Jacobin Radio

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant. It was a rare moment of hope for Palestinians, but the US government responded with outrage.

Earlier this year, a report by the Guardian and +972 Magazine showed that Israel had been spying on the ICC for a number of years. The aim of the espionage was to keep track of which particular allegations of war crimes were being investigated by the ICC. Israel would then start its own investigation retroactively into the same allegations. This was designed to undercut the ICC and make it possible for people like US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller to speak about the virtues of the Israeli court system.

Our guest today for a conversation about the ICC arrest warrants is John Reynolds. John is a professor of law at Maynooth University and the author of Empire, Emergency and International Law. He’s joined us twice before on Long Reads to speak about the challenges Israel is facing on the international legal front.

Find his last interview for the podcast, "Backing Israeli Apartheid Isn’t Just Immoral — It’s Illegal," here: https://jacobin.com/2024/08/israeli-apartheid-gaza-icj-icc

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Veteran journalist Marc Cooper joins Suzi to talk about the landslide that wasn’t, Trump’s transition swamp, and the state of the Fourth Estate. Trump’s victory is confined to the undemocratic electoral college. His winning margin in the popular vote is 1.6 percentage points, the smallest in more than 20 years. Trump may claim an historic, unprecedented mandate, but he just squeaked by. He is still dangerous but vulnerable. We talk about the danger and the chaos to come, including the threat to formal democracy.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Michael Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, talks about how the government executed his mother despite knowing her innocence. Ruth Whippman, author of BOYMOM: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, discusses the challenges of raising boys.

See recent documents shedding light on "Why Ethel's execution was wrongful": https://www.rfc.org/node/4836

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar in the final installment of a three-part series on Central America. This episode picks up with Nayib Bukele’s authoritarian crypto enthusiasm in El Salvador; Daniel Ortega’s perversion of Sandinismo’s revolutionary legacy in Nicaragua; anti-mining movements in Panama; Honduras and Guatemala, where popular social movements have elected left presidents to confront entrenched power structures. We conclude by discussing mass migration from the region that’s taken on a mystified form in US politics as the MAGA far right’s principal scapegoat.

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Check out nacla.org for in-depth coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean 

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Anatol Lieven tries to divine a Trump foreign policy out of unreliable rhetoric and early appointments. Alex Vitale tries similar on Trump and criminal justice.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar in the second of a three (not two!) part series on the history and present of Central America. This interview picks up our discussion of revolutionary armed struggles against brutal US-backed military-oligarchic regimes in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Then, the peace accords and postwar transitions accompanied by the imposition of neoliberal economic restructuring. Finally, the rise of mass migration, new transnational gangs, and the regime of El Salvador’s authoritarian Bitcoin enthusiast Nayib Bukele. And more.

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Suzi talks to UC Berkeley sociologist Dylan Riley, who has written a great deal about fascism and far right politics. The US has just elected to the Presidency a man who represents a dire threat to democracy and constitutional rule as we know it. We get Dylan’s understanding of the specificity of Trump’s politics, the basis of his support, and the fascistic measures favored by people in and around his party, including the frightening Project 2025. Central to MAGA is a reactionary view of gender, which sees women’s advances happening at the expense of men and their traditional family role. Dylan sees Trump as more of a patrimonial misfit, a charismatic leader who rules more incoherently than a consistent fascist. We also ask how Trump fits in with analogous movements of the far right around the world.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Earlier this week, Joe Biden welcomed the Israeli president Isaac Herzog to the White House. Last October, Herzog announced that there were no innocent civilians in Gaza. The International Court of Justice cited his comments as evidence that the Palestinian people needed protection from the threat of genocide.

Akbar Shahid Ahmed of the Huffington Post has been following the Biden administration’s support for the Israeli attack on Gaza from the start. He’s currently working on a book that will give a detailed account of the inside story. Akbar has joined the podcast twice before to discuss the latest developments. Dan spoke to him again after the US presidential election about the events of the past few months and what is likely to happen next.

Find our last Long Reads interview with Akbar here: https://jacobin.com/2024/06/biden-administration-israel-cease-fire-policy

And read his ongoing coverage for Huffington Post here: https://www.huffpost.com/author/akbar-shahid-ahmed

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

We look at the election results that took many of us by surprise — giving Donald Trump and Republicans an across the board victory. For a look at the bigger picture, Suzi speaks to Robert Brenner, professor of history at UCLA, for analysis and some post-election blues. This podcast was recorded on November 8, before all the votes were counted along the West Coast. The final tallies will likely shrink Trump’s margin of victory, but not the overall results. The striking character of the Trump victory is attributable virtually entirely by the drop off in the vote for the Democrats. We try to understand what happened, and how to analyze this shift to the right.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Doug comments on the Trump victory and the role of inflation. Dahlia Scheindlin talks about Israeli public opinion. James Foley and Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, authors of a recent paper, discuss Ukrainian nationalism in the Western political imagination.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Oh lord almighty, when will we be rid of this man? Apparently not for another four years at least. We ring in the latest chapter of this never-ending "Trump Era" with the new biopic/origin story THE APPRENTICE (2024).

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Trump’s decisive victory, Harris’s catastrophic loss, multi-racial working-class dealignment, and where the left might go from here. 

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We now have a special feed dedicated entirely to our Thawra series. Listen and spread the word: thedigradio.com/Thawra

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Laura Jedeed, author of a recent feature article for Lux, discusses the right’s war on North Idaho College. Mouin Rabbani talks about what’s driving Israel’s multiple wars, and the Axis of Resistance.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

Featuring Hilary Goodfriend and Jorge Cuéllar on the history of Central America. This is the first episode in a two-part series covering the late-19th and early-20th century rise of export-crop oligarchies and constant US intervention, the US-backed separation of Panama from Colombia to take control of the Canal, the CIA's 1954 Guatemala coup, the rise of armed revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and the US-backed dirty wars that were prosecuted in response—that and so much more.

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Want to learn more? Greg Grandin on The Dig: thedigradio.com/podcast/empires-workshop-with-greg-grandin

We now have a special feed dedicated entirely to our Thawra series. Listen and spread the word: thedigradio.com/Thawra

Buy Mastering the Universe at Haymarketbooks.com 

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Alan Minsky sits in for host Suzi Weissman on a special pre-election edition of Jacobin Radio. In the first half, Alan speaks with economist Mark Paul, Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University, about a California ballot measure, Prop 33, that addresses one of the top concerns of voters across the country: the cost of housing. Prop 33 would eliminate statewide restrictions on rent control measures. Predictably, a PAC supported by large real estate corporations is spending over $100 million to try to defeat it. Paul explains why the arguments made by opponents of Prop 33 are misguided, and that the measure, if passed, will provide much needed relief for over-burdened poor, working- and middle-class Californians.

Then, in the second half of the show, John Nichols, the National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation, talks with Alan about the homestretch of the presidential election. Just like 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump is in a virtual tie with the Democratic nominee. John reflects on the race in his home state of Wisconsin, which is once again one of the few swing states that will decide the election — and explains why the Harris campaign would be well-served by campaigning on a progressive economic and pro-labor platform.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Is Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER (1979) about the Soviet Russia in which it was made? And if not, then where exactly is "The Zone"? We wade into one of the most forbidding cinematic objects of all time, but realize that the answer is only ever found within. PLUS: Justin Trudeau is historically unpopular - so why hasn't he stepped down?

"US Politics Has Reached a Dead End" by Luke Savage - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/19/trump-campaign-leaked-data-voters-elon-musk

"Revealed: Trump ground game in key states flagged as potentially fake" by Hugo Lowell - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/19/trump-campaign-leaked-data-voters-elon-musk

Our episode on Ivan's Childhood - https://www.patreon.com/posts/263-sculpting-in-55465791

Our episode on Solaris - https://www.patreon.com/posts/317-hunters-in-64139407

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix on their book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea. Guest hosted by Micah Uetricht.

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William Hartung, co-author of a recent paper for Brown University's Watson Institute, outlines how much aid the US has given to Israel over the last year (plus, he shares some wacky stuff on AI weapons). The sociologist Scott Schieman talks about his surprising research showing that people actually like their jobs.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

The German Peasants’ War was the biggest social revolt in a European country during the period before the French Revolution. In the wake of the Reformation, a movement among the popular classes rose up against feudalism and aristocratic power. The revolt was brutally crushed and the challenge to the feudal order was defeated. Marxist writers like Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky later made it into a key reference point for their theories of class struggle.

Long Reads is joined by the writer and historian Martin Empson to discuss the rebellion. His book on the topic, The Time of the Harvest Has Come, will soon be published.

Read his article for Jacobin about the German Peasants' War here: https://jacobin.com/2023/12/german-peasants-war-feudalism-class-conflict-reformation

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Five years after Joker because an era-defining cultural phenomenon, its sequel, JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (2024), is the biggest flop of the year. We sifted through the wreckage to find a purposely abrasive object, and are split on its effectiveness.

Toronto listeners, see Luke speak at Progressive Publics: A Symposium Connecting Scholarship & Independent Media, November 8 - https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/progressive-publics-a-symposium-connecting-scholarship-independent-media-tickets-1051089455857

Plus, on November 5, a screening of Fantasy Mission Force with an introduction from Will - https://www.foxtheatre.ca/movies/important-cinema-club-masterpiece-classics-fantasy-mission-force/

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Anatol Lieven dissects the ambitiously aggressive grand design of the Biden-Harris foreign policy. Lily Lynch, author of a recent article for The Baffler, talks about the emptying out of the Balkans.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Naomi Klein on how the pandemic turbocharged a far-right conspiracist politics that’s sweeping into power. This strange new world, however, is a product of an old contradiction: the need to disavow and deny a long history and awful present; the inability to make sense of the extreme violence and oppression that makes everyday Western capitalist society possible. 

We discuss Klein’s book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World and her Guardian essay "How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war": theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/05/israel-gaza-october-7-memorials

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Paul North and Paul Reitter discuss their new translation of Marx’s Capital. Nimrod Flaschenberg and Alma Itzhaky, authors of a recent article for Jacobin, talk about the vicious political culture of Israel after October 7.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

On October 8, the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign held an online conference on “Boris Kagarlitsky and the Challenges of the Left.” Although Kagarlitsky is serving a five-year sentence in a Russian penal colony, he has just published a book called The Long Retreat: Strategies to Reverse the Decline of the Left. The conference addressed Kagarlitsky’s wide-ranging analysis of the left’s dilemmas in the face of multiple global crises, including the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. We will bring the whole conference to Jacobin Radio with a stellar lineup of international scholars and activists.

Today we hear the panel “Imperialism(s) Today,” looking at the nature of imperialism historically and in the present. Robert Brenner begins with the theory of imperialism from before WWI through the post-war period and up to the present, essentially arguing that in the present period of American hegemony, imperialism is the weapon of weaker powers. Ilya Matveev follows by examining three theorists of imperialism—Lenin, Schumpeter, and Mearsheimer—and looks at the Russian case through the lens of their different theories. Hanna Perekhoda, originally from Donetsk in the contested Donbas region, examines Putin's view of Ukraine as a creation by Russia's enemies. According to Putin, Lenin's support of the self-determination of Ukraine divided Russia, preventing it from becoming a leading power in the world. For proponents of this view, Russian sovereignty is under threat so long as Ukraine exists.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the third and final part of the epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our epic series on the history of revolutionary Arab politics. This episode takes us from Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative elections, through the siege on Gaza, to October 7, the Gaza genocide, the Axis of Resistance, and Israel’s attempt to draw Iran into a massive regional war with the US. 

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Last October, Long Reads spoke to Rashid Khalidi, one of the leading historians of modern Palestine, about the Israeli attack on Gaza. Few people would have guessed at the time that the mass killing of Palestinian civilians would still be happening twelve months later, and now expanding into Lebanon. The interview was conducted Wednesday, October 9th, when we were still waiting to see whether and in what way Israel would launch its promised attack on Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu had just threatened to inflict the same devastation on Lebanon that his military machine had already inflicted on Gaza.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

The new Netflix documentary WHAT'S NEXT: THE FUTURE WITH BILL GATES (2024) positions the Microsoft founder as "one of the good billionaires." But what are the limits to his brand of philanthropy? And how neutral and objective are these documentaries on the big streaming platforms? Luke welcomes Tim Schwab (author of The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire) to discuss why he declined to participate in the documentary, and what he uncovered about its making.

