Bungacast

On the brave new world we have entered.

Historian Arash Azizi is back on the pod, talking to Alex H and Lee Jones about the ongoing war. We try to draw out some firm consequences, beyond the immediate situtation.

• Why did Trump go to war?

• Is this Netanyahu's war? And will he continue it regardless of the US?

• Will the Islamic Republic become more conservative now? 

• What has the war revealed about asymmetric warfare? About US vulnerability?

• What is the state of the Hormuz weapon now?

For more like this, join us at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Arash Azizi:

• Reasons to be Hopeful in Iran, Arash Azizi, The Atlantic

• /24/ #IranProtest ft. Arash Azizi

• /150/ Shadow Commander ft. Arash Azizi

• /444/ Opportunism & Revenge in the Middle East ft. Karl Sharro & Arash Azizi

Analyses:

• How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, NY Times

• Netanyahu’s Iran War Is Also the War of Global Neocon Elites, Nimrod Flaschenberg, Jacobin

• Trump's War, Daniel Luban Dissent Magazine

• The world energy shock is coming, Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk, New Statesman

• One battle after another: Netanyahu’s new security doctrine, FT 

• /532/ Is This a Paleocon Foreign Policy? ft. JF Drolet

• Atlas Shrugged: Decoding Trump's National Security Strategy, Lee Jones, American Affairs

On abolishing queer theory.

Ran Heilbrunn talks to Lee Jones and Alex Hochuli about his chapter, "Abolish Queer Theory!" in the edited collection Inversion: Gay Life after the Homosexual.

• What is queer theory and why should it be abolished?

• What is the meaning behind the shift in terms: invert, to homosexual, to gay, to queer?

• How does queer theory politicise sex and why is this bad?

• Do our libidos care about social inclusion? Can they?

• Is identity okay but identity politics bad?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Inversion: Gay Life after the Homosexual, Aman Namaman and Pierre d’Alancaisez (eds.), Verdurin, 2025

 

We deal with your questions, comments and criticisms from the past month.

Key issues:

• The difference between radical conservatism and the far right

• Racism in class society in decomposition

• Tech bro übermenschen (or just Uber men)

• Who is doing the work of justifying this order?

• And Ursula, the villainous Cecaelian sea witch, about whom songs must be sung

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• To Keep and Bear Arms, Garry Wills, The New York Review

• David Graeber vs. Peter Thiel: Where Did the Future Go?

• /495/ Heritage America vs the World? ft. James Pogue

 

On Amazon, labour & logistics, and trains.

Benjamin Fong, of ASU's Center for Work and Democracy, as well as an editor at Damage and co-author of the substack On The Seams, talks to Alex and George about organising workers in locations of corporate vulnerability.

We also preview the forthcoming print issue of Damage, Trains, by discussing modernity and its avatars, and development and de-development in Brazil.

• Why target Amazon above all else?

• What are the "seams" and why are they important?

• Can labour still "go after the big targets"? Do these still exist given the dispersion of production and distribution?

• How much public appetite is there for blockages at pain points?

Links:

• On the Seams, Substack

• The Labor Movement Must Go All In on Organizing Amazon, Benjamin Y Fong, Jacobin

• Organizing Logistics Chokepoints: Hitting Them Where It Hurts, Benjamin Y Fong, New Labor Forum

• The Apotheosis of Point of Sale Data, Benjamin Y Fong, Phenomenal World

On "non-hegemony" and world disorder.

Tom Chodor, IR & politics scholar at Monash University, joins us to talk about a world that still retains the formal shells of multilateral institutions but whose contents have been hollowed out.

• What is "multilateralism"? Why is it an important concept to capture the US-led order that is now falling apart?

• If multilateralism was always in crisis, what is new today?

• Is the emerging (dis)order multipolar or apolar? What's the difference?

• Is multilateralism the historic exception that we wrongly take to be the norm? Why is there no going back to the post-1945 – or post-1991 – order?

• What are the prospects for a new hegemonic order? Isn’t prolonged chaos and decay more likely? 

