Episodes
Tuesday Jan 23, 2024
/384/ Millennial Rule ft. Amber A'Lee Frost
Tuesday Jan 23, 2024
Tuesday Jan 23, 2024
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Why "millennial"? Does it make sense to talk in generational terms?
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What are the left's "perversions" as Amber sees them?
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'Occupy' was all leaderless, horizontalist crap. Why did Amber stick around?
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Bernie Sanders did not leave an organizational legacy – why?
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After the failure of left-populism, in US and Europe, was it all worth it?
At patreon.com/bungacast we continue discussing the problems of DSA, as well as look forward to the US election and ask whether there's a vibe-shift at Davos.
Links:
- Dirtbag
- OK Bunger! The Problem of Generations (5-part Bungacast docu-series on generations)
Tuesday Jan 09, 2024
Excerpt: /382/ Death of the Millennial Left ft. Chris Cutrone
Tuesday Jan 09, 2024
Tuesday Jan 09, 2024
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Why define it as the "Millennial" Left?
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Was the anti-Stalinism of leaderless protests a good thing?
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Did the talk of "winning" from 2015 onwards represent maturity?
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Should the turn to a more public, statist capitalism make us more optimistic?
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How will the 'lawfare' used against Trump play out?
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The Millennial Left is dead, Chris Cutrone, Platypus
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The Death of the Millennial Left: Interventions 2006-2022, Chris Cutrone, Sublation
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
[FROM THE VAULT] /44/ Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome (N.O.B.S.)
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
FROM THE VAULT: ALEX'S PICK (1)
In which we lay the liberal establishment down on the shrink's sofa. It's a systematic analysis of liberal derangement: of the inability to accept, explain, or respond to the breakdown of the current order. Why can't the liberal establishment accept that the 2008 crisis would eventually have political consequences? Why can't liberals explain why they keep losing? Why can't they offer anything but more of the same?
Symptoms:
- Incredulity and denial of political change
- Unwillingness to take responsibility
- Moralisation
- No belief in political causation (things just happen)
- Fetishising disinformation
- Elite persecution complex
- Hysteria & catastrophism
- Nostalgia for a very recent past & rewriting history
- Repetition compulsion
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
/369/ Information-War and War-Politics ft. Jacob Siegel
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
- On disinformation: A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century, Jacob Siegel, Tablet
- A trap has been set for Israel, Jacob Siegel, Unherd
- End US Aid to Israel, Jacob Siegel & Liel Leibovitz, Tablet
- On data: The Nanny vs. The Nanny State, Jacob Siegel & John Robb, Tablet
- Manifesto Podcast, Jacob Siegel & Phil Klay
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
/365/ It’s So Over (Again) ft. Ryan Zickgraf
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
Tuesday Oct 03, 2023
- America's Politics of Nothing, Ryan Zickgraf, Compact
- After Anti-Politics: The Apeiron, Alex Hochuli, Sublation
- Everything is Hyperpolitical, Anton Jäger, The Point
- /361/ A Nightmare on the Brains of the Living ft. Benjamin Studebaker
Thursday Sep 28, 2023
UNLOCKED: /361/ A Nightmare on the Brains of the Living ft. Benjamin Studebaker
Thursday Sep 28, 2023
Thursday Sep 28, 2023
Tuesday Aug 29, 2023
Excerpt: /361/ A Nightmare on the Brains of the Living ft. Benjamin Studebaker
Tuesday Aug 29, 2023
Tuesday Aug 29, 2023
Tuesday Aug 22, 2023
/359/ Apollo Gets High ft. Benjamin Fong
Tuesday Aug 22, 2023
Tuesday Aug 22, 2023
- Building Big Things, Damage Magazine, Issue 1
- Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, Benjamin Y. Fong, Verso
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Who Deserves Amphetamines, Benjamin Fong, The Point
Tuesday Aug 08, 2023
/356/ Land of the Unfree ft. Sohrab Ahmari
Tuesday Aug 08, 2023
Tuesday Aug 08, 2023
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
Excerpt: /352/ Cold War Marxism, East & West ft. Sean Sayers
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
Tuesday Jul 18, 2023
Professor Emeritus and one of the founders of ‘Radical Philosophy’, Sean Sayers, joins us to talk about Marxist philosophy, how it’s developed and changed over the course of the twentieth century and into this one. We talk about Sean’s background and experience in the radical academy of the 1960s, and how the New Left fed through into the founding of ‘Radical Philosophy’, and more recently, the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books. Sean talks about what’s happened to academic philosophy, and what it might take to defend the humanities in the modern Western academy.