"Why I refused to participate in the Netflix docu-series on Bill Gates" by Tim Schwab - https://timschwab.substack.com/p/why-i-refused-to-participate-in-the

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

The rise of the labor movement in the US constitutes one of the brightest spots on the political horizon. Auto workers were joined by academic workers, actors, writers, hotel workers, UPS teamsters won without striking, and union drives have hit Amazon, Starbucks, universities and other sectors. Are these union drives and strikes opening a new period, igniting a newly energized working class?

Live from the Progressive Central conference held in Chicago before the Democratic National Convention, Jacobin Radio features an all-women panel of labor leaders and champions celebrating "Organized Labor on the Rise: the 2020s and Beyond." This panel, introduced by Alan Minsky and Hartsell Gray of Progressive Democrats of America, opens with Nina Turner on overcoming racism in the labor movement, followed by Saru Jayaraman from One Fair Wage and UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center, Sara Nelson, President of CWA’s flight attendants union, and Stacey Davis Gates, President of the Chicago Teachers Union.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years War on Palestine, talks about Israeli settler-colonialism and its imperial patrons. Aurélie Daher looks at Hezbollah and the challenges it faces after the assassination of its leader.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Jake Werner on how the US and China entered into a New Cold War and why the whole world urgently needs an alternative international order that fosters great power cooperation.  

Read Jake’s report A Program for Progressive China Policyquincyinst.org/research/a-program-for-progressive-china-policy/#executive-summary

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Forrest Hylton, author of a recent piece for the London Review of Books blog, talks about wildfires in Brazil and the political impotence of Lula’s administration. Edwin Ackerman discusses politics in Mexico as AMLO hands over power to Claudia Sheinbaum, having engineered a controversial overhaul of the judiciary.

Read Edwin's article, "AMLO’s War on Neoliberal Corruption," originally published in Catalyst, here: https://jacobin.com/2024/09/amlo-morena-neoliberalism-corruption-mexico

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Yoav Peled, Professor Emeritus of Tel Aviv University, is able to speak to us again for the first time since 2023. He helps chart the evolution of Israeli politics since the October 7 attack by Hamas, which was quickly followed by Israel's devastating war on Gaza, showing total disregard for the lives of Palestinians. That war is now extending to the North as Israel unleashes terror in Lebanon. And in Israel, the reverberations of October 7 continue to affect domestic politics. It also has created divisions within the Jewish community in the US. We get Yoav's analysis of the mood in Israel, what the massive demonstrations against Netanyahu signal, and the relationship between the expanding war and Israeli party politics. We'll also get Yoav to discuss his research on the rise of ethno- and religio-national populism, especially among the Mizrahim, who form the base of the Likud and the far right.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Over the last week, Israel has launched a full-scale attack on Lebanon as an extension of its campaign against Gaza. So far the air strikes have killed well over five hundred people. The attack on Lebanon has made the subject of this week’s podcast all the more relevant to the current situation.

Mahdi Amel was a member of the Lebanese communist movement and one of the most important political thinkers of the Arab left. Before his assassination in 1987, Amel produced a series of books and essays, some of which have now been translated into English for the collection Arab Marxism and National Liberation.

Long Reads is joined by the editor of that collection, Hicham Safieddine. Hicham is a professor of history at the University of British Columbia. The conversation was recorded Friday, September 19th. Please excuse sound quality issues, due to a bad connection, in the last part of the interview.

Read Hicham's piece about Amel in Jacobin: https://jacobin.com/2024/05/anti-colonialism-marxism-mahdi-amel

See also Hicham's recent coverage of the Israeli attack on Lebanon: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-new-front-war-cannot-end

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Featuring Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana on the history of left-wing internationalism from the Third Worldist currents that powered decolonization and struggles against neocolonialism through today’s renewed politics in solidarity with the Palestinian national liberation movement. Recorded in New York at Jewish Currents Live. 

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Niobe Way, author of Rebels with a Cause, talks about the emotional and social lives of boys and what they’re telling us about society. Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequality, reviews what economists have said about the topic over the centuries.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Bernie Sanders delivered the keynote speech at Progressive Central 2024, a conference held at the Chicago Teachers Union building just ahead of the Democratic National Convention. The two-day event posed progressive solutions to the crises undermining contemporary society and politics — many things missing from the convention itself.

The session, introduced by Alan Minsky of Progressive Democrats of America (and producer of this podcast), opens with remarks from Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, followed by Senator Bernie Sanders in dialogue with The Nation's John Nichols. Lastly, we hear from Representative Maxwell Frost. Progressive Central 2024 was hosted by PDA in coordination with The Nation, The Arab American Institute, and Operation Rainbow/PUSH.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second of what has become a three-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), The Dig's series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. This episode takes us from the disastrous Oslo Accords through the 2000 Camp David Summit and the eruption of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Then the 9/11 attacks, the War on Terror, the US destruction of Iraq, the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise of Islamic State. A century of Western imperialism had undermined Arab revolutionary movements and governments; the new millennium brought two decades of US-led war that destroyed the Arab state system. Atop its wreckage was the explosion of sectarian violence and murderous authoritarianism across the Arab East. Hope still resides in the power of popular renewal.

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

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Buy Exit Wounds at UCPress.edu

Is it ethical for a journalist to also act as a spy for a foreign government? Luke Lebrun of PressProgress joins us to consider the far-fetched claims of one of Canada's worst journalists, Adam Zivo. PLUS: In this very special episode, we catch up on some news items of Canadian interest, including the declining polling for Justin Trudeau's liberals, and the rising number of far-right Canadian influencers.

"This National Post Columnist Says He Spied for a Foreign Intelligence Agency. Experts Call His Behaviour ‘Unethical’ and ‘Absurd’" by Luke Lebrun - https://pressprogress.ca/this-national-post-columnist-says-he-spied-for-a-foreign-intelligence-agency-experts-call-his-behaviour-unethical-and-absurd/

"I cover the far right for a living. This is why I wasn’t surprised to find Canadians embedded in an alleged Russian propaganda scheme" by Luke Lebrun - https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/i-cover-the-far-right-for-a-living-this-is-why-i-wasnt-surprised-to/article_56042920-6c7c-11ef-aa82-9302cac8f9d3.html

"It Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election" by Luke Savage - https://jacobin.com/2023/01/hillary-clinton-russian-bots-2016-presidential-election-trump

"In Toronto's Weirdest Cinema, a Portrait of the Artist I'd Never Become" by Adam Zivo - https://quillette.com/2022/01/18/in-torontos-weirdest-cinema-a-portrait-of-the-artist-id-never-become/

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Neil Sehgal, co-author of a study about the relationship between slaveholder ancestry and net worth among members of Congress, discusses his research. Emily Jashinsky gives a conservative’s view of the election. And Melissa Lyon, co-author of a recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper, talks about the effects of US teachers' strikes.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

At the beginning of June this year, Emmanuel Macron called a snap election for the French National Assembly. The move came after the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, the National Rally, topped the poll in France’s European election. The party was widely expected to repeat that performance in the national election and form a government for the first time. But a left-wing alliance, the New Popular Front, thwarted the ambitions of Le Pen and her ally Jordan Bardella.

The New Popular Front was the largest single bloc in the National Assembly and should have been given the opportunity to nominate a prime minister. However, Macron was determined to stop that from happening. After stalling throughout the summer, Macron finally appointed a new prime minister last week. He chose Michel Barnier, a conservative politician whose party came fourth in the election.

Macron appointed Barnier with the approval of Marine Le Pen. As Jacobin’s Europe editor David Broder put it, Barnier may be in office, but Le Pen will hold power. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, the largest group in the New Popular Front, denounced the appointment of Barnier as a subversion of democracy and the popular will.

Bruno Amable, a professor of political economy at the University of Geneva, joins Long Reads for a conversation about Macron’s role in the wider crisis of French politics. Bruno is the author, with Stefano Palombarini, of an important book that analyzed the aggressive and authoritarian class politics underpinning Macron’s project. It was translated into English as The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France's Political Crisis.

Dan spoke with Bruno before the appointment of Michel Barnier as prime minister, when it was already clear that Macron was determined to exclude the left from power.

Find an earlier interview Jacobin conducted with Bruno, about Macron forming a right-wing bloc, here: https://jacobin.com/2022/04/emmanuel-macron-election-neoliberalism-france-right-left

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies with music by Knxwledge.

Featuring Amna Akbar, Gabe Winant, and Thea Riofrancos on the American political conjuncture: the centrality of Palestine, the contradictions of left electoralism, renewed liberal militarism, the return of Obama-ism, the state of the labor and climate movements—and more. Recorded live at Socialism 2024 in Chicago. 

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Robert Pausch of Die Zeit talks about the far right’s strong showing in German regional elections. Rob Larson, author of Mastering the Universe, looks at the obscene wealth of the superrich.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

What if a movie about a corporate merger became the most popular movie of the year? Friends, you don't have to imagine it. We discuss DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024) and ponder the question that Vulture asked: "Is Shawn Levy the Future of Populist Filmmaking?"

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first of a two-part epilogue to Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the Iranian Islamic Revolution’s huge impact across the Arab East alongside Saudi and Egyptian efforts to foster religious conservative movements in an effort to supplant and suppress the secular nationalist left. Plus the Iran-Iraq War, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the First Intifada, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the first US-led invasion of Iraq, and the PLO’s march toward the Oslo Accords–and how Hamas and Islamic Jihad stepped into the resulting vacuum, picking up a Palestinian armed struggle the PLO had renounced.

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Buy Nuclear Is Not The Solution at versobooks.com

Buy The Wannabe Fascists at UCPress.edu

Naomi Hossain explains the uprising in Bangladesh that deposed PM Shekih Hasina. Then Sandipto Dasgupta, author of Legalizing the Revolution, examines the transformation of India from colony to nation through the drafting of its constitution.

Journalist Marc Cooper and historian Robert Brenner, two long-time socialists, join Suzi to talk about the state of the election after a convention that lifted Democrats' spirits and Kamala Harris's chances to defeat Trump. The convention was historic in several ways: it was pro-union and the speakers were younger and more openly progressive on issues that matter. It also appeared to unite the old neoliberal wing of the party with the more radical base, emphasizing unity in the fight to protect the freedoms under attack. Judging by the polls, candidates Harris-Walz successfully walked the delicate tightrope that is internal Democratic politics but this meant downplaying both Palestinian issues and climate catastrophe. 

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

A Democratic National Convention takes place against a backdrop of protests against American imperial atrocities overseas... that's right, we're travelling back in time to 1968 with Haskell Wexler's MEDIUM COOL (1969). PLUS: So, have you heard about the DNC?

Join us on Patreon for an extra episode every week - www.patreon.com/michaelandus

"This National Post Columnist Says He Spied for a Foreign Intelligence Agency" by Luke LeBrun - https://pressprogress.ca/this-national-post-columnist-says-he-spied-for-a-foreign-intelligence-agency-experts-call-his-behaviour-unethical-and-absurd/

"Medium Cool: Preserving Disorder" by Thomas Beard - https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2773-medium-cool-preserving-disorder

"The New Yorker Political Scene Scene" podcast with special guest Will - https://rss.com/podcasts/newyorkerpoliticalscenescene/1619477/

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Jake Werner of the Quincy Institute makes his case for what a progressive China policy could look like. Then Gabriel Hetland reviews the record of Colombian president Gustavo Petro, a leftist trying to govern a deeply conservative country.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Sunaura Taylor on her book Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation. What does it mean to rethink socialism and Marxism through the frameworks of disability liberation and animal liberation? How do we relate to human difference and also to non-human animals? Where does the struggle against industrial agriculture fit into the fight against capitalism? Sunaura is interviewed by her sister, Dig guest host Astra Taylor.

