Episodes
Thursday Nov 28, 2019
/98/ Painful Politics ft. Jennifer Silva
Thursday Nov 28, 2019
Thursday Nov 28, 2019
On working class pain and politics.
We talk to Jennifer Silva about her most recent book, and working class Americans' experience of and perspectives on pain. We discuss racial, gender and class identities and sense of relative losses and gains. If the American Dream has been 'stolen', how can the working class dream again? What are the prospects for socialist politics when distrust of politics predominates?
Thursday Nov 21, 2019
/97/ Bungacast Analytica ft. João Magalhães
Thursday Nov 21, 2019
Thursday Nov 21, 2019
On algorithms and politics.
Can we "blame the media" today for political outcomes? Who's responsible for The Discourse in a fragmented landscape? It seems like there's increasing polarisation today, driven by social media 'filter bubbles'. Are they real? Who's responsible?
Plus: we talk about the media portrayal of Jeremy Corbyn; culture wars vs class politics; Brazil's craziness; and why arguments and interaction matter.
Readings:
- Have the mass media fuelled Brazil’s turmoil?, João Magalhães, Politike
- My lovely useless Facebook bubble, João Magalhães
Thursday Nov 14, 2019
Excerpt: /96/ Three Articles
Thursday Nov 14, 2019
Thursday Nov 14, 2019
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Bolivia: The Extreme Right Takes Advantage of a Popular Uprising, Raúl Zibechi, Toward Freedom (originally in Spanish in Uninomadasur)
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Emmanuel Macron in his own words, The Economist
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A Californian economist loves neoliberalism. When Chileans started protesting it, he opened fire. Teo Armus, Washington Post (also available from SFGate)
Thursday Nov 07, 2019
/95/ The Fall of Rojava? ft. Dani Ellis / Alexander Norton
Thursday Nov 07, 2019
Thursday Nov 07, 2019
Rojava offered the hope that a progressive, multiethnic politics might be salvaged from the ashes of Syria’s civil war. Now the Turkish assault on northern Syria looks set to crush the Kurds and a radical experiment in the region.
We talk to two British volunteers in Rojava about the prospects that the political structures set up there might be saved.
- Dani Ellis (@lapinesque): engineer; civil defence volunteer, International Commune (@communeint)
- Alexander Norton: deputy features editor, Morning Star; revolutionary volunteer, International Freedom Battalion
Running order
- (05:27) - Dani interview
- (41:39) - Alexander interview
- (01:27:51) - Final discussion
Readings & Links:
- Internationalist Commune
- Rojava Information Center
- America abandons the Kurds, Tom Stevenson, LRB
- Russia and Turkey reach deal on Syrian border, Financial Times
- European leftists are rejecting the Kurds over their reliance on the US. It is just another disgusting betrayal, Slavoj Zizek, The Independent
- "Turkey Is Reviving Islamic State in Rojava", Rosa Burç & Kerem Schamberger, Jacobin
Glossary:
- YPG: Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (People's Defence Corps); PYD’s armed wing in Syria
- YPJ: Yekîneyên Parastina Jin (Women's Protection Units); all-female militia
- PYD: Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (Democratic Union Party); Syrian Kurdish affiliate of the PKK
- SDF: Syrian Democratic Forces; alliance composed primarily of Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian/Syriac militias, led by the YPG
- PKK: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party); Kurdish party in Turkey founded in 1978 by Abdullah Öcalan. Started armed insurgency in 1984, thousands of fighters in northern Iraq and Turkey
- IFB: International Freedom Battalion; armed group of foreign leftists fighting for the YPG in support of the Rojava Revolution
- MLKP: Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, Turkey
- TEV-DEM: Movement for a Democratic Society; umbrella organisation in northern Syria, aims at organising Syrian society within the democratic confederalist system