Jacobin Radio

Latest Episodes:

The Dig: A Theory of ISIS with Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou Mar 13, 2019

Show notes

Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou explains: it's not just that the War on Terror has warped American and European politics and society; it's that the War on Terror and Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS have become mutually-critical facets of a larger, more total global geo-political order. In other words, the terrorists and the national security states waging war against them are dependent upon one another, and together have created a more violent, divided and alienated world.

Thanks to University of California Press. Check out Red Round Globe Hot Burning: A Tale at the Crossroads of Commons and Closure, of Love and Terror, of Race and Class, and of Kate and Ned Despard by Peter Linebaugh ucpress.edu/book/9780520299467/red-round-globe-hot-burning

And to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com

Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Jacobin Radio: DSA; Generation Priced Out Mar 12, 2019

Show notes

Suzi talks to DSAers Jeremy Gong and Magally Miranda Alcazar about the larger issues they are confronting after two years of Trump, a midterm election that saw radical democratic socialists elected to Congress, and the beginning of a second Bernie Sanders campaign for president. How do they see the challenges ahead, in a more favorable national context for Democratic Socialists, thanks to Bernie, AOC, #Red4Ed striking teachers, and the Trump administration’s retrograde policies? Can the Left take over the Democratic Party and should that be their aim? Or should the social-movement work of DSA, independent of the Dems, be their focus? How do they define socialism, and what should socialists do given the structures of our politics and economy?

Then, Suzi talks to Randy Shaw about his new book,Generation Priced Out — which is a call to action that addresses the national crisis of housing, city by city, looking at how policy and neglect, as well as economic crisis, has led to skyrocketing rents and home values that have priced out the working and middle class of urban America such that young people today join the exodus from the city or face homelessness because they cannot afford to live in our cities. Generation Priced Out not only tells the stories of those impacted by the national housing crisis in more than a dozen cities, he makes the argument that cities can and must address the housing needs of residents of all income levels — and he offers specific strategies, honed from his own decades of experience as a housing activist to reverse rising economic and racial inequality.

The Dig: Green New Deal Architect Rhiana Gunn-Wright Mar 09, 2019

Show notes

It's irrelevant whether establishment liberals are sincerely aware of the threat posed by climate catastrophe because they are constitutionally hemmed in by a small-bore, technocratic and profoundly neoliberal ideology. But the climate justice movement understands not only the urgency of the problem but also the magnitude of the political-economic response that solving it requires: to fight global warming, according to The Green New Deal, we must transform the unequal, alienating and exploitative system that carbon emissions are rooted in. Dan interviews Green New Deal architect Rhiana Gunn-Wright.

Read Jacobin's Green New Deal series jacobinmag.com/series/green-new-deal

Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com

Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

The Dig: Feminism for the 99% with Tithi Bhattacharya Mar 06, 2019

Show notes

Striking women have begun to reclaim feminism as a project of working-class struggle against not only patriarchy's domination of women by men but also against capitalism's domination of the many by the few—a system that sexism serves. As Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser write in Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, "Our answer to lean-in feminism is kick-back feminism. We have no interest in breaking the glass ceiling while leaving the vast majority to clean up the shards. Far from celebrating women CEOs who occupy corner offices, we want to get rid of CEOs and corner offices." Dan interviews Tithi Bhattacharya.

Thanks to Verso. Check out their huge selection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com

Please support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig

The Dig: Hegemony How-To with Jonathan Matthew Smucker Feb 27, 2019

Show notes

Dan's guest is long-time organizer Jonathan Matthew Smucker, the author of Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. The book is both a critique of the radical left's traditional style of politics and a how-to guide to fighting and winning, from nuts-and-bolts organizing methods to theory. What is wrong with the world and how to change it are two different categories of knowledge, and effective organizing requires that we master the latter.

Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com

Please support us with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Jacobin Radio: Kate Aronoff on Democratic Party Politics Feb 26, 2019

Show notes

Suzi talks to Kate Aronoff about Bernie Sanders’s candidacy, the Green New Deal, and the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders raised a whopping $6 million the first day he announced his run for president in 2020, making him the most important candidate in the race, and not just because of the money. His 2016 run within the Democratic Party but against its politics has changed the political conversation, brought tens of thousands into the work of politics, elected a new cohort of left Democrats to — and thanks to Bernie, all the candidates are now at least proclaiming support for Medicare for All, striking teachers, and a Green New Deal. As Kate Aronoff puts it, “The types of ideas laughed off in the 2016 primary as magical unicorns are now firmly in the party’s mainstream, even as they make its top brass sweat.”

Behind the News: Housing and the Green New Deal Feb 22, 2019

Show notes

Daniel Aldana Cohen, author of this article, on the role of housing in a Green New Deal. Then, Joel Whitney, author of this article, on the CIA's history as a purveyor of fake news.

Behind the News: AIPAC; the Green New Deal Feb 22, 2019

Show notes

Noah Kulwin, staff writer with Jewish Currents, on why Ilhan Omar’s AIPAC tweets weren't antisemitic. Then, Thea Riofrancos, one of editors of Jacobin's Green New Deal series, on the agenda's scope and politics.

The Dig: Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire with Dylan Riley Feb 20, 2019

Show notes

Dan discusses The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte — Marx's take on revolution and reaction in mid-nineteenth-century France, the broader theories he develops about history and the relationship between politics and the class war, and how this all might apply to today — with political sociologist Dylan Riley.

Check out Dan's recent NYT op-ed, "The Case Against Border Security."

Thanks to NACLA, reporting on the Americas since 1967. Check out their collection of articles on Latin American politics at nacla.org. And thanks, as always, to Verso. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com.

Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig!

The Dig: Contradictions with Eric Levitz Feb 16, 2019

Show notes

Dan talks to Eric Levitz — who at New York magazine provides the sort of consistently thoughtful and deeply contextualized analysis that is often quite hard to find on mainstream news sites — about the increasingly impossible to reconcile immanent contradictions shaking the Democratic and Republican parties.

Thanks to University of California Press. Check out American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams by Peter Richardson, with a foreword from Mike Davis.

Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig!

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