Read about Daniel Denvir and The Dig in The Guardian theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/aug/13/dig-podcast-daniel-denvir

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Take 25% off a subscription to n+1 at nplusonemag.com/thedig 

Buy Unite and Win at haymarketbooks.org/books/2434-unite-and-win

During the 2012 election cycle, Pauly Shore went to Washington to take the temperature on American and Her Problems. His resulting comedy special, PAULY SHORE'S PAULY-TICS (2012), accidentally foreshadows some of the bad vibes of the years to come. PLUS: We chart one Oscar blogger's evolution from #StillWithHer to MAGA.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Russian dissident activists and scholars Ilya Budraitskis and Grusha Gilayeva last spoke to us after the Marxist critic Boris Kagarlitsky lost his appeal and was sent to a penal colony on a trumped-up charge of “justifying terrorism.” A few days later, Alexei Navalny died. Suzi talks to Ilya and Grusha to get their views about the complex multi-prisoner swap that happened at the start of this month and what it represents.

Kremlin spies, sleepers, and killers imprisoned in the west were exchanged for prisoners held in Russia’s penal colonies, including Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, British-Russian Vladimir Kara Murza, and Russians Ilya Yashin, Oleg Orlov and others. Sixteen have been exchanged. More than a thousand are still in prison. Millions remain in Russia. Of the Russian prisoners, Ilya Yashin was forcibly removed from Russia and exchanged against his will. Vladimir Kara Murza has vowed to return to Russia. We’ll hear more about the politically courageous Russians who were held (and now exchanged) for speaking out against Putin’s savage war in Ukraine like Yashin, Orlov, and Kara Murza. We’ll also ask what it means for Putin: will he continue to hold hostage human “assets” to be exchanged? Does the timing of the exchange signal Putin favors a Harris presidency over another Trump term?

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Arielle Klagsbrun of the All Eyes on Yass Campaign sheds light on the insufficiently known right-wing funder Jeff Yass. Then Sohrab Ahmari and Hamilton Nolan debate the existence, real or imagined, of pro-worker Republicans.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Ten years ago, Indonesia elected a new president named Jokowi who was supposed to represent a clear break with the legacy of Suharto’s dictatorship. He defeated the most notorious representative of the old guard, a former general called Prabowo. Prabowo was involved in some of the worst atrocities of the Suharto regime during the occupation of East Timor. This year, Prabowo won the presidential election on his third attempt — this time with the tacit support of his former opponent, Jokowi.

To discuss how Prabowo finally achieved his goal and what it means for Indonesian politics, Long Reads is joined by Mike Vann, professor of history at Sacramento State University. Mike joined us on Long Reads back in 2021 for a two-partconversation about Suharto’s regime and its legacy.

Read his article, "Indonesia’s New President Is Dangerously Authoritarian," here: https://jacobin.com/2024/02/prabowo-indonesia-president-authoritarian-fascist

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Tony Buba chronicled the decline of his hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania in a series of acclaimed documentaries that elevated him to national notoriety. But in the extraordinary documentary/fiction hybrid LIGHTNING OVER BRADDOCK: A RUST BOWL FANTASY (1988), he asks what it means when his success is tied to so many people's poverty.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Heidi Matthews analyzes the World Court’s declaration of Israel’s occupations illegal. Molly White looks at how crypto is spending its money in politics. And lastly, Nausicaa Renner, author of a recent article for Parapraxis, psychoanalyzes Joe Biden.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Jeremy Corbyn and Laleh Khalili on internationalism and left-wing politics. A special Dig co-hosted with the Verso Podcast in front of a live London audience.

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 - Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org 

Buy Twilight Prisoners at Haymarketbooks.com

In Barry Levinson and David Mamet's WAG THE DOG (1997), a political spin-doctor teams with a movie producer to fake a war and save an incumbent president. You've heard of manufacturing consent, but to what extent can Hollywood and Washington manufacture reality? We're joined by Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison of the American Prestige podcast to discuss.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Dan just did a live Dig in London with Jeremy Corbyn and Laleh Khalili. It was part of a podcast doubleheader that included this live episode of the economics podcast Macrodose featuring Asad Rehman, James Meadway, and Thea Riofrancos. The live Dig with Corbyn and Khalili on internationalist and anti-imperialist politics will be posted in a few days.

Subscribe to Macrodose at linktr.ee/macrodosepodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or wherever you get podcasts 

Support Macrodose at patreon.com/Macrodose

The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 - Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org

Cole Stangler talks about the monumentally inconclusive French elections. David Palumbo-Liu explores the Silicon Valley world that launched J. D. Vance as a politician. Plus: a brief bit from the late Jane McAlevey on power.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SIXTEENTH and final episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment traces a massive defeat for the Palestinian Revolution: Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and brutal siege of Beirut. Under severe pressure and isolated in the wake of Egypt’s normalization with Israel, the PLO evacuated its headquarters. What followed was a giant massacre of Palestinian civilians and the end of the decades-long era of Arab revolutionary politics to which this series has been dedicated. A substantial epilogue is coming soon.

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Spread the word about Thawrathedigradio.com/Thawra

Check out the Palestinian Revolution website! learnpalestine.qeh.ox.ac.uk/teach

Take 25% off a subscription to n+1 at nplusonemag.com/thedig. Enter THEDIG for discount. 

Suzi talks to writer Micah Sifry, who covers US & Middle East politics on his Substack newsletter The Connector, about whether he thinks a Harris presidency could change the dynamic of the Israel-US relationship, what it will mean for the war on Gaza, as well as Netanyahu’s political survival. The withdrawal of Biden from the presidential race has upended what looked like a death march to a Trump/Vance victory. Netanyahu’s dreadful speech to the joint session of Congress on July 24, boycotted by half the Democratic caucus in both houses, including VP Kamala Harris, highlights the opportunity she has to win back the votes of those who threatened to stay home unless the US stop funding Israel’s wars — an opening that is particularly important in the swing state of Michigan. Micah Sifry untangles all these threads, which constitute what he sees as the black hole of foreign policy.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

It's a politics-only episode, because we've got a big subject: It's time to say goodbye to your favorite American president, Joe Biden. We welcome back Branko Marcetic to tally #46's successes and failures—and do a vibe check on the Democratic Party following the ouster of its standard-bearer. PLUS: Branko reports on the Republican National Convention.

"Joe Biden Wanted This" by Branko Marcetic - https://jacobin.com/2024/07/biden-2024-dropout-gaza-legacy

"How Joe Biden Became a Steadfast Israel Defender" by Branko Marcetic - https://jacobin.com/2024/07/joe-biden-israel-support-history

"Never Forget How Many Times the Liberal Establishment Saved Biden’s Arse" by Luke Savage - https://novaramedia.com/2024/07/23/never-forget-how-many-times-the-liberal-establishment-saved-bidens-ass/

"Why Biden finally quit" - https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/21/why-biden-dropped-out-00170106

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Last week, the International Court of Justice issued a landmark ruling on the status of Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Israel is currently facing several challenges through the international legal system. The ICJ has also been hearing a South African case that accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza. And the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has requested arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Yoav Gallant.

John Reynolds, a professor of law at Maynooth University and the author of Empire, Emergency, and International Law, joins Long Reads to discuss these developments. John previously spoke to us back in January after the ICJ gave its first response to the South African genocide case.

Find John's articles for Jacobin here: https://jacobin.com/author/john-reynolds

Also see recent investigations into Israel's covert war on the ICC at +972and The Guardian.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Brandon Mancilla of the UAW looks behind the GOP’s pro-worker facade. Adam Hilton, author of True Blues, talks about the bizarre nature of the US political party system.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

In 2005, the Clinton family's own foundation created a DVD compilation of times when Bill and Hillary brought the funny. We discuss A TIME TO LAUGH: THE CLINTONS' HUMOR (2005), and glean a little bit of insight into how the former First Family view themselves. PLUS: From an assassination attempt of the former U.S. president to a coup attempt on the current one, we've got a lot of news to catch up on.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

The second round of elections in France and in Iran both yielded surprise results that we could characterize as historic, especially in France, and to be seen in Iran. Sebastian Budgen returns to discuss the French results, which upset Le Pen's far right RA and Macron's Center, putting the left New Popular Front in the strongest position in Parliament. How were the various organizations of the left able to come together so quickly in their new alliance? How did they achieve agreement with the center to get candidates in constituencies with 3 or 4 candidates to withdraw so that only the strongest candidate could face down the RA rightist candidate? What comes next? With the left now the majority force in France’s parliament, we get Sebastian’s take on the challenges it faces in implementing the popular proposals in their platform — and whether they can continue the alliance with the center to thwart the right.

Suzi also talks to Yassamine Mather to get her views on the surprise result in Iran’s second round. At a moment when the hardliners seemed fully in control, the Iranian people elected Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate reformer, as President. He won with 3 million votes over the regime insider and hardliner Ali Jalili, who mouthed all the regime’s hardline positions on internal security and foreign policy. It is a dramatic turn of events signaling the population’s desire for change. Pezeshkian focused on social reforms, economic improvement and renewed nuclear negotiations — and won, but his success depends on the Supreme Leader’s approval. We get Yassamine’s understanding of this result and ask if it sets the stage for potential change in Iran where the nation is grappling with deep-seated discontent, geopolitical turmoil, a crippled economy, rampant corruption, and a repressive regime.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment addresses the Palestinian Revolution’s project in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan—leading up to the 1970 conflict with the Jordanian state and the violent expulsion of PLO guerrillas during Black September. Then, Egypt and Syria checked Israel’s power in the October War of 1973—only for Anwar Sadat to lead Egypt into Kissinger’s plan to pacify Arab revolution. 

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com

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The Palestinian Revolution website is live! learnpalestine.qeh.ox.ac.uk/teach

Buy tickets for live Dig with Corbyn in London https://unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili

The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 - Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org 

Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin 

Richard Seymour, author of a recent rundown for New Left Review's Sidecar blog, discusses the British election. Trita Parsi talks about the Iranian election. Finally, we remember Jane McAlevey with a 2017 Behind the News interview. See a catalog of further interviews here: https://lbo-news.com/2024/07/11/jane-mcalevey-the-behind-the-news-interviews/

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

On July 4, voters in Britain went to the polls to elect a new government. Labour ended up with 411 seats in the House of Commons, while the Conservative Party had just 121.

At first glance, the result seems like a massive popular mandate for Keir Starmer and the Labour Party. But we have to reckon with the British electoral system, which can give parties a large majority of seats without even a small majority of votes. Labour will form a government with less than 34 percent of the overall vote. That’s barely 2 percent more than the party achieved with Jeremy Corbyn as leader in 2019, on a much lower turnout.

The real story of the election was a Tory collapse. The Conservative vote share dropped by 20 percent. The right-wing Reform Party of Nigel Farage divided the right-wing bloc with its anti-immigrant platform. Reform received 14 percent of the vote, but only ended up with 5 seats.

For a conversation about the election and the future of British politics, Long Reads is joined by Phil Burton-Cartledge. Phil is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Derby, and he’s the author of a book about the Conservative Party called The Party’s Over.

Support for this podcast comes from Haymarket Books, offering free shipping on orders over $25 (or £20). One title you might enjoy is Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba.

Support also comes from A Sense of Rebellion, a new podcast from tech critic Evgeny Morozov that explores counterculture at the dawn of the digital revolution.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

It's Studio 60 vs the unions in Episode 17 ("The Disaster Show") of Aaron Sorkin's STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP. We're pleased to welcome Will Menaker (of Chapo Trap House and Movie Mindset fame) to help us make sense of Sorkin's perspective on organized labor. PLUS: So have you heard about Joe Biden?

This is an unlocked episode from our ongoing Patreon series about Studio 60.

Robert Pape, author of a recent piece in Foreign Affairs, talks about how, despite Israel’s murderous onslaught on Gaza, Hamas is winning. Wanda Bertram discusses how US incarceration rates stack up against the rest of the world (massively) and other news on crime and punishment. See the Prison Policy Initiative's 2024 report: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.html

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the rise of the Palestinian Revolution and then its explosion after the Arab defeat in the June War of 1967 with Israel. Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation and Palestine, and other factions launched an armed guerrilla struggle against Israel, engaging the Palestinian people in a full-scale mobilization for their liberation. Also: Ba'athists Aḥmad Ḥasan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein seized power in Iraq, as did Muammar Gaddafi’s Free Officers in Libya. 

