The global politics podcast at the end of the End of History. Politics is back but it’s stranger than ever: join us as we chart a course beyond the age of ’bunga bunga’. Interviews, long-form discussions, docu-series.
Episodes
Tuesday Feb 25, 2020
Tuesday Feb 25, 2020
On Applied Ballardianism.
Is it J.G. Ballard's world? Bunga talks Ballard with Simon Sellars, author of a new book on the great British sci-fi novelist J.G. Ballard. Urban decay, social breakdown, consumerism as social control and the Interzone.
Opening passage is taken from Ballard's 2000 novel 'Super-Cannes'.
Reading:
Applied Ballardianism, Simon Sellars, Urbanomic
Subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020
Tuesday Feb 11, 2020
On pandemics, panics, and China.
The 2019 Novel Coronavirus is yet another new epidemic to appear on the scene this century. What accounts for their increasing frequency, and who decides if an epidemic is classed as a pandemic? More importantly, what governs that choice? The WHO and the whole intergovernmental management of health has 'securitised' these questions. Are they privileging the free flow of capital over public health? And what of China's draconian response and lockdown of Wuhan - is it effective? And who will bear the blame if things go wrong? Might Coronavirus become a threat to Xi Jingping and the Chinese regime?
Readings:
- ‘Rumormonger’ Doctor Who Raised the Alarm Says He Has Coronavirus, Sixth Tone
- 'Hero who told the truth': Chinese rage over coronavirus death of whistleblower doctor, The Guardian
- The Free Market Isn’t Up to the Coronavirus Challenge, Leigh Phillips, Jacobin
- Locked-down Wuhan and why we always overplay the threat of the new, Kenan Malik, The Guardian
- Coronavirus: nature fights back, Michael Roberts blog
Guests' books:
Mark Honigsbaum: The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris
Lee Jones (& Shahar Hameiri): Governing Borderless Threats: Non-Traditional Security and the Politics of State Transformation
Running order:
- (00:44) Introduction
- (06:21) Mark Honigsbaum
- (38:48) Lee Jones
Friday Feb 07, 2020
Friday Feb 07, 2020
On Ireland's elections.
With Sinn Fein riding high in the polls, are we looking at an upset? Is this a populist upsurge in Ireland, finally, more than a decade after the start of the crisis? We discuss what Ireland's 'end of history' was like and how the 'Celtic Tiger' economy sustained it; and look at how the country was the EU's "model prisoner" of austerity. Are there new stirrings? And what are the prospects for unification?
Readings:
- Mary Lou McDonald could take Sinn Féin into the political mainstream, Jason Walsh, The New European
- This Month’s Elections in Ireland Are a Historic Opportunity, Michael Taft, Jacobin
- The End of Irish History, Colin Coulter et al., Manchester UP (Edited book; pdf)
Tuesday Feb 04, 2020
Tuesday Feb 04, 2020
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
Tuesday Jan 28, 2020
This is a sample. For the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/BungaCast
On ecofascism.
Both the shooters in the Christchurch and El Paso massacres were declared 'ecofascists'. Now, a new governing coalition in Austria brings together Greens and the hard right in an unconventional union.
How does Malthusianism link the far right and ecology? What are the dangers of 'lifeboat politics', and how can the Left resist this logic? Is the Green New Deal a solution?
Readings:
- Eco-fascism: The ideology marrying environmentalism and white supremacy thriving online, Sarah Manavis, New Statesman
- First as Tragedy, Then as Fascism, Alex Amend, The Baffler
- Austria’s new government includes the pro-environment Greens. That’s a first., The Washington Post
- Why White Supremacists Are Hooked on Green Living, Sam Adler-Bell, TNR
- What Is Eco-Fascism, the Ideology Behind Attacks in El Paso and Christchurch?, Luke Darby, GQ
- Only a Green New Deal Can Douse the Fires of Eco-Fascism, Naomi Klein, The Intercept
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
Tuesday Jan 21, 2020
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
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
On forecasts for the next decade.
-
25 Ideas That Will Shape the 2020s, Various, Fortune
-
Boris Johnson is reinventing one-nation Conservatism, Bagehot, The Economist
-
Forecasting the world in 2020, Various, Financial Times
![[UNLOCKED] /77/ CaliBunga: Tech, Drugs & Capitalist Soul, Pt. 2](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/ep-logo/pbblog2148233/calibunga_300x300.png){kind=logo}
Tuesday Jan 07, 2020
Tuesday Jan 07, 2020
On drugs and mental health.
In part two, we chat about recreational drugs and mental states in a Hollywood bar with friends of the podcast, Amber A'Lee Frost and Alex Gendler. But mostly, we delve deeper into capitalism and depression with the 'States of Wellness' group at UC Irvine (Catherine Liu, Thomas Williams, Michael Mahoney, Benjamin Kruger-Robins).
#CaliBunga is a special multipart series on the Californian Ideology: the seemingly paradoxical hybrid of New Left and New Right ideas - the synthesis of hippies with yuppies, all tied together with the promise that technology might liberate us.
Thanks to UC Irvine School of Humanities for sponsoring this series.
Monday Dec 16, 2019
Monday Dec 16, 2019
On how Labour lost.
Was it Brexit that did for Labour? In what sense? What now for the British Left - and for democracy?
Running order:
- (02:40) Opening chat
- (05:15) The electoral map, the generational divide
- (21:46) Class
- (33:52) The leadership and the media
- (48:10) Holding our prediction to account
- (53:30) Reaction of various Labour factions
- (01:03:10) Future of left-populism
Readings:
- How class, turnout and the Brexit party shaped the general election result, Financial Times
- The Failure of the Left to Grasp Brexit, Michael Wilkinson, Verfassungs Blog
- Anti-politics & the last gasp of British Labourism, Tad Tietze, Left-Flank
- Hate to say it, but #BrexitWouldveWon, Alex Hochuli
- Don’t blame Corbyn or Brexit: Labour failed to rage against the hated political system, Adam Ramsay, openDemocracy
Subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast
Tuesday Dec 10, 2019
Tuesday Dec 10, 2019
On the 30 years since 1989.
For our 100th episode, we invited our favourite guests to reflect on the question: “What one event, personal or political, most captures for you the past thirty years, since 1989?”
Are we still living in the death throes of the 20th century, or is something new emerging?
Guests:
- (00:07:42) - Maren Thom
- (00:14:14) - David Broder
- (00:21:33) - Ashley Frawley
- (00:26:11) - Catherine Liu
- (00:33:05) - Angela Nagle
- (00:40:49) - Benjamin Fogel
- (00:46:25) - Alex Gourevitch
- (00:51:31) - BungaCast hosts
- (00:59:22) - David Adler
- (01:04:05) - Amber A’Lee Frost
- (01:08:48) - James Heartfield
- (01:16:17) - Anton Jaeger
- (01:23:24) - Leigh Phillips
- (01:30:25) - Lee Jones
- (01:36:03) - Karl Sharro
Subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast
Tuesday Dec 03, 2019
Tuesday Dec 03, 2019
UK general election preview.
Go to patreon.com/BungaCast for the full episode
Is is really the Brexit election, if Labour doesn't want it to be? We survey the parties' positions, and promises, and ask some big what ifs. Could there be a major realignment in the offing? And we make some predictions - which you can hold us to account for later on...
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
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
Thursday Nov 14, 2019
-
Bolivia: The Extreme Right Takes Advantage of a Popular Uprising, Raúl Zibechi, Toward Freedom (originally in Spanish in Uninomadasur)
-
Emmanuel Macron in his own words, The Economist
-
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
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