The full episode is for subscribers. Join at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Non-Hegemony, Tom Chodor, Jack Taggart and Ilias Alami, Phenomenal World

• /377/ The Locked-Up Country ft. Shahar Hameiri & Tom Chodor

• /357/ Lucky, Meaty Nations ft. Shahar Hameiri & Tom Chodor

 

On the slowing rate of technological progress.

Alex, George and contributing editor (and science writer) Leigh Phillips discuss David Graeber's 2012 essay, Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit. This builds on two of this year's themes: state capitalism (how planning and growth – or their absence – intersect with technology) and the pre-political (how technology shapes

•⁠  ⁠Were we right to expect jetpacks? And are we looking in the right place for technological advances today?

•⁠  ⁠⁠Has technical progress actually slowed in the way Graeber says? 

•⁠  ⁠⁠Are the explanations he gives for slowdown correct?

•⁠  ⁠⁠What political tasks does this reality impose on us?

•⁠  ⁠⁠What is the role of geopolitics and war in the rate of technological development?

Links:

• Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit, David Graeber, The Baffler

• Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck, Patrick Collison & Michael Nielsen, The Atlantic

• /59/ Übermenschen of Capital Pt. 3 ft. Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski

• Progress is in the balance between innovation and implementation, Phil Bell, LSE

• Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (On Robert C. Allen)

• Engels’s Second Theory: Technology, Warfare and the Growth of the State

On the operating system of the 21st century.

Historian Quinn Slobodian and tech writer Ben Tarnoff talk to Alex Hochuli and Alex Gourevitch about their new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, and why we should ask "what is Musk a symptom of?"

• If Fordism characterised the mid-20th century, are our times those of Muskism?

• What are the touchstones of Muskism that the authors identify: fortress futurism, financial fabulism, state symbiosis?

• Who is the real Musk, that of vehicles, energy, infrastructure, or that of the post-industrial stuff of social media, finance, AI?

• What does Muskism promise people? How does it legitimise itself – if at all?

• Is the state actually dependent on Musk, or is Musk dependent on the state?

• How much of Musk's right-wing turn is necessary to Muskism, and how much is contingent? Is the racial component central?

Links:

• Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff, Harper Collins

• /57/ Übermenschen of Capital Pt. 1 ft. Alex Gourevitch

 

We deal with your questions, comments and criticisms from the past month or so. Key issues this month are:

• What are the wrongs of the postmodern right – aand left?

• Will the civilisational paradigm become hegemonic?

• Is Trump's foreign policy techno-populist?

• Whether, and how, to protest anti-immigration policing

• To defend or to smash the professions?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

On anti-racism, communism, and philosophy.

Alex Gourevitch talks to political philosopher Paul Gomberg about his original and deep Marxist arguments for what makes racism wrong, why racism cannot be eradicated without overcoming capitalism, and the limits of many contemporary anti-racist arguments.

• What does it mean to "alienate" race?

• What is the harm in racism? How does it harm everyone, not just its obvious victims?

• Why does Gomberg argue that can racism cannot be overcome in capitalist society?

• Has official racism been replaced by official anti-racism in the neoliberal era?

• What does it mean to understand anti-racism as communism?

• How did Gomberg's communist militancy impact his philosophy?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Anti-Racism as Communism, Paul Gomberg, Bloomsbury

• How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice, Paul Gomberg, Blackwell

On postmodern conservatives.

Matt McManus talks to Alex and George about a Right increasingly shaped by the parameters of postmodern culture – and his Damage article on this.

• Who are the key thinkers of postmodern conservatism?

• Does truth matter anymore?

• Is "flooding the zone" an act of post-truth politics?

• Does all that is solid melt into advertising – and is it Charlie Kirk's fault?

• Is postmodern conservatism an adequate response the dissolution of the traditional “sources of the self”?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• Conservativism as Postmodernism, Matt McManus, Damage

• Why only Socialism can redeem Conservatism, Maurice Glassman, Together For The Common Good

 

On Trump and Rubio, Venezuela and Cuba.

Writer Juan David Rojas talks to Alex and Lee about the abduction of Maduro, what next for Venezuela, and Trump's "hemispheric" foreign policy.

• What is the Trump administration's policy toward Latin America?