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Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com

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Buy Love in the Time of Self-Publishing at Princeton.press/love

Journalist Marc Cooper and historian Robert Brenner join Suzi in conversation following the painful first presidential debate held on June 27. Most of the immediate post mortems are panicked responses and calls for Biden to step out of the race. We go beneath the surface to parse the issues discussed or omitted, and ask what they think is now possible in the remaining months before the election. We also look at the way CNN handled, or mishandled, the debate itself, with no attempt to fact check or challenge falsehoods. Finally we look at the danger of a possible second Trump term for the US and the world.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

You can go looking for the zeitgeist, but only the zeitgeist can find you. That's what the makers of countless pieces of failed Oscar bait have learned. In this special episode, we run through some of the most legendary failed Oscar bait of the last 25 years and speculate why they didn't catch anything. PLUS: presidential libraries, the Obama Foundation, and an autobiographical novel from an unlikely Hollywood star.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Sebastian Budgen, Editorial Director of Verso Books, splits his time between London and Paris. He joins us to discuss the surprising elections called in each country.

In the UK, Rishi Sunak called a general election for July 4 at what seems like the worst time for Tory rule. And across the pond, Emmanuel Macron called a snap election in France for June 30 and July 7 after Marine Le Pen’s far right Rassemblement National swept the European elections on June 9. He didn’t have to do it, any more than Sunak did, though Macron’s government isn’t teetering like Sunak’s.

Why now? Conventional wisdom holds that Macron called the election after the right trounced the center in the European elections because he was certain the divisions in the left would make him the rational choice, apparently betting that the center can hold. But the left responded to this new reality, getting its act together and forming a New Popular Front consisting of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, the Parti Socialiste, the Greens, and the Communist Party. According to the NYT on June 21, the new coalition is increasingly well-positioned to form a new government that could weaken Macron’s grip on power.

In the UK, PM Rishi Sunak called a general election for July 4 at a terrible time for his government. Whereas Macron is unpopular, Sunak’s Tories are falling apart after fourteen years in power. What’s behind both these elections? What are the possible outcomes? To get a deeper analysis and perspective, we turn to Sebastian Budgen in Paris.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Steven Simon discusses Israel and the Arab states’ relations with it. Jennifer Berkshire, co-author of The Education Wars, talks about the right wing’s latest educational ploys.

See Marcus Brown’s website, mentioned in the show intro: https://arslaverytrails.com/

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

When our politicians fail us, can journalism save us? We revisit George Clooney's GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK (2005), about Edward R. Murrow's battle with Joseph McCarthy, and get a lesson in how the liberal imagination remembers the Red Scare. PLUS: the rise of A.I. in the arts and the state of the center-left in Europe.

"Liberals, I Do Despise" by Adolph Reed Jr. - https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/12/09/liberals-i-do-despise

"On Smarm" by Tom Scocca - https://www.gawkerarchives.com/on-smarm-1476594977

"Europe Is Warning Us" by Grace Blakeley - https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/06/europe-is-warning-us

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Elections for the European Union happened two weeks ago. Although turnout was just over 50 percent, the elections have already resulted in some dramatic consequences for European politics. The largest single group in the new parliament will be the European People’s Party, the main bloc of the center right. Ursula von der Leyen, the German president of the European Commission, is a prominent figure in the EPP. She and the EPP leader Manfred Weber have both indicated that they would be open to forming an alliance with sections of the far right.

In France and Italy, far-right parties have already supplanted the traditional conservatives as the dominant right-wing force. The French party of Marine Le Pen came first in the election, prompting Emmanuel Macron to call a snap election for early next month.

Jacobin’s European editor David Broder joins Long Reads for a conversation about European politics after the election. David has written two books about the rise of right-wing nationalism in Italy, First They Took Rome and Mussolini’s Grandchildren. He’s also written many articles about European politics for publications like the New Statesman and the New York Times, as well as Jacobin, of course.

Find David's coverage on the Jacobin site, including his latest, "Europe’s Center Is Holding — by Integrating the Far Right": https://jacobin.com/2024/06/eu-parliament-elections-far-right-center

Also see the William Bouchardon article mentioned by David, "Marine Le Pen Is Seducing France’s Business Elite": https://jacobin.com/2024/06/marine-le-pen-france-business-elite

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRTEENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the armed left-wing revolutionary movements that challenged British imperial power across Southern Arabia, with the National Liberation Front taking over South Yemen and Dhufari rebels in Oman waging a liberation war against the Sultan. Today’s alliance of reactionary Gulf monarchies was not inevitable; they were made by colonial power, and Arab revolutionaries in the 1960s and 70s mounted a major effort to overthrow them.

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com

Buy tickets for live Dig with Jeremy Corbyn in London:

unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili

Buy The Last Human Job at Princeton.press/job 

Buy How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment at haymarketbooks.org

Edwin Ackerman, who wrote a recent piece for NLR Sidecar, reviews the Mexican elections and the reasons for AMLO’s immense popularity. Joel Whitney, author of the book Flights, talks about radical and revolutionaries’ battles with the CIA.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

In this episode of Jacobin Radio, guest host Barry Eidlin assesses the most recent Labor Notes conference held near Chicago from April 19-21. The Labor Notes conference is the premier gathering of rank-and-file labor activists and organizers from across the U.S. and around the world. This year’s conference was the biggest yet, with over 4,700 people gathered to hear the latest on organizing strategy and contract victories. In a bit of serendipity, Labor Notes conference goers got to watch live the vote tallies coming in from a union election at the VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The United Auto Workers won an historic 3-to-1 victory, organizing the first foreign-owned auto transplant in the South.

What does this year’s Labor Notes conference tell us about the state of the U.S. labor movement, and what lies ahead? Barry discusses these questions and more with two long-time Labor Notes conference organizers, Alexandra Bradbury and Jane Slaughter.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

During the Trump presidency, #TheResistance had a powerful figurehead, and his name was (the late) Mr. Rogers. We discuss the Tom Hanks-led #nicecore landmark A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (2019), the strengths and limitations of Fred Rogers as a Trump-era political symbol, and what this movie fails to understand about him. PLUS: What's eating David Frum about the recent Mexican election?

"Can You Say... 'Hero'?" by Tom Junod - https://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/publications/press/esquire/index.html

"How Liberalism Betrayed the Enlightenment and Lost Its Soul" by Michael Brenes - https://jacobin.com/2024/05/cold-war-liberalism-moyn-review

Mr. Rogers at the Emmys - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upm9LnuCBUM&ab_channel=TheEmmyAwards

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

On June 5, Boris Kagarlitsky’s appeal against a five-year prison sentence was rejected by the Russian Supreme Court's Military Chamber. Kagarlitsky must now serve his sentence in a penal colony in Torzhok some 155 miles northwest of Moscow. The decision was unjust, but not unexpected.

Kagarlitsky spent nearly five months in pre-trial detention, charged with "justifying terrorism" for ironic remarks he made on his social media channel after the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in 2022. He was freed after a military court handed him a fine in December. But in February 2024, there was an unexpected appeal trial at a military court of appeals where the prosecutors overturned the December verdict that freed him, citing excessive leniency.

During the June 5 appeal hearing, Kagarlitsky explained that the title of the offending YouTube video, “Explosive Congratulations for Mostik the Cat” — a reference to a real cat that lived on the Crimea bridge — was “an extremely unfortunate joke.” He argued that his jail term was disproportionate to the offense. Kagarlitsky’s attorney plans to appeal the verdict with Russia’s Constitutional Court on the grounds that his client received “excessive” punishment.

The case against Boris Kagarlitsky is indicative: He received five years not for the content of the video, but for the words of its title. The judges’ cruel decision reflects the determination of the Putin regime to crush domestic opposition to its war on Ukraine. This is a state bent on suppressing all forms of criticism, jokes included. In this context, the basic democratic and legal rights of anti-war activists like Boris Kagarlitsky and thousands of others count for very little.

Boris Kagarlitsky is in prison for courageously speaking out against the war in Ukraine. He is the victim of a gross but entirely deliberate miscarriage of justice and has become a symbol of the struggle for the right to freedom of expression. He is a political prisoner and prisoner of conscience.

Ilya Budraitskis, another Putin critic, was dismissed from his job at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and forced to flee Russia to avoid arrest for his active critique of the war in Ukraine and consistent opposition to Putin’s regime. He joins us with his take on the fate of opposition in Russia and the case of Boris Kagarlitsky in general.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Siddhartha Deb, author of Twilight Prisoners, dives into the Hindu right and its poor showing in India’s elections. Sean Jacobs, professor at the New School and publisher of Africa Is a Country, explains the ANC’s poor showing in South Africa’s elections.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the TWELFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of Saudi Arabia, a country whose reactionary, US-aligned trajectory was throughout the 1950s and 60s challenged by labor strikes, dissident currents, rebellious princes, and an anticolonial oil minister. But Saudi royal conservatism asserted itself and a friendship with Nasser’s Egypt turned into conflict. Ultimately both countries got drawn into North Yemen’s civil war, which sapped Egypt’s military strength ahead of the 1967 war with Israel. Plus: radical politics against British colonial power in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the Trucial States.

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unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili

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This is another special episode of Long Reads about the Israeli war on Gaza.

On Thursday, June 6th, we spoke with Akbar Shahid Ahmed of the Huffington Post. Akbar previously spoke with us in early January about the role of the Biden administration. Five months later, with the Israeli government now on trial for genocide while the attack on Rafah has begun, it’s time for another look at Biden’s tenacious support for Israel.

Find Akbar's coverage here: https://www.huffpost.com/author/akbar-shahid-ahmed

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Suzi talks to Isabel Kain at UC Santa Cruz, Marie Salem at UCLA, and Anna Weiss at USC — all UAW academic workers — about the unprecedented labor action on their campuses and the violent response from police called in by their administrations.

We recorded the interview with Isabel at UCSC as the police in riot gear moved into the campus. Santa Cruz was the first to go on strike and unlike the other UC campuses, the administration was passive and did not call in the police. Until 1am on May 31. At the heart of the action is the war in Gaza, which has inflicted unspeakable suffering and carnage, provoking widespread actions in solidarity with Palestine on campuses. New movements organized in encampments have demanded an immediate ceasefire and university divestment from companies tied to Israel’s war and occupation. The response from the administration at UCLA in particular was brutal. They called in police who assaulted the encampment and stood back when a mob of white nationalists and neo-Nazis joined forces with Zionists to attack the camp, whose residents included a large number of Jewish students.

Outraged grad students at UC, organized in UAW Local 4811, have launched a strike, turning the right to protest and freedom of speech into a labor issue. The local represents some 48,000 postdocs, teaching assistants, academic and student researchers across the UC system. At USC, academic workers filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) after five grad student members were arrested on campus during the crackdown on the protests. We get the story.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Aziz Rana, author of The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them, analyzes how our founding document constrains democracy but we worship it anyway.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Dylan Saba and Waleed Shahid on how Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the mass solidarity movement opposing it are transforming US politics. This anti-imperialist internationalist moment marks a profound turning point for the American left.

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The Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago from Aug 30 - Sept 2. Learn more and register at socialismconference.org (early bird discount until 6/28!) 

Buy Unbuild Walls at haymarketbooks.org

The Russian Marxist Boris Kagarlitsky last spoke to us shortly after his release from nearly five months in prison. He was arrested on far-fetched charges of "justifying terrorism" for ironic remarks he made on his social media channel after the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in 2022. Boris was freed after a military court handed him a fine in December 2023, and spoke to Suzi two weeks later in the interview you are about to hear.

Barely two months after Boris’s release there was an unexpected appeal trial at a military court in February 2024, and the prosecutors overturned the December verdict that freed him, citing "excessive leniency." He was sentenced to five years in a general regime penal colony and whisked from the courtroom to prison. Now three months later, after several moves, Boris has arrived at his final place of detention, Penal Colony No. 4 in Torzhok, 155 miles northwest of Moscow.

Once again, Boris requires our solidarity. His final appeal will be heard on June 5 by Russia’s Supreme Court. An international petition has garnered more than 16,000 signatures calling for his release and all anti-war political prisoners. President Putin’s government is using anti-terror laws to step up its already draconian repression of dissent at home and in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. More than 20,000 Russians have been detained and more than 1,000 have been put on trial.

