Jacobin Radio

The brutality of the Saudi royal family had been hiding in plain sight. It was an open secret convenient to the political, media and business elites for whom the Kingdom means big business and an invaluable geostrategic proxy. But the brutal murder and dismemberment of a single Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, has forced Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and his American enablers onto the defensive as the regime's brutal war on Yemen, global support for Salafist fundamentalism, and kleptocratric repression have suddenly been subjected to intense public scrutiny. Dissident scholar Madawi al-Rasheed explains the history and political-economy of Saudi Arabia, and the now-frustrated efforts at obfuscation mounted by bin Salman and his allies.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Recently, Dan spoke to Nikhil Pal Singh about the unfortunate and never-ending debate over whether it was economics or racism that got Trump elected. This is a sequel to that discussion: because what Malaika Jabali powerfully exposes in a Current Affairs piece combining on-the-ground reporting in Milwaukee and historical and data analysis is that when we talk about the impact of economic crisis on Trump's victory, the condition of Black poor and working-class people—many of whom decided to stay home on election day—must be at its center.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jacobin Managing Editor Micah Uetricht pulls Dave-Davies-duty for Dan and interviews Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez, a DSA member running for alderwoman in Chicago. Rodríguez-Sanchez moved to Chicago from Puerto Rico, where the brutal austerity imposed on the island made her job as a teacher impossible. She has brought with her a radical tradition and a program to fight for the city's beleaguered public schools, for renters and for immigrant rights, and for a public safety agenda that prioritizes social workers over cops.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of radical titles at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

CORRECT EPISODE NOW POSTED. Today's episode is on the alarming new report out from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and how it is that William Nordhaus — an economist whose work is dedicated to arguing that that it would be too inefficient to address the ecological crisis aggressively and urgently — recently won the discipline's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Dan speaks to Alyssa Battisoni, a PhD candidate in political science and member of Jacobin's editorial board.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge selection of left-wing books at www.versobooks.com.Please support this podcast with your money at www.patreon.com/TheDig.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A look at two forthcoming elections: the November midterms in California, and the second round of Brazil’s general election on Oct 28. Gustavo Arrellano of Orange County, author of Ask a Mexican and Taco USA, wrote in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed that “The Spotlight may be on the OC, but Democrats are building for the long haul in the Central Valley” — in other words, he explains why winning blue in Bakersfield and Fresno is even more important than in Republican OC — and, says it could be a template for winning back small towns and rural America.Suzi then talks to Matthew Richmond in Sao Paulo about the Oct 28 second round of the general election. The ultra-right-wing Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal party is ahead of the PT’s Fernando Haddad (as Lula sits in jail), and we get Matthew Richmond’s analysis of how Bolsonaro was able to gain a formidable base among the poor — and why these constituencies support Bolsonaro when his economic policies will hurt them. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and op

Leandros Fischer on German politics, with an emphasis on refugees. Then, Samuel Moyn, author of a recent Boston Review article, on why the Supreme Court sucks and what can be done about it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Brazil is headed toward fascism by way of Jair Bolsonaro, a sexist, homophobic, and violent militarist clown nostalgic for a murderous dictatorship. How did this happen? Alfredo Saad-Filho, a professor of political economy at SOAS University of London, explains the roots of right-wing reaction and left-wing collapse — and the ultimately disastrous results of a PT governance strategy centered on an accommodation with a capitalist order that could only last as long as the global commodity boom did.Read "Bolsonaro’s Conservative Revolution" by Matthew Aaron Richmond: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/10/brazil-election-bolsonaro-evangelicals-securityThanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge catalog of left-wing books at www.versobooks.com.Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Socialist Alternative's Kshama Sawant was elected to Seattle City Council way before socialism became a cool thing. Today, Dan's talking to Sawant about how socialists can build power and win at the local level—and how in Seattle, that means taking on Amazon, which recently coerced her colleagues on Council to reverse themselves on a big-business tax that was earmarked to help the homeless people who have been squeezed out of the housing market by an economy dominated by those very same big businesses. Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their enormous catalogue of left-wing books at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today, we’re addressing one of the most obnoxious corners of the identity politics debate. And that is the corner occupied by Right Liberals who believe that any desire to change the world is a divisive symptom of maladjusted affluenza emanating from pampered college students. Moira Weigel discusses her Guardian review of The Coddling of the American Mind, which makes its case by way of pragmatic folk aphorisms like: “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child”.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge catalogue of left-wing books at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with you money at patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Let’s ensure that the history of American socialism doesn’t repeat as farce. That’s one reason that Max Elbaum wrote Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, an account of the little-remembered New Communist Movement that defined the American anti-capitalist Left of the 1970s. Their internationalism, anti-racism and cadre organization were in many ways admirable. Their dogmatism and sectarianism proved disastrous. Elbaum relates this history, and the lessons that the New Left failed to learn from the Old Left—lessons that today's resurgent left would be wise to study.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge catalogue of left-wing titles, including Revolution in the Air, at www.versobooks.comPlease support this podcast with MONEY at patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Meagan Day, Natalie Shure, and Alissa Quart reflect with Suzi Weissman on the toxicity — and banality — of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to the Supreme Court. We look at the way the contentious, emotional hearings exposed the fault lines between gender, privilege, class, and politics in the US — and ask why the Democrats have been so meek, diffident, and ineffective in the face of the Republican Party’s disciplined march to impose the future, violating every norm to get an extreme right-wing bloc on the Supreme Court. We also look at what that means for the fightback. Natalie Shure looks at the Federalist Society and their influence and politics that go beyond gender justice to the very defining characteristics of Kavanaugh’s ideology and the political movement that groomed him. Alissa Quart, author of Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America writes about class privilege and the women who are invisible to Kavanaugh and his class. Christine Blasey Ford is heard, but betrays her class by stepping forw