Readings:
- Radical Philosophy turns 50, Jonathan Rée, Sean Sayers, Christopher J. Arthur, Kate Soper, Diana Coole, Stella Sandford
- Luigi Galleani: The Most Dangerous Anarchist in America (review), Ruth Kinna, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books
- Marx and Progress, Sean Sayers, International Critical Thought (pdf)
Tuesday Jul 05, 2022
/272/ As Late As Necessary ft. Alex Gourevitch
Tuesday Jul 05, 2022
Tuesday Jul 05, 2022
On abortion.
After the US Supreme Court ruling, where does this leave women in the US? Political theorist Alex Gourevitch joins us to discuss Roe v Wade, and how the fact it rooted abortion in a right to privacy was problematic.
How can we ground the right to abortion in an argument for freedom in general? And is the US really faced with a rising tide of reaction, as liberals claim? Are same-sex marriage and contraception imperilled by the decision.
Reading:
- Wrong Life and Abortion, Ethan Linehan, Sublation
- The Left killed the pro-choice coalition, Kat Rosenfield, Unherd
- A Defence of Abortion, Judith Jarvis Johnson
- How to Win the Abortion Argument, Helen Lewis, The Atlantic
Tuesday May 10, 2022
/262/ The Useless Past ft. Matt Karp
Tuesday May 10, 2022
Tuesday May 10, 2022
On liberals' embrace of the past and history wars.
We talk to Matthew Karp about his essay, "History As End: 1619, 1776, and the politics of the past". It seems as if there's an ideological inversion going on, where liberals see history in terms of original sin and cycles of injustice, or at best, want to relitigate the past in order to fight battles of the present. Meanwhile conservatives have abandoned the past. What does this say about current attitudes to capital-h History and making the future?
Readings:
- History As End: 1619, 1776, and the politics of the past, Matt Karp, Harpers
- Ends in Sight: Marx/Fukuyama/Hobsbawm/Anderson, Gregory Elliott
- The End of the End of History, Bungacast
Tuesday Apr 05, 2022
/252/ Technopopulism & Toxic Politics ft. Carlo Invernizzi Accetti
Tuesday Apr 05, 2022
Tuesday Apr 05, 2022
On the fusion of technocracy & populism.
Carlo Invernizzi Accetti talks to us about his book, Technopopulism, co-authored with Chris Bickerton. This is the "new logic of democratic politics". How are all politicians today effectively technocratic and populist at the same time? How does this distinguish our age from a more ideological age in the past? And what can be done to make politics ideological again?
Part 2, which includes the rest of the interview, and the After Party where Alex, George and Phil debate why politics are toxic today, is available here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/64729183/
Readings:
- The Age of Technopopulism? George Hoare, Damage
- Alex's thread on consensus-through-dissensus
- The Berlusconi - cocktail recipe
Tuesday Mar 22, 2022
/249/ Dances with Truckers ft. Ashley Frawley
Tuesday Mar 22, 2022
Tuesday Mar 22, 2022
We move on to debate how to understand popular resistance to 'social engineering' today, as well as the uses of 'emotionalism' to undermine political agency.
Readings & Links:
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How the truckers split indigenous Canada, Ashley Frawley, UnHerd
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Lecture: Emotion & Reason, Ashley Frawley, The Academy
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Semiotics of Happiness, Ashley Frawley, Bloomsbury, 2005
Tuesday Feb 22, 2022
/242/ Bureaucracy Rules OK ft. Michael Lind
Tuesday Feb 22, 2022
Tuesday Feb 22, 2022
On class wars, new and old.
Michael Lind, Professor of Practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, joins us to talk about what it might take to restore working class power in Western states. He explains some of the arguments in his book The New Class War (2020) in greater depth, as well as discussing his intellectual debt to the ex-Trotskyist theorist turned Cold War conservative, James Burnham.
Plus, Michael talks about how his Texan background and upbringing shaped his outlook on industrialisation, national development and populism.
Part two: https://www.patreon.com/posts/243-bureaucracy-62900197
Readings:
- America’s Asymmetric Civil War, Tablet Mag
- Why ending tenure is only the start, Tablet Mag
- The importance of James Burnham, Tablet Mag
- Bungacast Reading Club on The New Class War