In an open letter from prison, Boris wrote, "Under today’s conditions, when political action and self-organization in our country have become extremely difficult, helping our co-thinkers who have been imprisoned is not just humanitarian activity, but also an important political gesture, an act of practical solidarity." He has brought his incisive analysis to these airwaves for more than three decades.

The petition demanding the immediate and unconditional release of Boris Kagarlitsky and all other anti-war prisoners can be found at freeboris.info. This interview was originally broadcast in January.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Mouin Rabbani discusses Israel's war on Gaza and the broader context of the conflict. Stefanie Stantcheva discusses her recent economicpapers about why people hate inflation.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

When Immanuel Wallerstein died in 2019, he was one of the most influential thinkers about the crisis-ridden development of global capitalism. People who might never have read one of his books will still find themselves referring to the core and the periphery of the capitalist world-system.

Gregory Williams joins Long Reads to take a deeper look today at Wallerstein’s life and work as a radical intellectual. Gregory is a professor of political science and international relations at Simmons University in Boston. He’s also the author of Contesting the Global Order: The Radical Political Economy of Perry Anderson and Immanuel Wallerstein.

Read Gregory's piece for Jacobin, "Immanuel Wallerstein’s Work Can Help Us Understand the Deepening Crises of Capitalism" here: https://jacobin.com/2023/12/immanuel-wallerstein-world-systems-theory-development-cycles-capitalism-crisis-history

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the ELEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of the destruction of the two giant revolutionary projects of 1958: the union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser’s United Arab Republic and Iraq’s July Revolution that brought Qasim alongside communist allies to power. The rival radical projects of pan-Arabism and communism suffered huge blows. So did Nasser and Qasim, the era’s most significant Arab anti-imperialist leaders. Meanwhile, the Ba’ath, once ideological and idealistic, became increasingly dominated by military men who made the party into an instrument for raw domination. 

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unionchapel.org.uk/venue/whats-on/versothe-dig-live-podcast-with-jeremy-corbyn-laleh-khalili

Buy Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom at Versobooks.com 

Subscribe to Dissent magazine in print or online at dissentmagazine.org/subscribe

Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee scored a smashing victory on April 19, when they voted by a 3-1 margin to join the UAW. That makes Tennessee Volkswagen the first auto plant in the South to unionize by election since the 1940s. While the recent victory was overwhelming, it came only after two bitter organizing defeats for the VW Chattanooga workers, first in 2014 and then in 2019. The organizing victory at VW is one of the single most important wins for U.S. labor in decades, and potentially the start of a much bigger turnaround.

Guest host Barry Eidlin talks to auto workers Yolanda Peoples, Renee Berry, and Victor Vaughn — all deeply involved in the organizing campaign at the Volkswagen Chattanooga plant — about how they organized, how they won, and what comes next.

Barry talked to the Chattanooga workers before the union vote count at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama on May 17. While the Volkswagen organizing drive was an amazing success, the workers lost at the Mercedes plant in nearby Alabama, where 56% of workers voted against unionizing after a sophisticated anti-union drive by management with an assist from anti-union local and state officials.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Annelle Sheline talks about her resignation from the State Department as a protest against the war on Gaza. See her statement on Yahoo! News. Plus: Daniel Bessner, author of a recent Harper's cover story, discusses the debasement of screenwriting in Hollywood.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

After inhabiting the White House but before examining the Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin created a show that sought nothing less than to fix the most important American institution of them all: Saturday Night Live. We launch what will eventually become a multi-episode discussion of STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP (2006-7). Catch parts two and three on Patreon.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the TENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment tells the story of Iraq’s 1958 July Revolution: a Free Officers’ coup overthrew the imperialist-aligned Hashemite monarchy and brought nationalist Abdul-Karim Qasim to power alongside a surging Communist Party. Revolutionary currents soon turned against one another, however, as did Qasim and Nasser. Conflict stemmed from serious political and strategic differences, but also petty rivalries and bitter feuds. And in Iraq, class conflict often appeared dressed up in the sectarian and ethnic modalities through which class was lived. 

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Quinn Slobodian, who recently wrote a paper about Peter Brimelow, discusses the white supremacist wing of neoliberalism. Derek Seidman looks into the Alabama corporate elite and its terror at the incursion of the UAW. See his recentarticles for Truthout.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online. https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Adam Federman, author of a recent feature for In These Times, talks about the criminalization of protest. Kay Gabriel, who wrote a piece about anti-trans panic for n+1, explains how the right is using that panic to make war on public schools and teachers’ unions.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

In the election year of 2004, an ultraviolent subtitled right-wing Christian movie became a genuine cultural phenomenon and political lightning-rod. We finally discuss THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004) and theology according to Mel Gibson. PLUS: the White House Correspondents Dinner, the Columbia encampment, and the one optimistic takeaway of a discouraging week.

"This Is How Power Protects Itself" by Jack Mirkinson - https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/columbia-ccny-cuny-protest-nypd-police-brutality/

"Mel Gibson's Martyrdom Complex" by Frank Rich - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/movies/mel-gibson-s-martyrdom-complex.html

"The Gospel According to Mel" by Christopher Hitchens - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/03/hitchens-201102

The Mel Gibson/Diane Sawyer interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ecnfe530IE

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the NINTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment covers the creation of a Palestinian national liberation movement throughout the 1950s by a people dispersed by the Nakba: organizations, alliances, and theories of change assembled in the universities, cities, and refugee camps surrounding Palestine. We end with the 1959 foundation of Fatah, the first organization for Palestinians led by Palestinians focused first and foremost on Palestinian liberation. This is the story of the beginning of the Palestinian national liberation movement as we have come to know it today. 

Buy How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment at haymarketbooks.org 

Buy States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization at Versobooks.com 

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During the 1990s, the government of Slobodan Milošević led Serbia into another Balkan war. His allies in Bosnia were responsible for a litany of war crimes, including the massacre at Srebrenica. The war left Serbia itself isolated and impoverished. A protest movement drove Milošević from power in 2000.

Two decades later, Serbia has a president who served under Milošević and supported the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Where is Serbia going under the rule of Aleksandar Vučić?

Lily Lynch, an American journalist who’s been reporting from Belgrade over the last decade, joins to discuss. She’s the editor of Balkanist magazine and she’s written for publications such as New Left Review and the New Statesman.

This week only, Jacobin is offering a special May Day rate on subscriptions. Get a year of the print magazine for just $10! Use code MAYDAY2024: https://jacobin.com/subscribe/?code=MAYDAY2024

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Jacobin is celebrating International Workers’ Day once again with solidarity subscriptions! Since our founding in 2010, we’ve aimed to reach millions with democratic socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. Our work online — be it podcasts, video, or daily articles — is sustained first and foremost through magazine subscriptions. On May 1st, and a few days after, you can use the code MAYDAY2024 at checkout to get a yearlong digital subscription for just $1, or $10 for the print magazine. This offer also applies to gift subscriptions.

Subscribe here: https://jacobin.com/subscribe/?code=MAYDAY2024

NYC listeners: May 1st (this evening) at 7pm, we're hosting a roundtable talk at The People's Forum about the future of the US labor movement, featuring Alex Press, Paul Prescod, Anthony Rosario, and Nick Livick. The event is free, but please RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jacobin-may-day-event-whats-next-for-us-labor-tickets-884360575287

Jodi Dean talks about being suspended from teaching at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for writing an article the administration didn’t like. Keri Leigh Merritt, who recently wrote an essay for Aeon, discusses the lingering effects of antebellum Southern society. Finally, we hear excerpts from an interview first broadcast in June 2023 with Samuel Bazzi, co-author of a paper about the postbellum South, on the effects of white migration out of the region.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the EIGHTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. A compact introduction to the Movement of Arab Nationalists, which in the 1950s built a presence that stretched across the region, from Beirut and Jordan to Cairo and the Gulf—becoming a truly powerful force in Kuwait. Led in significant part by Palestinians, its early history offers a ground-level look at the organizational and theoretical currents shaping radical Arab politics. It is also the backstory for key Marxist groups that later grew out of the Movement: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, South Yemen’s National Liberation Front, and the Dhofar Liberation Front.

Buy Future of Denial at versobooks.com 

On May 1st, subscribe to a year of Jacobin's digital publication for just $1, or a year of Jacobin in print for only $10: jacobin.com/subscribe/?code=MAYDAYDIG

Or this link for a gift: jacobin.com/subscribe/?type=gift&level=standard-digital&?code=MAYDAYDIG

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At the end of last year, the French politician Jacques Delors died at the age of 98. Delors is best remembered for his time as president of the European Commission from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. During that time, the European Community became the European Union. The Delors Commission also laid the groundwork for the single currency through the Maastricht Treaty. One of the main ideas associated with Delors was the concept of a “social Europe.”

Our guest today is Aurelie Dianara. She’s a research fellow at the University of Évry in Paris. Her book Social Europe, the Road not Taken: The Left and European Integration in the Long 1970s was published in 2022.

As Aurelie explains, the idea of “social Europe” originated in the crisis of global capitalism during the 1970s. When it was taken up by Delors and his Commission, it lost its radical connotations and eventually became an alibi for the neoliberal framework of the Eurozone.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Yanis Varoufakis talks about being banned in Germany for supporting the Palestinian cause, and then about the transformation he analyzes in his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Noura Erakat, Avi Shlaim, Ussama Makdisi, Ilan Pappé, Ghada Ageel Hamdan, and Abdel Razzaq Takriti on the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Recorded at the World Academic Forum for Palestine in Houston. We’ll be back next week with episode eight of Thawra, our rolling series on 20th century Arab radicalisms.

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Watch more from the World Academic Forum for Palestine youtube.com/c/haymarketbooks

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Buy The Jail is Everywhere at versobooks.com

By the third entry of the God's Not Dead franchise, its creative team had clearly started listening to their critics. The result was a kinder, gentler right-wing Evangelical Christian drama that sought to heal divides... and failed at the box office. We welcome back New Republic writer and our resident God's Not Dead correspondent Alex Shephard to discuss GOD'S NOT DEAD: A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS (2018).

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Heidi Matthews surveys cases against Israel pending at the the World Court. Elijah Wald, author of Jelly Roll Blues, talks about Jelly Roll Morton and the hidden history of early blues music.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SEVENTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the the US’s Eisenhower Doctrine, which in 1957 inaugurated a new era of imperialism in the Middle East; the Ba’ath Party driving Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic, a superstate under Nasser’s rule, in 1958; and, later that year, Eisenhower landing US Marines in Lebanon, the first American combat operation in the region.

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Buy Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat at versobooks.com

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For seven weeks in 1936 and 1937, workers at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan held a risky sit-down strike. A true David vs. Goliath story, their strike won recognition for the United Auto Workers and changed labor in the United States forever. With a newer UAW strike fresh in the memory, we discuss the BBC documentary THE GREAT SIT-DOWN (1976).

Watch The Great Sit-Down - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Py_vNt4fc

See Will introduce Gamera: Super Monster at the Fox Theatre in Toronto on April 16 - https://www.foxtheatre.ca/movies/important-cinema-club-gamera-super-monster/

"Joe Lieberman? Really?" by Branko Marcetic - https://jacobin.com/2018/07/joe-lieberman-democratic-party-conservative-left

"Sam Bankman-Fried will grow old in jail. But don’t forget those who basked in his orbit" by Aditya Chakrabortty - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/28/sam-bankman-fried-jail-ftx-money

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Trita Parsi explains why Israel is trying to expand its war to Iran and Hezbollah. Natasha Lennard analyzes the Zionist appropriation of leftish “safe space” discourse. And Stefan Yong explores the structure of the global shipping industry in light of the Baltimore bridge disaster.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

J. B. S. Haldane was one of the great scientific minds of the twentieth century. He played an important role in the development of genetics and the theory of evolution. Haldane was also a tireless political campaigner who gravitated towards the communist movement in the 1930s and 40s. His public career makes for a fascinating case study on the relationship between politics and science.