Christine Blasey Ford and other women have revealed that our political-economic elite is pervaded by profound intimate violence, forms of brutal interpersonal domination that are the everyday and microcosmic connective tissue of systems of domination as a whole. Lisa Duggan offers her thoughts on how to link these individual stories that playing out at economic, political and celebrity peaks to the systems that order the world that the rest of us live in. Duggan also addresses carceral feminism and how "believe women" obscures the way that gender and sexuality are embedded in political and economic structures. Plus, she rethinks her controversial blog post about Avital Ronell in response to grad student critics.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their huge catalogue of left-wing books at versobooks.comAnd please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sociologist Shamus Khan on the culture of elite schools and the sense of entitlement they breed. Then, political scientist Thea Riofrancos on the delegitimation of our ruling class and the political possibilities inhering in that. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

An interview with three members of Reclaim Philadelphia, which emerged from the Bernie 2016 campaign in Philly and has since — in a remarkably short amount of time — played a key role in getting Larry Krasner elected District Attorney, effectively won a state legislative seat, and taken over two Democratic Wards in the city. Much of the debate on the Left over how to engage in electoral politics revolves around how to relate to the inside and outside of electoral politics as they currently exist: in other words, how to approach the unfortunate reality of the Democratic Party. Reclaim Philadelphia brings an outsider perspective and base to a hard-nosed insider game. Nikil Saval, Rick Krajewski, and Amanda Mcillmurray explain what they do and how they do it.Thanks to Verso Books. Peruse their huge collection of left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com!Please support this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, on the win–win business- and plutocrat-friendly philanthropy of today’s nouveau riche. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Legal analyst Harry Litman joins Suzi to unpack the legal and constitutional questions raised in both the Mueller investigation and the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The question that is on the table is whether the Constitution and the traditional practices of the American political system can protect us from the from the power of the extreme right and the march to authoritarianism.And then Germany: The demonstrations in Chemnitz at the end of August sent chills through Europe and the world, just a year after the electoral successes of the AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) in the September 2017 elections. They reflect the ascent of the far right, including outright Nazis on the German political scene. We talk to long-time analyst of the German far right, Volkhard Mosler, socialist activist in Chemnitz Gabi Engelhardt, and Einde O’Callaghan, a teacher and activist who has lived in Germany for twenty-five years to get an analysis of what is behind the rise of the Right — and the

Serious people in Washington are seduced by vapid and self-serving accounts of their savvy operation of the machinery of government — works like Bob Woodward's latest exercise in extended stenography Fear: Trump in the White House. The problem with Trump — for defenders of the establishment political order that helped make his presidency possible — is precisely that he's not a man like John McCain, a bloodthirsty and world-historically successful self-mythologizer. Patrick Blanchfield on his review of Fear in n+1 and obituary of John McCain in The Baffler.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out their massive collective of left-wing books at versobooks.com!Please support this podcast with your money at patreon.com/TheDig. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode's guests are Margaret Corvid, who recently won a city council race in Plymouth, England, and Julia Salazar, who just won the Democratic primary for New York state senate in Brooklyn. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The United States today exceeds at perpetually waging wars that are destined to fail to meet their purported objectives. The War on Terror is one such war. The War on Drugs is another. In both cases, failure never leads to much official questioning of the war let alone a repudiation of its underlying wisdom. The conventional wisdom is always that the war just hasn't been waged in the right way, or aggressively enough. My guest today is Leo Beletsky, who directs the Health in Justice Action Lab at Northeastern University. He and Jeremiah Goulka recently published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the abolition of the DEA, noting that after hundreds of billions of dollars spent fatal overdose rates have skyrocketed to a historic high. Let's #AbolishDEA.Thanks to Verso Books. Check out a huge catalogue of excellent left-wing books at versobooks.com.Please support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For many, conservatives and liberals alike, Appalachia provides a skeleton key for interpreting changes in American politics that might otherwise be difficult to comprehend. But the way conservatives and liberals talk about Appalachia tells us a lot more about conservatives and liberals than it does about the region. Elizabeth Catte, the author of What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia, puts the region and representations of it in historical and political-economic context.Thanks to Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles at www.versobooks.com. And thanks to University of California Press, which just published Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century by Barbara Ransby: ucpress.edu/book/9780520292710/making-all-black-lives-matter.Support this podcast with money at Patreon.com/TheDig! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.