• Is the attack on Venezuela a war for oil? Or a war vs 'narcoterrorism'?

• What are the internal divisions in Venezuela, and could it fall into civil war?

• What are the armed groups in the country?

• Who's calling the shots in Washington: neocons or paleocons?

• Is the US open-border policy for Cubans going to cause a rift within the Trump admin?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• How Maduro Sealed His Own Fate, Juan David Rojas, Compact

• Atlas Shrugged: Decoding Trump’s National Security Strategy, Lee Jones, American Affairs

• From Rogue State to Failed State?: The Perils of Intervention in Venezuela, Juan David Rojas, American Affairs

• Trump’s Venezuela Actions Are About More Than Oil, Matt Huber, Jacobin

 

On "thin ideologies" in a postmodern age.

The Reading Club kicks off with an exploration of illiberalism, a "new ideological universe" that exists in "a permanent situational relation to liberalism."

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast/membership

• What are examples of this backlash against liberalism?

• How is illiberalism different from populism, conservatism, or the far right?

• What is a thin versus a thick ideology? Are we condemned to a 21st century of only thin ideologies?

• Is 'illiberalism' a useful term to describe what is going on in politics today?

• Is liberalism versus illiberalism just a terminal culture war?

Links:

• Illiberalism: a conceptual introduction, Marlene Laruelle, East European Politics (2022)

• /114/ Reading Club: The Light That Failed | Patreon

On Trump & radical right ideology.

Jean-François Drolet, a leading researcher into the 'World of the Right', talks to Alex and Lee about Donald Trump's coveting of Greenland, and puts the move into its ideological context.

• What is the paleoconservative worldview, how is it different from the neoconservative one, and which is more influential in the Trump regime?

• How does paleoconservatism translate into actual foreign policy? What's in Trump's new National Security Strategy?

• Are we back to a 19th century-style 'spheres of influence' arrangement?

• Does the radical right's foreign policy lead back to a populist kind of isolationism – or to a 'civilisational nationalism'?

• Will Trump solidify the transatlantic alliance, or generate a rift?

Links:

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

• World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

• International Relations and the Geopolitics of the European New Right, European Journal of International Relations, JF Drolet

• From Critique to Reaction: The New Right, Critical Theory and International Relations, Journal of International Political Theory, JF Drolet & Michael C. Williams

• Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy: Goodbye, Liberal International Order; Hello, Radical Right, Lee Jones, American Affairs (forthcoming

 

On ICE, Minneapolis – and your questions & comments.

Contributing editor Ryan Zickgraf is back from Minnesota and tells us what is happening on the ground. We also discuss:

• If this was Trump picking a fight, why Minnesota?

• Do the slayings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti mark a step-change in who can be killed in the US with relative impunity?

• What are the implications for the 2nd Amendment and will this divide MAGA World?

• Does a hard border necessarily entail a hard, militarised society too? Is the interiorisation of the border inevitable?

For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/bungacast

We then discuss listener questions on:

• What is important that Bungacast cover?

• The benefits of citizenship

• Capitalists paying themselves for labour

• The post-doomer personality

Readings:

• South Minneapolis has had enough, Ryan Zickgraf, UnHerd

• Enforcement Regime, Michael Macher, Phenomenal World 

• Minneapolis Is a Second Amendment Wake-Up Call, Tyler Austin Harper, The Atlantic

• ICE unloads, Ken Klippenstein, Substack

On the social turn in psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysts Christie and Ricky talk to Alex and George about their article in issue #5 of Damage, on ill-fated attempts at solving social problems through therapy.

• What is the 'social turn' and is it another case of immediacy?

• Why are the social problems to be dealt with treated as both urgent and impossible to resolve?

• Is this a case of hyperpolitics? Is psychoanalysis actually white supremacy?

• Do the professions need defending? Do they need to accept their limitations?

Subscribers to this podcast get 15% off print subscriptions to Damage magazine – and access to to this episode. Go to patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

• The Regression in Psychoanalysis’s “Social Turn”, Christie Offenbacher & Ricky Levitt

• /210/ Reading Club: Psychoanalysis & Spirit of Capitalism