Samanth Subramanian joins Long Reads to discuss the life of Haldane. Samanth, a journalist from India who’s now based in London, is the author of several books, including the 2019 biography A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies with music by Knxwledge.

Pankaj Mishra, author of a recent article for the London Review of Books, "The Shoah after Gaza," talks about the propaganda-induced debasement of the Holocaust. Nancy Folbre, co-author of a recent report on household economic well-being, discusses assigning a monetary value to care work.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the SIXTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the intensification of the Cold War across the Middle East. Western imperialist powers attempted to recruit Arab countries to the Baghdad Pact, a Middle Eastern NATO. Nasser rallied the Arab masses in opposition, becoming an anti-imperialist icon. In 1956, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. In response, the British, French, and Israelis attacked Egypt. But Nasser and Arab anti-imperialism won the day.

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Suzi talks to Ilya Matveev about the recent election in Russia giving Putin a fifth term in power—an election he argues was stage-managed from above. Matveev discusses how the Putin government, with increasing nationalist propaganda, has stepped up repression and persecution of critical voices against the war in Ukraine. He talks about Kremlin policy of silencing independent media, stopping public displays of opposition, and detaining critics with large prison sentences. While the economy hasn’t tanked—the war has provided a source for military Keynesianism—Matveev insists that Putin's ability to order an exact electoral result is a sign of weakness, not stability. The horrific terror attack of March 22 underscores that Putin is not managing everything well, even though he has cynically used the attack to blame Ukraine.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

For decades, a cottage industry flourished in the subterranean depths of the American music industry: send a company your poem, and, for a fee, they'll turn it into a song. Maybe the song will even be your entryway into the industry and the Billboard charts! But most assuredly it will not be. Was this industry exploitative? Did it produce art? What even is "art" anyway? We tackle all these questions and more as we discuss the documentary OFF THE CHARTS: THE SONG-POEM STORY (2003).

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

David Moore outlines how AIPAC is using GOP contributors’ money to go after progressive Democrats. Meron Rapoport discusses how Schumer and the ICJ are being received in Israel. Jamieson Webster speaks about the social aspects of mental disorder among the young.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the early years of a struggle for Syria that would decisively shape the Arab world: the fight for independence from France, the first (CIA-backed) coup of 1949, and the rise of the Ba’ath and Communist movements.

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Buy The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Wont Save the Planet at versobooks.com 

Buy Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism at haymarketbooks.org 

Robert Fatton explains Haiti’s further descent into poverty and chaos. Steve Fraser, author of a recent article for Jacobin, analyzes and mourns the death of any sense of a better future.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

In 1991, over 100 of the the most famous singers, movie stars, an athletes in America got together to record a song for the troops in the first Gulf War. We take a visit to the consent-manufacturing factory and discuss the "apolitical" James Woods-hosted TV special VOICES THAT CARE: STAND TALL, STAND PROUD (1991).

Watch the special here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ1S_UNaWps

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Vijay Prashad explains how the North American and European bourgeoisies have become a spent force with nothing to offer the world. Volodymyr Ishchenko, author of Toward the Abyss, talks about Ukraine during and after the USSR.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

Against the backdrop of the incredibly boring 2000 election, the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman went on a cross-country journey to see if George W. Bush or Al Gore represented America. The result was THE PARTY'S OVER (2001), aka THE LAST PARTY 2000 — that's right, it's an official sequel to the Robert Downey Jr-hosted documentary. We found many resonances between this fossil from the turn of the millennium and our current moment. PLUS: The Democratic Party primary, the fascist Italian Prime Minister in Canada, and a fond farewell to David Bordwell.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Suzi talks to Warren Montag, professor at Occidental College, who was recently targeted for his talk at a college forum about Israel’s war on Gaza and issues it has raised in the US. The specific topic was one Warren had spoken on numerous times since the first Intifada: Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. In retaliation, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) campaigned to get him fired.

We hear Warren's personal testimony, his view on the history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, and his understanding of how the very discussion of anti-Semitism has become weaponized to discredit and silence critics of Israeli policy. What does this campaign of intimidation and retaliation mean for freedom of expression and inquiry, especially in an atmosphere of book-banning, harassment of librarians, teachers, professors and critics?

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

This final episode of Organize the Unorganized offers key lessons from the CIO moment. We asked all of our guests about this basic question, and these are their answers. The negative lessons—points where guests were keen to note the differences between the '30s and the present moment—focused on the changed economic situation and the issue of labor law. The more positive lessons dealt with union democracy, overcoming divisions in the working class, mass organizing, raising expectations, and seizing the moment.

This is the series finale. Find episode one, and all the other episodes, on the web or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/episode-9-lessons

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the politics surrounding the Zionist settler colonial destruction of Palestine, the Nakba of 1948, and the ground-shifting event that followed in its wake: the Nasser-led 1952 Egyptian Free Officers Movement coup that would set the tone for two decades of revolutionary nationalism across the region. Also: the Soviet camp’s support for the colonial partition of Palestine and its calamitous impact on powerful Arab communist parties. 

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Buy Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1 at haymarketbooks.org/books/2096-abolition

From the HIV/AIDS crisis, to the opioid epidemic, to the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmaceutical corporations have been accused of profiteering at the expense of countless lives. Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now and the author of a new book called Pharmanomics: How Big Pharma Destroys Public Health, joins Long Reads to discuss an industry that exploits public research and denies crucial medicine to poor countries.

Read another interview with Nick on the Jacobin website, "Big Pharma Reaps Massive Profits by Ripping Off Public Research and Weaponizing Patents": https://jacobin.com/2024/01/big-pharma-profit-public-research-patents-intellectual-property

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Historian Donna Murch, author of Living for the City, takes on some myths about the Black Panther Party. Saadia Toor and Rabia Mehmood discuss Pakistan.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html

The eighth, penultimate episode of Organize the Unorganized concludes the main story of the CIO. We cover the organization’s communist purge in the late 1940s and Operation Dixie, the failed campaign to organize workers in the south. We end with the merger with the AFL in 1955 and the afterlife of the CIO in the Industrial Union Department, which made important contributions to the civil rights movement.

Listen to the final, ninth episode here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/organize-the-unorganized-09-lessons

Find all the episodes on the web, or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/episode-8-is-there-an-ending-to-the-cio

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRD episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment is a comprehensive overview of the Middle Eastern Arab state system that crystalizes with the end of British and French colonial rule.

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Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com

Buy Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements are Leading the Fight for our Planet at haymarketbooks.org/books/2101-environmentalism-from-below 

Chilean writer and activist Pablo Abufom spoke at UCLA on February 23, 2024 about how the October 2019 social revolt in Chile propelled Gabriel Boric to power, created a Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution, but was then defeated, with reactionary neo-fascist forces now ascendant. Pablo Abufom was deeply involved in the social protest movement of October 2019, and has been on this podcast many times to discuss and analyze the revolt, the failure of the constitutional process, and the demobilizing effects of the pandemic.

In this talk, Pablo attempts to explain larger political and social phenomena on a global scale from the Latin American experience. Why did the wave of revolts between 2018 and 2020 fail to go further, and what accounts for the rise of neo-fascism everywhere, most recently in Argentina?

Pablo asks what can we learn from the Latin American revolts of the last five years and admits it is a tragic question; we ask it after being defeated or at least after the revolts were paralyzed by the power of ruling elites amid Covid-19. Cesar Bowey Castillo adds to the discussion with his analysis of the 2021 Colombian uprising, looking at how the various fragments of the working class and urban poor mobilized there. Suzi comments on Pablo's understanding of how the struggle for a dignified life moved people into the streets spontaneously, what did or did not emerge in terms of organizational forms, and how he sees that perennial, historical question of leadership and political mediation.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out early 20th-century anti-colonialism: from the Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian Great Revolts, to the birth of Arab nationalism, Islamic resistance, Ba'athism, and communism.

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Buy Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom at versobooks.com

The early period of the CIO arguably ended with the Little Steel strike in 1937. The strike's brutal repression and failure dramatically illustrated the limits of the New Deal order. But the CIO continued to grow through the 1940s during the war escalation. Episode seven of Organize the Unorganized is devoted to the CIO's role in and relation to the war effort, and what it meant for this labor upsurge.

Listen to the eighth episode here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/organize-the-unorganized-08-is-there-an-end-to-the-cio

Find all the episodes on the web, or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/episode-7-war

Jeet Heer, author of a recent article for The Nation, discusses Indian Americans in politics and society. Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno, authors of The Fall and Rise of American Finance, takes on the new finance capital.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html.

In 1987, America was ready to look back on the Vietnam War... with laughter. We discuss GOOD MORNING VIETNAM (1987) and why it is one of the quintessential "boomer liberal" texts. PLUS: We check in on the state of Canadian politics (it's not good, folks).

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Over the last four months, the Israeli war on Gaza has spilled over into the rest of the Middle East, from Lebanon to Iraq. But the most dramatic example has been the link between events in Palestine and Yemen. Ansar Allah, the movement known as the Houthis, imposed a blockade on ships going to Israel until there was a ceasefire. In response, the US and the UK have carried out air strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen. The Houthis say they won’t be deterred by military action.

Helen Lackner, one of the leading experts on modern Yemen and the author of several books about the country, returns to Long Reads to discuss the recent actions of the Houthis. The interview was recorded on Tuesday, February 20th.

Hear our previous episode with Helen, on the history of Yemen, from 2021: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/619be5d09c63710019611394

Read her recent articles for Jacobin here: https://jacobin.com/author/helen-lackner

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

There are many markers showing February 2024 to be a landmark month of cruelty — not least in Gaza, but also in Russia, where we turn our focus today. The slow murder of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the Arctic Circle penal colony Kharp on Friday, February 16, signals a turning point for Putin’s Russia and underscores both the Kremlin’s power and weakness.

We cover the turmoil in Russia in the lead-up to the March 2024 rubber-stamp presidential election. We were scheduled to speak to Boris Kagarlitsky, but, on February 13, Kagarlitsky’s appeal trial took place. He had been arrested in July 2024 for his criticism of Kremlin policy and opposition to the war in Ukraine. Kagarlitsky spent four and a half months in pretrial detention in the far northern Republic of Komi and was freed in December 2024. On February 13, the December verdict was overturned. Kagarlitsky was whisked from the courtroom into custody to begin serving five years in a penal colony. Three days later, on February 16, Alexei Navalny died.

Suzi speaks to Russian dissident activists and scholars Ilya Budraitskis and Grusha G. to get their understanding of these events. Budraitskis says Navalny is a man the regime truly feared, and they subjected him to a slow, cowardly murder, drawn out over many months. The Marxist critic Boris Kagarlitsky is now in their hands — and international solidarity is required. This is happening in the context of an election and the upcoming 2nd anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, when the Kremlin looks to portray Russians as united behind Putin.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment sets the stage: European imperialism in the Arab Mashriq from the late 18th century through the early 20th.

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Check out our newsletter and vast archives at thedigradio.com

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Buy A Short History of Trans Misogyny at versobooks.com

Gerald Epstein, author of Busting the Bankers’ Club, discusses the finance racket and how to transform it. Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, examines our sped-up, unmediated cultural eternal present.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html.

On episode six of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, we go deeper into some of the key CIO unions: the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC), and the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC). There were many other unions that formed the CIO — in oil, printing, transport, and other areas — but these four were some of the biggest and most influential.

Listen to the seventh episode here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/organize-the-unorganized-07-war

Find all the episodes on the web, or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/episode-6-from-the-docks-to-the-killing-floors

We discuss THE MENU (2022) and its place in the context of the current wave of "eat the rich" cinema. PLUS: we discuss Walter Isaacson's new hagiography of Elon Musk, and Joe Biden's wildly successful "I'm fit for office" press conference.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Ajay Singh Chaudhary talks about his new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. Matt Notowidigdo, co-author of a recent NBER paper, examines how recessions increase life expectancy.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html.

If you think about the French revolutionary tradition, you’re most likely to picture the storming of the Bastille and the overthrow of the monarchy. But that wasn’t the first time there was a major uprising against the established order in France. In the second half of the fourteenth century, there was a popular revolt known as the Jacquerie, which terrified the French ruling class. They drowned the revolt in blood and set about demonizing the peasants who took part in it. It was only in the wake of a successful revolution four centuries later that historians began taking a fresh look at the Jacquerie.

