Episodes
Friday Feb 16, 2024
/392/ The Biggest Country No One Talks About (II) ft. Michael Vann
Friday Feb 16, 2024
Friday Feb 16, 2024
- How did Prabowo go from wannabe fascist dictator to cuddly populist grandpa?
- Why is Jokowi "Indonesia's Obama"?
- What is Indonesia's Trump/Hunter Biden ticket?
- What's up with the $32bn new capital being built in Borneo?
- What is the Museum of Anticommunism, and how successfully has Indonesia's ruling class rewritten its history?
- Plus: why is metal so popular in Indonesia?
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Suharto’s Old Guard Is Still Calling the Shots in Indonesia, Michael Vann, Jacobin
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Shadow Puppets and Special Forces: Indonesia’s Fragile Democracy, Michael Vann, The Diplomat (on police v military clashes)
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Indonesia state apparatus is preparing to throw election to a notorious massacre general, Allan Nairn, The Intercept
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Excerpt: /391/ Aufhebonus Bonus - Feb 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
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Palestinians as surplus population
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Peripheral countries as 'imitators'
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Whether Brexit has led to greater political accountability
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Why Ridley Scott sucks
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Why contemporary art sucks
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Bonapartism and techno-populism
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Romanticising dead workers - and old social-democrats
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Esoteric knowledge about how the world *really* works
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Lenin's Lesson for Western Liberals, Philip Cunliffe, UnHerd
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Why the Tories Are Blowing Brexit, George Hoare, The Northern Star
Friday Feb 09, 2024
/390/ The Biggest Country No One Talks About ft. Vedi Hadiz
Friday Feb 09, 2024
Friday Feb 09, 2024
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What was the authoritarian order that followed the 1965 anti-communist massacres?
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How did the Asian financial crisis lead towards democratisation – and how did the old oligarchy manage to retain much of its power?
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How has Indonesia become "Islamified", and what is "Islamic populism"?
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How do class and ethnicity/religion interact in Indonesia? Who speaks for the "downtrodden"?
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Is the upcoming election a contestation between oligarchic populisms?
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Marketing Morality in Indonesia's Democracy, Vedi Hadiz, East Asia Forum
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The demise of the left and the Islamisation of dissent in Indonesia, Vedi Hadiz, Melbourne Asia Review (video)
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Indonesia’s 2024 Presidential Election Could Be the Last Battle of the Titans, Carnegie Endowment
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
/388/ Betting on Bukele (I) ft. Nelson Rauda / Juan Rojas
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
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El Salvador’s Bitcoin Paradise Is a Mirage, Nelson Rauda, NYT
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Behind Bukele's Revolution, Juan Rojas & Geoff Shullenberger, Compact
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On Security, Bukele and Petro Have a Problem in Common, Juan Rojas, Americas Quarterly
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In response to killings, El Salvador’s bitcoin president attacks civil liberties, Nelson Rauda, LA Times
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The Rise of Nayib Bukele, El Salvador's Authoritarian President, Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker
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Chaos in Ecuador, Guillaume Long, Sidecar/NLR
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¡Viva la ‘eficracia’!, Martin Caparrós, El País
Tuesday Jan 30, 2024
/387/ Get Fungal to Save Culture ft. Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family)
Tuesday Jan 30, 2024
Tuesday Jan 30, 2024
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Why are the kids taking less drugs?
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Can we respond to our nihilistic times with nihilistic art?
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What is the nature of conformity today?
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How to challenge conformity without sneering at the masses?
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Is there a romantic revival going on? Why is Lias interested in Ivan Illich?
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If living cheaply in big cities is now very difficult for artists, will something new emerge from the provinces?
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Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family & the Miracle of Failure, Lias Saoudi & Adelle Stripe, White Rabbit Books
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Punk's spirit is broken, Lias Saoudi, UnHerd
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Is modern medicine making us sick?, Lias Saoudi, UnHerd
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Forthcoming album: Forgiveness Is Yours
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/353/ Bunga Sells Out ft. Jason Myles - on music and the spectacle
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/359/ Apollo Gets High ft. Benjamin Fong - on drugs in America
Monday Jan 29, 2024
Excerpt: /386/ Reading Club: Globalisation (III & IV)
Monday Jan 29, 2024
Monday Jan 29, 2024
- How important was the neo-cons' Project for a New American Century?
- What were the long-term consequences of the Iraq invasion?
- What do we make of Arrighi's theoretical account of imperialism and the tension between territorial and capitalistic logics?
