex about his co-authored World of the Right and how the radical right has gone global. We discuss:

• Does academia takes the Right as seriously as it should?

• What's the difference between the radical right and the far right, the new right, national conservatives, or fascists?

• How is the right 'global' – not just through international conferences but by being "co-constituted by its relation to the global"?

• Why is the radical right focused on the global liberal managerial elite? What does it get right and what does it get wrong about this stratum?

• How did the radical right come to take Gramsci seriously?

• Is the radical right just parasitic on the breakdown of liberal universalism?

• What does this analysis of the radical right say about the Left – is it the force that protects the status quo of the liberal international order?

Links:

• World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order, Michael C. Williams et al., Cambridge UP

• /351/ Eating the Left’s Lunch? ft. Cecilia Lero & Tamás Gerőcs

• /129/ The Right Is Weak ft. Corey Robin

/460/ The Profane Appeal of Sacred Authority

On Conclave.

In our final episode of the year, we debate Edgar Berger's new film about a Papal election, featuring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci as Cardinals and Isabella Rossellini as a nun.

• Is the film about an alien, abstruse process – the conclave – or is it about something familiar and earthly? Is the film about the sacred or the profane? About temporal or holy power?

• What does it say about process and neutrality, in times of lawfare and contested elections?

• ⁠Why is there so much film and TV about the Pope? What is it that appeals today about Papal authority?

• The film features a good liberal, a corrupt moderate, a nasty reactionary, a tainted idpol candiate (a homophobic African) – do these politics matter? Why so crude?

• ⁠Is it mere Oscar bait?

/459/ Reading Club: Place 2 - Augé

On Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity

[For access, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership]

We continue working through the 2024/25 syllabus with the first theme, The Future of Place, asking, is politics possible without a sense of place. We discuss Marc Augé's much-referenced 1992 work on 'non-places': airports, shopping malls, corporate hotels, motorways... We discuss:

• Are non-places proliferating, and what would this mean for society and politics?

• Are non-places the spatial accompaniment to post-politics, to the foreclosure of political contestation?

• Is the distinction between non-places and places/spaces useful?

• Is there anything to the notion of a hyper- or super-modernity?

• Is Augé too deterministic? Does he miss how non-places can be places for culture or politics?

Links:

• 2024/25 Bungacast Syllabus (with links to readings)

/458/ The Society of Pure Vibe ft. Anna Kornbluh

On immediacy, representation, and anti-politics.

Anna Kornbluh, professor of English and author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism talks to Alex about the cultural, political, and economic changes she refers to as 'immediacy'. We discuss:

• Is 'immediacy' just a vibe, or is vibe itself non-mediated?

• How does anti-representation in film, TV and books relate to anti-representation in politics?

• And can we relate culture immediacy to the 'material base'?

• How do Fleabag, Uncut Gems, and the turn to memoirs and autofiction exemplify immediacy?

• Why does self-disclosure fit so well with the data economy?

• In what way is contemporary anti-theory nihilistic and apologetic?

• How does the style of immediacy relate to Frederic Jameson's understanding of postmodernism?

• Is the desire to put everything private on show a response to alienation?

• And is the professionalisation of 'theory' a problem or solution?

Links:

• Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Anna Kornbluh, Verso

• Has culture become pure vibe?, Anna Kornbluh, Spike Art Magazine

• The Theory of Immediacy or the Immediacy of Theory?, Jensen Suther, Nonsite

• Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn't Try to Find Ourselves, Todd McGowan, Repeater

/457/ AufheBonus Bonus - December 2024

On your questions, comments & criticisms.

[Patreon Exclusive]

We're back with a final letters to the editor episode of 2024 in which we discuss:

• the universalisation of 'anti-fascism' as a kind of politics

• whether there are any actual 'family abolitionists' out there

• humanitarian intervention in Palestine

• the hard and less hard facts of US imperial decline

• the legitimacy of 'existential' politics

• whether anti-corruption politics are good, actually

• and why Phil loves Hillary