Long Reads is joined by Justine Firnhaber-Baker to discuss this uprising. She's a professor of history at the University of St Andrews and the author of The Jacquerie of 1358: A French Peasants’ Revolt. Published in 2021, the book was the first major study of the Jacquerie since the nineteenth century.

Read her article for Jacobin, "The Jacquerie Was a Great Popular Rebellion Against the Rich Nobles of France" here: https://jacobin.com/2023/09/jacquerie-peasant-revolt-france-middle-ages-class-conflict-nobility

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Featuring Luke Messac on Your Money or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine. An estimated 100 million people in the US are in debt because they sought medical treatment. Medical debt exacerbates poor and working-class people's physical and psychological suffering while undermining their financial well-being and freedom.

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Subscribe to a year of Jewish Currents at secure.jewishcurrents.org/forms/subscribe 50% off with special code DIG2024

Buy What Was Neoliberalism at haymarketbooks.org/books/2056-what-was-neoliberalism

Are commercial considerations always doomed to taint art? And are commercial considerations really a taint? We discuss Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's meta-movie ADAPTATION (2002) and the artist/hack dichotomy. PLUS: We mark the passing of the world's most famous minimalist sculptor and murder suspect.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Episode five of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO examines the Little Steel strike in the summer of 1937. It was a tragic failure for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and the CIO, one that illustrates the limits of the New Deal order. The Little Steel strike was in many ways a turning point, a key hinge in our story. To fully understand it, we also delve into the general history of steel organizing in the US, a fantastically brutal affair that reveals the soul of American capitalism.

Listen to the sixth episode here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/organize-the-unorganized-06-docks-to-the-killing-floors

Find all the episodes on the web, or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/episode-5-little-steel

Ed Broadbent died January 11, 2024. Suzi speaks with the co-authors of Ed's recent book, Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality. We also hear clips from Ed during his long political career.

Ed was the very popular leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Canada, first elected to the House of Commons in 1968 from Oshawa, Ontario, and always at the forefront of the parliamentary struggle for democratic socialism. Ed was also Vice President of the Socialist International. In 2011, he founded the Broadbent Institute, a think tank. Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality isn’t a memoir per se: Ed thought most political memoirs ended up being self-serving and self-justifying. He wanted to discuss the ideas he tried to exemplify and win while he was leader of the NDP in Parliament and afterwards with the Broadbent Institute. To do this, he engaged in dialogue with three collaborators, Carleton University Professor Frances Abele, policy analyst Jonathan Sas, and Jacobin writer Luke Savage, each from different generations. They dive deep into the theory and practice of social democracy.

In the postscript to the book, Ed leaves us with an enduring vision and his hopes for what is to be done to build the good society for today and the future. He writes: "To be humane, societies must be democratic—and to be democratic, every person must be afforded the economic and social rights necessary for their individual flourishing... Social democracy alone offers the foundation upon which the lives of people everywhere can be made dignified, just, and exciting."

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Sean Jacobs explores why South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel. Eric Blanc, who wrote a recent piece about sprawl and the suburbs, talks about organizing in a scattered and atomized society. Hassan El-Tayyab discusses the widening war in the Middle East.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online at https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html.

Featuring Emily Dische-Becker on how Germany became attached to a wildly narcissistic anti-antisemitism and Israeli proxy nationalism that have made it one of the most anti-Palestinian governments on earth.

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Check out our newsletters and vast archives at thedigradio.com

Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15— a special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin 

Buy Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine before the Nakba at haymarketbooks.org/books/2325-against-erasure

How was it that the CIO was finally able to make good on the decades-old dream of industrial unionism? In the fourth episode of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, we outline two more factors, alongside political opportunities and organizational militancy, that were key to the CIO’s success. First, we look at the great energy and commitment of the left toward the stable end of collective bargaining. Then we discuss what podcast guest Lizabeth Cohen has called the “culture of unity” bred by the CIO.

Listen to the fifth episode here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/organize-the-unorganized-05-little-steel

Find all the episodes on the web, or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode at https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/episode-4-taking-stock.

The world can't stop discoursing about it. Hillary Clinton herself has championed it. And our superdelegate patrons specifically requested it. It's time for us to turn our attention to the most discussed movie of the past year, BARBIE (2023). PLUS: We bid a fond farewell to Ron DeSanctimonious.

Seeking Social Democracy, the book Luke coauthored with Ed Broadbent, is available here: https://ecwpress.com/products/seeking-social-democracy-ed-broadbent

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

At least 26,000 people are now estimated to have been killed by Israel’s war on Gaza, although the real figure is believed to be even higher. The main legal challenge to Israel’s war has come from South Africa at the International Court of Justice. The court published its first response to the South African case on Friday, January 26th.

John Reynolds, professor of law at Maynooth University and author of Empire, Emergency, and International Law, joined Long Reads the day of the court response to discuss the case.

Read John's Jacobin essay, coauthored with Noura Erakat, about South Africa’s submission to the ICJ: https://jacobin.com/2024/01/south-africa-icj-isarel-gaza

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Shireen Al-Adeimi of Michigan State and the Quincy Institute discusses the Houthis. Political scientist Aurélie Daher gives another view of Hezbollah.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online at https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html.

Featuring Helen Lackner on the Houthis, the politics of their attacks on Red Sea shipping, and the long history of Yemen from British colonial Aden through the current civil war. 

Read Helen's articles for Jacobin jacobin.com/author/helen-lackner

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Buy Environmentalism from Below: How Global People’s Movements are Leading the Fight for our Planet at haymarketbooks.org/books/2101-environmentalism-from-below

Buy The Good Die Young: The Verdict on Henry Kissinger at versobooks.com

On the third episode of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, we examine the first major victories of the CIO in rubber, auto, and steel. The story begins at the Goodyear complex in Akron, Ohio, where a victorious strike put the CIO on the map. We turn to the General Motors strike in the winter of 1937, a transformational victory and perhaps the most iconic confrontation of the period. Finally, we hear about an important steel organizing campaign, whose success was drawn in part from the threatening militancy of the CIO.

Listen to the fourth episode here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/organize-the-unorganized-taking-stock

Find all the episodes on the web, or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode here: https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/episode-3-sit-down

Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative discusses ankle bracelets and electronic monitoring. Joseph Daher, author of Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God, delves into that demonized organization.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive at https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html.

On the second episode of Organized the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, we discuss the institutional formation of the CIO and meet some of the organization’s key personalities. We learn about figures such as John L. Lewis, whose bold leadership came at a decisive moment in history, and Sidney Hillman, the only other real center of power besides Lewis in the early CIO. Finally, we hear about some of the CIO’s key organizers, most of whom hailed from the United Mine Workers of America.

Listen to the third episode here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/organize-the-unorganized-03-sit-down

Find all the episodes on the web, or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode at https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/episode-2-powerful-personalities.

Political scientist Jacqueline Behrend examines Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei. Then Benjamin Fong, author of Quick Fixes, talks about Americans’ love-hate relationship with drugs.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive at leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html.

Featuring Ashley Mears on her book Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit. Mears, a sociologist and former fashion model, explores the super-elite "models and bottles" party scene where beautiful young women and conspicuous consumption heighten the status of rich men. 

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Buy Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine before the Nakba at haymarketbooks.org/books/2325-against-erasure

Subscribe to a year of Jacobin for only $15. A special offer for Dig listeners! bit.ly/digjacobin 

Your coworkers are spying on you. Your boss won't let you keep the expired food. The coffeeshop is charging you an arm and a leg to rent a laptop. In Aki Kaurismäki's funny and wonderful FALLEN LEAVES (2023), can a budding romance survive the everyday indignities of life under capitalism? PLUS: What would a British West Wing look like?

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

On episode one of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, we explore the conditions that led to the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. We first dive into the history of the organization from which the CIO broke off, the American Federation of Labor. Then, we discuss three key developments that raised workers’ expectations in the lead-up to the CIO’s inauguration: the broken promises of welfare capitalism, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the mass strikes of 1934.

Hear the next episode here: https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/organize-the-unorganized-02-powerful-personalities

Find all the episodes on the web, or by searching for "Organize the Unorganized" on your podcast app.

Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Find the full show notes for this episode at https://soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized/under-the-blue-eagle.

Suzi talks to Boris Kagarlitsky, Russian left intellectual writer-activist, just two weeks after he won his release from over four months in pre-trial custody. Kagarlitsky was arrested in Moscow on July 25 by the FSB, the Russian secret police, and taken more than 800 miles north to the city of Syktyvkar in the Komi Republic, where the local FSB opened a criminal case against him. He was accused of justifying terrorism, ostensibly for comments that he posted months earlier on social media regarding the attack on the Crimean Bridge. Even pro-Kremlin commentators were surprised at how far-fetched the accusations were. The state has imposed increasingly draconian charges and sentences for even minor anti-war activities, arresting thousands.

Kagarlitsky's arrest was part of a coordinated attack on the online journal and popular YouTube channel that Kagarlitsky edits, Рабкор.ру (Workers Correspondent). The Russian Socialist Movement saw Kagarlitsky’s arrest as an attack on the whole left movement in Russia, and a huge movement to free Boris emerged all over Russia and the world in response.

Kagarlitsky’s trial opened on December 11 in Syktyvkar and lasted two days. The prosecution and the FSB demanded five and a half years in prison. Kagarlitsky’s lawyer argued that “the charges against Boris were absurd, Kagarlitsky never supported or justified terrorism. The purpose of all his speeches is an attempt to show the real problems that the Russian state faces.” In a total surprise, the Russian authorities conceded to public opinion and the demands of thousands of scientists, researchers, artists, politicians, trade union members, and political activists from around the world. Kagarlitsky was found guilty, fined 600 thousand rubles (about $6600), banned from editing any media outlet or webpage for two years, and set free. The next day Rabkor held a crowdfunding event and 700,000 rubles was raised within an hour.

We are fortunate to have Boris Kagarlitsky with us to tell the story.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Ussama Makdisi on how Western colonialism and Zionism exploited, exacerbated, and imposed sectarianism across the Arab Middle East. This is the SECOND of a two-part interview.

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Samuel Moyn, law professor and historian, discusses the political and legal dubiousness of excluding Trump from the presidential ballot. Labor journalist Alex Press talks about the year in labor. See her Jacobin article, "In 2023, the US Working Class Fought Back" here.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

This is another special episode of Long Reads looking at Israel’s war on Gaza. Our focus today is on the politics of the Biden administration and its backing for Israel. Joe Biden and his team are still giving their firm support to Benjamin Netanyahu as he talks about a war lasting for “many months." With a presidential election due in the fall, there appear to be strong echoes of Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam in 1968.

Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the senior diplomatic correspondent for the Huffington Post. He’s been following Biden’s policy and the dissent among US government officials. We spoke on Tuesday, January 2nd, shortly after an Israeli bomb attack that killed a Hamas leader in Beirut, sparking fears of a wider escalation.

Find his coverage of Gaza here: https://www.huffpost.com/author/akbar-shahid-ahmed

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

We kick off 2024 by raiding the fridge for some holiday leftovers. It's become an annual tradition on this podcast to try to extract ideology from Tim Allen's "Santa Clause" franchise. With THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE (2006), we hit the motherlode.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

There have been many moments of labor upsurge in America: the influx of members into the Knights of Labor in 1886, the dramatic growth of unions during and after World War I, and the great wave of public sector unionism in the 1960s and ‘70s. But none matches the period of the 1930s and ‘40s, when millions of workers unionized under the aegis of the great labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. If we’re looking to get millions of private-sector workers into the labor movement today, there’s no better example than the ascendant period of the CIO.

In Organize the Unorganized, a podcast produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University and Jacobin, author Benjamin Y. Fong tells the story of the CIO with the help of prominent labor historians, including Nelson Lichtenstein, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Steve Fraser, Erik Loomis, Jeremy Brecher, Robert Cherny, Lizabeth Cohen, David Brody, Melvyn Dubofsky, and others. The multi-part series begins with a short history of the organization from which the CIO broke off, the American Federation of Labor, and explores central causes for the CIO’s founding: the broken promises of welfare capitalism, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the mass strikes of 1934.

