Bungacast

/100/ What Was the End of History? ft. Many Guests

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

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Excerpt: /99/ Proof in the Pudding

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...

/98/ Painful Politics ft. Jennifer Silva

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? 

/97/ Bungacast Analytica ft. João Magalhães

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

Excerpt: /96/ Three Articles

This is a sample. Go to Patreon for the full episode. 

On Bolivia, Macron, Randian Chile.

 

In this month's 'Three Articles' - in which we each bring to the table a key article to unpick and unpack - we discuss Bolivia's coup and a left-wing argument against Morales; Macron's big interview in the economist and his questionable 'defence of sovereignty'; and a libertarian nutjob goes berserk in Chile.

 

Readings:

• 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)

/95/ The Fall of Rojava? ft. Dani Ellis / Alexander Norton

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

Excerpt: /94/ Reading Club 2: Anti-Politics

In our second Reading Club, we discuss Eliane Glaser's Anti-Politics (Repeater, 2018) and take readers questions and contributions.

Readings:

• Anti-Politics: On the Demonization of Ideology, Authority and the State, Repeater

For access to this and other bonus episodes, become a patron at patreon.com/bungacast

/93/ Hot Chile and Other Neoliberal Failures ft. Pablo Pryluka

On Argentina's elections and Chile & Ecuador's revolts. 

Macri's election was heralded by the right across the continent as the end to a sequence of centre-left governments in South America. Now only four years later, he is likely to be thrown out of office by the return of 'Kirchnerismo'. Next door, the supposedly "stable and growing" Chile is in flames as protests and riots challenge the conservative Piñera administration and the country's deep inequality. This follows on the heels of weeks of mobilisations in Ecuador against the ending of a fuel subsidy. What's going on and what does it all signify?

[Chile & Ecuador discussion starts at 46mins]

Readings:

• The Day After Macri’s Downfall, Martín Mosquera, Jacobin
• Lenín Moreno Has Betrayed Ecuador. Now the Country Is in Revolt, Guillaume Long, Jacobin
• Did Chile ditch its authoritarian government 26 years ago? Not quite., Jennifer Prible, WaPo
• If Piñera wants to wage war in Chile he should fight the real enemy: inequality, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Guardian

Excerpt: /92/ Three Articles

A new format in which we each bring to the table a key article to unpick and unpack.

 

This week we take a sharp look at the crumbling US political establishment and its empire: impeachment and regime legitimacy; centrist rebels against their lefty parents; and the betrayal of the Kurds.

 

Readings:

• Impeachment is regime suicide, Daniel McCarthy, Spectator USA
• Centrist-child syndrome, Shuja Haider, The Outline
• The US is now betraying the Kurds for the eight time, Jon Schwarz, The Intercept

/91/ Exhaustion Revealing ft. Leigh Phillips

On environmental protest politics. Extinction Rebellion and the Climate Strike have brought eco protest back to the front pages. But it all seems a bit of a flashback to the 2000s. We examine the protests' alarmism and post-political positioning. After inequality and class have been put on the agenda again, do these protests represent a step back? We also ask what might be done about climate change if we don't go along with these groups' interpretations and demands. 

Excerpt: /90/ Work, Bitch ft. Amber A'Lee Frost

On UBI and social reproduction.

 

Following on from ep. 88 where we discussed post-work with Anton Jäger, we have Amber on to talk about her recent article in Jacobin on Andrew Yang's proposals for a Universal Basic Income. Is a citizen under a UBI regime really assimilable to a mid-century American housewife? How free is either? Does fully automated luxury communism put too much emphasis on luxury and not enough on communism? And would UBI lead to a more or less alienated society?

 

Reading:

Andrew Yang and the Failson Mystique, Amber A'Lee Frost, Jacobin

 

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

/89/ On the Lam: Hong Kong Rebels ft. Toby Carroll

On the Hong Kong rebellion. Four months of protests is forcing a confrontation with the Hong Kong authorities and the Chinese state. The demands are for civil liberties and some more democracy - but what are the social conditions underlying the protests? How important is colonial nostalgia and Hong Konger chauvinism? How is this playing with mainland Chinese - and what will be the CCP's response?

Reading:

• Hong Kong is one of the most unequal cities in the world. So why aren’t the protesters angry at the rich and powerful?, Toby Carroll, The Conversation
• Four Points on the Hong Kong Protests, Kevin Lin, Jacobin

Become a patron of BungaCast at patreon.com/bungacast

 

Excerpt: /88/ Vouchers for Toxicity ft. Anton Jäger

On post-work. We discuss Anton's review of David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs and why it seems to have such appeal, even amongst elites. There is a crisis in the work ethic, but is it an error to counterpose work and leisure and simply opt for leisure? Is leisure even 'ours' anymore, or has it been fully colonised by capitalism? Ultimately, is the problem today more about bullshit in jobs, rather than bullshit jobs per se?

Readings:

• Back to Work: Review of David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, Nonsite
• Anton's writing in Jacobin

For the full episode, sign up at patreon.com/bungacast

/83/ Now It’s Syrizous [UNLOCKED]

Syriza lost the last Greek elections after 4 1/2 years in power. What happened to a party that, for a time, represented the European radical left's hopes? Did it achieve anything in power? Many talk about Tspiras' "betrayal" - is that the right way to look at it? And what are the wider consequences of this defeat: is time up for this wave of "left populists"? 

 

Readings:

• Greece’s Long Road Ahead, Costas Lapavitsas, Jacobin
• Defeat and decomposition, Panagiotis Sotiris, Historical Materialism
• Syriza’s rise and fall, Stathis Kouvelakis, NLR
• New Democracy Against Democracy, Various (incl. Leo Panitch), Jacobin
• The Radical Left: The Time for its Re-founding, Costas Lapavitsas & Stathis Kouvelakis, Verso blog
• Book Review: The Populist Radical Left in Europe, Anton Jäger, LSE blog

This episode was previously exclusive to patrons. To access all our content, please subscribe: patreon.com/BungaCast

Excerpt: /87/ Berluscoming

We discuss Paolo Sorrentino's "Loro" (2018), a dreamlike cinematic depiction of Silvio Berlusconi. Does the film succeed in capturing Silvio, or does it glamourise him? What explains the appeal he had - and why was the left never able to properly dethrone him? What does it say about 2000s Italy, and its relevance to our times?

 

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If you can't find the film where you are, try this magnet link to torrent it:

 

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