- Did the USA represent a "world state" after WWII, and how did it fail?
- What is the world-historic meaning of China’s development?
- Do we buy Arrighi’s attempt at a Smithean vision of inter-civilizational harmony?
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Adam Smith in Beijing:Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, Giovanni Arrighi
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/305/ Techno-Feudal Unreason - on 'political' capitalism and plunder
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/250/ Oil & Disorder ft. Helen Thompson - on imperialism, the world system and energy
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/195/ No Shock China ft. Isabella Weber - on China avoiding neoliberal shock-therapy
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 16, 2024
/383/ Stare into the Abyss with Us ft. Juliano Fiori
Tuesday Jan 16, 2024
Tuesday Jan 16, 2024
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What was humanitarianism, and why was it the "last utopia"?
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What does humanitarianism look like in an era of multipolarity?
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Does Western liberal democracy have any gas left in it? What should we defend?
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What politics are generated by the prevailing sense of anxiety and melancholia?
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If modernity is over, do we need to reject all progressivism?
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And how do we orient around catastrophe without falling into the trap of emergency politics?
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
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
UNLOCKED: /373/ Take a Stand: Be Neutral! ft. Lily Lynch
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
- Why did Sweden and Finland give up decades of neutrality - and why now?
- What happens with an enlarged alliance in light of the conflict in Ukraine?
- How does the current moment compare to the apogee of the Non-Aligned Movement?
- Why were the realists right?
- How is tech mythology helping to build 'digital nationalism'?
- Why is there beef over grain between Poland and Ukraine?
- And what the hell are the "skin suit of social democracy" and the "Waluigi of neutrality"?
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Joining the West, Lily Lynch, Sidecar
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The realists were right, Lily Lynch, New Statesman
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The EU’s great power delusions, Lily Lynch, New Statesman
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Guns, grain, and history, Lily Lynch, New Statesman
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Tech-Mythologies, Lily Lynch, Sidecar
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Imperfect Unity, Lily Lynch, Sidecar
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
[FROM THE VAULT] /104/ The Aristocracy of Finance ft. Alexander Zevin
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
FROM THE VAULT: ALEX'S PICK (2)
On The Economist and the contradictions of global liberalism.
Alexander Zevin joins us to discuss his work on the 176 year history of the magazine that has accompanied liberalism's global expansion. Has it just reflected the world or has it actually influenced politics? How has The Economist balanced democracy against the interests of finance and the needs of empire? And is the magazine suffering from N.O.B.S.?
Subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast
Running order:
- (06:02) Overview & early days
- (29:52) 19th century & empire
- (34:18) 20th century, esp 1930s and '40s
- (48:08) End of the Cold War and NOBS
- (01:02:19) Liberalism & its enemies
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
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
[FROM THE VAULT] /74/ Order Not Freedom ft. Quinn Slobodian
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
FROM THE VAULT: GEORGE'S PICK (2)
On the unexpected origins of neoliberalism. We talk to Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists, about how neoliberals look back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the League of Nations. Why does neoliberalism talk about freedom, but promote order? Is neoliberalism about more or less state - or is it about what kind of state?
Plus why the genuine neoliberals didn’t care about the Cold War and how Murray Rothbard laid the ground for Trump.
Readings:
- Globalists, Quinn Slobodian
- Neoliberalism’s World Order, Adam Tooze
- Why I am not a conservative, F.A. von Hayek
- The EU is a betrayal of Europe’s exceptionalism, Douglas Carswell
Subscribe for access to the Synthesis Session, where the guys discuss the broader implications: patreon.com/bungacast
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
[FROM THE VAULT] /161/ Culture is Bad for You ft. Mark Taylor
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
FROM THE VAULT: GEORGE'S PICK (1)
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
[FROM THE VAULT] /46/ Exiting Capitalist Realism
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
Thursday Dec 28, 2023
FROM THE VAULT: PHIL'S PICK (2)
The third in our Neoliberal Breakdown series. In which we discuss the late Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, 10 years on. Does his analysis still hold? The mood music of the time - the age of 'TINA' and the end of history - was acutely described by Fisher. But did it only really describe Britain? And has the world now entered a new period?
Readings:
Capitalist Realism http://www.zero-books.net/books/capitalist-realism
'Exiting the Vampire Castle' https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/mark-fisher/exiting-vampire-castle
Mark Fisher's k-punk blog https://k-punk.org/
Cover image: 📸 Stephanie Jung