Organize the Unorganized will be available weekly here on Jacobin Radio starting January 9. Subscribe and join us as we explore the rise, importance, and legacy of this crucial labor federation.

Gabriel Hetland has just published his study of populist experiments in Venezuela and Bolivia, Democracy on the Ground, showing the complexity of implementing participatory democracy at the grassroots level. Suzi talks to him about his findings. He examines the possibilities, limits, and concrete cases of participatory democracy, including participatory budgeting at the local level during the highpoint of Latin America’s Left Turn in the 2010s. Hetland's study immediately begs the question: what kind of democracy? It’s a pertinent question here in the US, where democracy is under threat.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Ussama Makdisi on the late Ottoman Empire's Arab culture of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish coexistence—an ecumenical frame that was interrupted by European colonialism and Zionism, which exacerbated and exploited sectarianism. This is the first of a two-part interview.

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If society outlawed emotions, could we stop all war and conflict? This is the very, very stupid question at the heart of EQUILIBRIUM (2002), the dystopian extravaganza that introduced the world to the art of "gun kata."

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Environmental journalist Tina Gerhardt analyzes the recently concluded COP28 environmental summit, where limited good intentions were uttered and oil contracts were signed. Historian Forrest Hylton talks about Javier Milei, the new libertarian, authoritarian president of Argentina.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

If anyone thinks about medieval Flanders today, it’s most likely because they have an interest in the art of painters like Bruegel and Rubens. But Flanders also pioneered the art of class warfare. There was nowhere else in Europe during the Middle Ages where the popular classes posed such an effective challenge to aristocratic power. At its high point during the early fourteenth century, this wave of popular mobilization defeated some of Europe’s most powerful armies.

Jan Dumolyn, professor of history at Ghent University, joins Long Reads to talk about the social conditions behind this wave of uprisings.

You can read Jan's piece for Jacobin, "Flanders Was the Epicenter of Class Conflict in Medieval Europe," here: https://jacobin.com/2023/07/flanders-class-conflict-medieval-europe-feudalism

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Joel Schalit, editor of The Battleground, discusses what it is in Israeli politics and society that’s behind the carnage in Gaza. Amy Schiller, author of The Price of Humanity, looks at what’s wrong with philanthropy and how to fix it.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

The French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte have inspired a lot of takes... so, of course, you can depend on Ridley Scott to find the least imaginative one. We discuss his lugubrious NAPOLEON (2023). PLUS: An update on Canadian politics, and some thoughts on the man who may be Prime Minsiter, Pierre Poilievre.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Shaul Magid on post-1948 Jewish Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism—including today's new generation of young, militant, left-wing, anti-Zionist American Jews and the Jewish establishment's quixotic efforts to deny and disavow them. PART TWO of a two-part interview.

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Join Jewish Voice for Peace jewishvoiceforpeace.org/join-us

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In the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, HBO made a movie about the lead-up to the first Gulf War, from the perspective of its most important factor: CNN. In LIVE FROM BAGHDAD (2002), Michael Keaton and his team of CNN reporters are Davids against the Goliaths that are establishment media... and the Iraqi security state. We discuss a mind-bogglingly awful piece of American propaganda from the Bush era.

Richard Seymour on CNN and Iraq - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELrGcK6XInE&ab_channel=TeleSUREnglish

Luke's interview with Tantoo Cardinal - https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/youve-got-to-crash-a-door-and-fail-and-get-back-up-canadas-most-recognizable/article_729f94ea-8ec2-11ee-843c-733c6d38c787.html

Luke's review of Werner Herzog's memoir - https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/werner-herzogs-new-memoir-is-as-complicated-and-fascinating-as-the-filmmaker-himself/article_92daad66-8ed7-11ee-9628-9345052d7cc2.html

Will's new zine, "The Journal of Stoogeological Studies" - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CPM5JBPB

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Trita Parsi discusses the global context of the Gaza war. James Bamford, author of a recent article for The Nation, investigates how Israel spies on US campuses. And Alberto Toscano, author of Late Fascism, talks about the latest iteration of the rough beast.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

Alan Minsky, Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America, spoke with Israeli historian and Genocide Studies scholar Omer Bartov at a public forum this week about the Israel/Gaza crisis. Bartov published two widely read pieces in November: "What I Believe as a Historian of Genocide,"New York Times, November 10, and "A political stalemate led to the bloodshed in the Middle East. Only a political settlement can truly end it," published in the Guardian November 29. Their conversation focuses on the necessity of relaunching serious negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to achieve a just, long-term, political solution to the 75-year conflict in Israel/Palestine, a demand they insist activists and the left in general should foreground immediately. Professor Bartov puts forward his proposal for a political solution that Alan Minsky describes as a “Confederated State Solution, neither a one-state nor a two-state solution, but something in-between.”

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Featuring Shaul Magid on the long history of Jewish Zionism and its antagonist, Jewish anti-Zionism. Defenders of Israel defame anti-Zionists as antisemites. In fact, today's growing ranks of anti-Zionist Jews draw on a powerful and diverse tradition.

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The estimated number of Palestinians killed or missing in the occupied territories since this war began is now 24,000 people — twenty times as many Israelis as were killed on October 7th. US government officials claim to have privately told Israel that it “must do more to limit civilian casualties” as the focus of the operation moves south. However, there is no evidence of any change in Israel's approach as the focus shifts from northern to southern Gaza and the relentless bombardment of civilian targets continues.

Palestinian academic Bashir Abu-Manneh joins for another special episode of Long Reads to discuss the latest developments in Israel's war on Gaza. Bashir is a reader in Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent and the author of The Palestinian Novel: From 1948 to the Present. He’s also a contributing editor at Jacobin who’s written many articles for us about Palestinian politics, including, most recently, "Israel Can’t Win Peace Militarily. Palestinian Democracy Is the Solution." https://jacobin.com/2023/11/israel-us-gaza-postwar-plan-nakba-palestinian-democracy

Other articles and videos mentioned in the podcast:

Josh Paul on CNN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5106v4b05I

Washington Post, "White House grapples with internal divisions on Israel-Gaza" by Yasmeen Abutaleb and John Hudson: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/26/biden-white-house-divisions-israel-gaza/

+972, "‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza" by Yuval Abraham: https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/

Al-Shabaka, "An Inevitable Rupture: Al-Aqsa Flood and the End of Partition" by Tareq Baconi: https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/an-inevitable-rupture-al-aqsa-flood-and-the-end-of-partition/

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Ed Harris is a senator with presidential ambitions. Diane Keaton is the love of his life, but uncomfortable in politics. And with the White House in his grasp, his campaign is about to be rattled by a very, very stupid revelation from her past. We discuss Michael Lindsay-Hogg's RUNNING MATES (1992), a movie that emerged straight from the primordial ooze of the 1992 election cycle.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Leigh Claire La Berge, author of Marx for Cats, talks about political economy and the human–feline relationship. Then an interview with Michael Zweig, author of Class, Race, and Gender, on understanding capitalism in order to transform it.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

The old saying goes that "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." But it helps if the men are very, very stupid. We discuss Martin Scorsese's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, in which the architect of a Native American genocide finds an easy pawn in one of the lowest-IQ protagonists in movie history.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Mohammed el-Kurd on Palestine. A short but expansive interview.

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Featuring Richard Seymour on the global politics of the Palestinian struggle and Israel’s war on Gaza. The *second* of a two-part interview.

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Christopher Ketcham, author of this Harper's article, gives us a look inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”. Neve Gordon discusses what dynamics in Israeli society have led to the acceptance of bombing hospitals.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive here.

For centuries, the English Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 only appeared in the historical record through bitterly hostile sources. Medieval chroniclers like Froissart presented it as a terrifying eruption of savagery from the lower classes. But the rise of modern social movements organizing workers and farmers encouraged historians to take a fresh look at this early challenge to aristocratic power.

Dominic Alexander, historian and the author of Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages, joins Long Reads to discuss this revolt and a much earlier one, in the twelfth century, led by a man called William Longbeard. While Longbeard was defeated, he has a strong claim to be recognized as England’s first social revolutionary.

Find Dominic's articles, "William Longbeard Was England’s First Revolutionary Leader" and "The English Peasants’ Revolt Gave Birth to a Revolutionary Tradition," on the Jacobin website.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Featuring Richard Seymour on the global politics of the Palestinian struggle and Israel's war on Gaza. The first of a two-part interview.

Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig

Buy Ireland, Colonialism, and the Unfinished Revolution at haymarketbooks.org/books/2111-ireland-colonialism-and-the-unfinished-revolution

Buy Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism at haymarketbooks.org/books/2098-care

Anatol Lieven discusses the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and the global standing of United States power. Ilyana Kuziemko and Suresh Naidu, co-authors of a recent paper on "economic policy and partisan realignment" in the US, talk about class differences in economic policy preferences ("predistributionist" vs. redistributionist).

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein returns to Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman to talk about the Tentative Agreements (TAs) the United Auto Workers (UAW) reached—still to be ratified—with the Big Three auto companies after six weeks on strike. It was the first time the UAW hit the Detroit Three at once. As Nelson wrote in his recent Jacobin piece, the UAW strike victory is historic and transformative, ending a forty-three-year era of concession bargaining and labor movement defeat. “With its successful strike, the UAW has broken with decades of concessions, won on pay and workplace democracy, and launched a new national labor leader. There’s much more organizing to be done, but this is an unmitigated victory for the entire working class.” We talk to Nelson about the transformative nature of this victory—the best news in the world today—and get his broader perspective on what it means for American politics and the working class writ large.

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

What if Britain's notorious right-wing GB News channel gave fading comedy hero and current "anti-woke" nuisance John Cleese a weekly show to do whatever he wants? Folks... the results may surprise you. We discuss the first few episodes THE DINOSAUR HOUR, the Monty Python legend's baffling new show. PLUS: Checking in on the Doug Burgum and Chris Christie campaign juggernauts.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Beverly Gage on her masterful biography G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. Guest hosted by Micah Uetricht. 

The Dig is an essential political education project. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig.

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Amjad Iraqi talks about what it’s like to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel—and what the Israeli state has in mind for Gaza. Georgi Derluguian, author of a recent guest essay in the Times, analyzes how the expulsion of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh exemplifies a new world disorder.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

For the week of Halloween, we offer a fond nod of the hat to our old, old friend Count Dracula by discussing NOSFERATU, PHANTOM DER NACHT (1979). And because we've both just read Werner Herzog's new autobiography, we discuss how its depiction of science versus the unknown fits squarely into the larger Herzog project. PLUS: More reflections on the crisis in Gaza. This podcast was originally broadcast October 31st.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

This is another special episode of Long Reads about Israel’s war on Gaza. Dan spoke to Rashid Khalidi, one of the leading historians of modern Palestine, on Monday, October 30th.

Last week, Joe Biden used a press conference at the White House to cast doubt on the casualty figures from Gaza. Neither Biden nor the White House offered any evidence to justify their alleged skepticism. An article in the Huffington Post showed that the State Department had been perfectly willing to rely on casualty figures from the Gaza health ministry in the last few weeks. The UN and other international bodies have also found those figures to be reliable. In response to Biden, Gaza's health ministry published a list of almost 7,000 people whose bodies had been identified up to that point. Reporters from the Interceptshowed that the list was a credible source of information. They looked in particular at a single Palestinian family that had lost more than forty people since the Israeli offensive began.

In the context of what Israel has been doing over the past few weeks, the comments from Joe Biden were a green light for more violence against Palestinian civilians. The Israeli military received the message loud and clear: Yesterday it carried out a major attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, killing dozens of people. Israel bombed the refugee camp again today.

Find a lightly edited transcript of this interview here: https://jacobin.com/2023/10/rashid-khalidi-biden-netanyahu-palestine-israeli-occupation-hamas-war

And for more on the historical background, see Rashid's book The Hundred Years' War on Palestine.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

Rami Khouri, a Palestinian American journalist and scholar, analyzes the war in Gaza. Evelyn McDonnell, author of The World According to Joan Didion, talks about the life and work of a groundbreaking writer.

Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.